Sora no Kikou ~The sky of the longing for memories~

Early this autumn, my friend from Japan brought me back several items, the one presented in this entry is Sora no Kikou ~The sky of the longing for memories~, featuring digital backgrounds by the studio CoMix Wave. The book is a 175 page softcover, the majority of which are images, which I find uncommon for most fanbooks. The pages are smaller than your standard letter/A4 meaning the images are a small, and knowing the level of detail in Makoto Shinkai’s work I think these images could be spectacularly crisp even if enlarged 4× the size. Inside you will find hundreds of backgrounds from Byousoku 5 Centimeter (5 Centimetres per Second), Kumo no Mukou, Yakusoku no Basho (The Place Promised in Our Early Days), Hoshi no Koe (Voices of a Distant Star), and a TV advertisement for the newspaper “Shinano Mainichi Shumbun”.

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In the process of collecting 1.07GB (1270 files) of high-quality animanga scans, wallpapers, and drawings, you come across a lot of junk. I don’t save the things I don’t like, but I’ve seen enough to be able to distinguish a Bad Wallpaper from a decent one. After a quick study, I discovered some common formulae used in the creation of a Bad Wallpaper, and now I present to you a step-by-step guided tutorial on how not to make an animanga wallpaper. Afterwards I’ll treat you to a (somewhat more decent) wallpaper I made for myself. So let’s get that Photoshop open and start cranking. (or just scroll to the bottom if you just want to see/download mine, cheapskate~)
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Hardcover, 244 pages.

My second artbook review will be for Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away. This book was a nice grab from amazon.ca, $25 shipping included (I added it to my friend’s order so she could get the free shipping quota). Compared to my Clannad Visual Fan Book it’s not as in-depth, but there are a lot of early development sketches, rough line art and unedited watercolour backgrounds which I was really looking forwards to, especially for a production from Mr. Hayao Miyazaki. There’s a certain beauty that is expressed through draft-quality hand-drawn watercolour paintings, I expect Ponyo on a Cliff is following through with that logic.Because this book is in English I can understand all of the captions, however there isn’t nearly as much text as the Clannad Visual Fan Book.

“Most people panic and collapse while shouting, “It can’t be true.” Those people will be erased or eaten up in the situation in which Chihiro finds herself. In fact, Chihiro’s being strong enough not to be eaten up is just what makes her a heroine. She is a heroine not because she is beautiful or because she possesses a unique mind. This is the key characteristic of this work.”

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Finally, three months after placing my order, I received my Clannad Visual Fan Book yesterday, shipped all the way from Nippon. And so it is about time I revive TsundereStorm, I’ve been on “hiatus” for more than a month (though occasionally I was finalizing my design for TsundereStorm 1.0 in my sketchbook on the subway).

Yeah, working in retail is busy, especially before the Christmas season. I finally got back into the animanga business after the New Year. Good timing for the arrival of my Clannad book!

The first page of the book is a delicious Kyou Fujibayashi conveniently locked in the gym equipment storage room.

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