abec: Sword Art Online Vol. 2 (Aincrad)
Translation of abec’s personal blog posts.
Mostly comments on the illustrations, since abec’s the illustrator for the series and all.
abec’s blog. (mature content warning)
Sword Art Online 2.
Dengeki Fes, SAO 2 Character Roughs, etc.
It’s obviously advised to have read through the novels, or seen its illustrations first.
Spoilers are slight if there are even any.
*-s are links to notes. Click on them.
I’m not reproducing any images, so their positions will be marked within {description}s.
Might be a good idea to open a copy of the original post to see the images.
5th August 2009
Sword Art Online 2
{SAO Vol. 2 cover}
It might have already been sold ahead of time, but it should be released on the 10th of August.
I hope for your support.
Comments after the Read More. Be sure to read them after getting the book, alright.
And so, for the moment, first up would be…
The hairstyles for Yui and Sachi are absolutely identical…
Not to mention they’re beside each other among the frontispieces…!! (spews blood)
Geez, I was shocked when the sample got here.
How did I not notice… Well, the design phase for Silica, Liz and Yui was at the same time as SAO 1’s roughs, while Sachi’s was while I was totally freaking out right before the manuscript, though.
No, I have no qualms at all over it by itself, so if I just ignore the frontispieces…
Aside from that, I did receive jabs going, “Silica’s way too cute, isn’t she, lol”, from those who read it beforehand, but well, while I personally love plain girls and such too, let’s not get this out in the wild:
Cute ones would obviously be more accepted among those who haven’t read it, right? In terms of sales (＾ｑ＾)ｙ-~
And that’s how it is! It’s not that you can’t sell art and works of a plain girl like that, with simplicity as her selling point.
I simply want to make her cute and cool instead, since I can do that.
It’s true that my parental love’s (but I’m just the illustrator) at work too, though.
Look, even if it were to get attacked by the weakass indoor clique, or even if there’s a certain other kind of fear lying around, it’s not poorly done as an illustration, right, lol?
Other than that, what I think I did well on were
the dragon, or the small dragon, or the skeleton shinigami *, I guess! (it’s all monsters-
3rd October 2009
Dengeki Fes, SAO 2 Character Roughs, etc
Now I’m left with a whole lot of spare time.
There will be a autograph session with Kawahara-san on the second day of the Dengeki Character Festival 2009 that will be held today and tomorrow, but if I were to go all abec beside Kawahara-san and scribble, the travelling expenses will be covered.
Or so I was told, so it’s a free trip to Tokyo. And I agreed without a second thought.
Work’s at Tokyo tomorrow, going all abec and drawing.
But I certainly am busy, being an active female high school student, not to mention a net idol in permanent hibernation; if this abec were to reveal her face, there’ll definitely be a huge outbreak in cyberstalkers, oh my, how scary.
That’s what came to mind, so I got a hold of a middle-aged guy in the neighbourhood and made him go in my place.
Treat him well!
…It’s just your imagination if you thought that I sounded increasingly lifeless while I said that out myself…
It’s been so frantic, I couldn’t get my hair cut or buy clothes. I haven’t bought any clothes recently.
Ah, I did a piece for the Dengeki Fes’s calender, a new drawing of Asuna-san.
Also, I completely forgot about the autograph paperboards I was asked to bring, so they won’t be there in time. I’m sorry.
Also, at the end of the Accel World 3 book which will be out in ten days (I think?), there’s an advance notice for SAO 3.
The original plan was to place the character roughs there, but it ended up being an illustration instead.
I just doodled in a part of an illustration meant for one of the frontispieces.
Looking back on it now, the facial expression wasn’t done very well. I’ll do it properly on the frontispiece.
I barely made it in time, but wouldn’t this work better?
That’s what I said, but maybe the character roughs would have done the job better.
Also, I laughed at the illustration in the author’s recent portrait section in Accel World 3, lol.
SAO 2’s character roughs after the Read More.
{character roughs for Yui, Silica and Lisbeth}
The designs kept changing subtly as I continued drawing them.
Like how I ended up designing Silica to reveal more and more of her sides.
And I didn’t colour it in, so it seems I got Pino’s eye colour and stuff wrong *.
I certainly screwed up-ZE☆
I did Sachi’s rough during a truly deranged situation, and it’s a mess, so please wait for it.
I was told that it’s fine to expose the rough of an illustration intended as one of the opening frontispieces that got scrapped due to time constraints, maybe I’ll upload them as a set around the start of the next month.
I really should mention this, I rarely ever draw character roughs with this much detail.
I just happened to have the time when I did the character designs these days, so I made them look good.
It’s been said that people have a limited amount of potential, though.
I wonder if I can keep this up from now on too.
Notes
Shinigami: Death god.
Pino: I’m translating, not editing.