abec: Sword Art Online Vol. 8 (Early and Late)
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 8 Early and Late.
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.
9th August 2011
Sword Art Online 8 Early and Late Sold on 10th August.
{SAO Vol. 8 cover}
Good day. abec, the manager of the Sword Art Online new volumes’ information blog, “abec’s place”, here.
It turned out being a blog deserving of that name, hasn’t it.
I do wish to draw yuriyuri art again sooner or later.
Putting that aside, here’s the new volume!
This time’s a collection of short stories from SAO and ALO.
For a summary, check out the link above.
There’s spoilers in the comments on the illustrations, so please look from the Read More.
Also, I’ll be doing a autograph session with Kawahara-sensei on the 20th of August this time, at Osaka.
(Refer to the link above for details. Tickets will be distributed from the 10th onwards.)
My health deteriorated right before those every single time, so I always had to get the middle-aged guy living nearby who’s coming along to stand in as my guardian to stand in for me in a hurry.
Those strange occurences might have happened,
(due to that, there are rumours floating about, of us being the same person, or me being a self-styled high school girl and such, how vexing!)
but I really wanted to meet everyone this time. I will be staying at the hotel for the whole of the day before just to make sure, but abec, who can’t sleep with a different pillow, might get weak due to lack of sleep, leading to a need to hurriedly call down that middle-aged guy from Kyoto.
I worry that such a thing might happen.
Well, putting such foolish thoughts aside, for those who have already read through it, the stories on the illustrations are after the Read More.
Cover:
This time is surprisingly enough, Heathcliff-san, along with the usual Kirito-san.
I’ve been taking too much notice of the colour blending recently, without variation, so I kept wondering if something was off and tried blending the colours in a way similar to the 2nd or 3rd volume, but how did it turn out?
That said, it’s two males, so there might be a lack of flowers about, lol.
Frontispiece
I went with an slightly amended illustration that I drew for a booklet from Dengeki Bunko MAGAJINE for the frontispiece.
The size is a little small, so it was tedious, but I like it.
And page 4 and 5 was a Everyone Gather! thing, so it was really difficult, but I hoped that the bustling feeling was expressed well
Also, Sinon’s armpits- by the character introduction- (that’s-
Monochrome
I tried to insert as many characters as I could, so the amount of cut-ins might have been too high.
There’s a steep transition between the serious and comical scenes, but I’ve been thinking about drawing various kinds of expressions lately, I would be glad if that got through.
Anyway, Klein’s cute, he really is.
Also, Sinon’s cute as expected, she really is.
And next, Asuna-san from her scarce tsundere period. What a tsundere! I want to get scolded!
Also, about the character designs
The appearance of that person whose name appears here and there, and the visual appearance of that character back in the SAO era.
Aside from that, I was really pretty pleased with Yoruko, but how was she. She had a surprised face on in all of them, though, lol.
She’s a girl with cute trousers. I do wish to upload a full body image if I get the chance. (and as per usual)