abec: Sword Art Online Vol. 6 (Phantom Bullet)
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 6 Phantom Bullet.
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.
13th December 2010
Sword Art Online 6 Phantom Bullet
{SAO Vol. 6 cover}
It’s been a long time since it started being sold.
I blame my lack of free time for not updating, I’m very sorry.
I haven’t even uploaded any character roughs since the Fairy Dance arc, huh ＞＜；
I want to make it in time for the end of the year somehow… but it’ll probably be hard.
For the time being, here’s the 6th volume that I believe many have already read!
It’s a volume full of rewrites… no, newly written text, so those who already read the web version, as well as those who haven’t, please enjoy it!
More about the illustrations at the read more.
Cover
As expected, the focus is on Kirito-san this time as well!
I had other ideas for Sinon, but there stands Kirito-san. Defending his spot to his last.
Also, armpits were impossible, but it was fun drawing Sinon’s ass. (what are-
Frontispiece
The instructions for the opening frontispiece are always “If you have time, colour in the character roughs. We’ll handle it after that from over here,” but I always go “No, please let me draw something new” and get my way.
But I rarely have the time, so up till now, there have been many times when I’ve just drawn the roughs, or not even that, but somehow, I drew them for both of those in the Phantom Bullet arc (´ー｀)=3 It was pretty impossible. I tried hard.
Also, there was that group picture of Asuna, Liz, Leafa, Yui, Silica and Klein.
(I totally forgot to write Silica’s name in, lol. 3 web claps pointing it out in just that short period. How scary, lol.)
I made sure to write in the characters’ settings properly. It was way too hard!
There are way too many visual changes in this series, so it’s extremely difficult!
But Asuna’s clothes aren’t cute enough, so I think I’ll draw them again.
Also, the guns were terrible.
From this volume onwards, I switched all of the colouring work to SAI and Photoshop, so the colouring style and such changed.
It would be nice if you could appreciate that as well.
The final page among the frontispieces is by Midori Foo-san. It’s too gorgeous! High quality!
Illustrations
Actually, all of them were darker than what abec expected.
I always make colour samples for the RGB reconversion and send that off with them, but I forgot. I’m reflecting over it.
As a result, I’m rather depressed with parts that I worked hard to draw getting destroyed.
I believe I put my spirit into the battle scenes, but how were they?
Nearly all of the scenes were serious, huh, lol.
Also, partially due to opening frontispiece as well, but actually, I couldn’t make the first deadline and caused various troubles for the editor.
Thank you very much. It has been hard on you.
I really did want to draw the nurse, Aki-san, as well, if I had the time, I believe I would have gone “please let me draw her!”, though ＞＜