“Tony’s ARTworks from Shining World” review

Wondered if I should get Tony Taka’s latest artbook “Tony’s ARTworks from Shining World”, ended up purchasing it and am quite glad I did.
Have been able to thoroughly admire and enjoy every page of it since it arrived a while ago.

Hesitated to get “Tony’s ARTworks from Shining World” because it is exclusively filled with Tony Taka’s art for the “Shining” game series and I already have the two “Shining Wind Collection of Visual Materials” & “Shining Tears Collection of Visual Materials” books, also filled with Tony’s art.

Wasn’t sure how much existing and how much new art this book would contain.

If it only had one or two new illustrations and was just a collection of the previous works, then it wouldn’t be of much interest to me.

Below illustration shows most of the girls, though it sadly lacks Blanc Neige, Elwing and Mao.
Kureha and Seena easily make up for it as they look very cute in their school uniforms, but most striking is no doubt bikini clad Xecty, showing Tony needs but a small corner of the page to draw a female character in such a way he can still make our hearts skip a beat.

While this new book does indeed contain all the illustrations already published in “Shining Wind Collection of Visual Materials” & “Shining Tears Collection of Visual Materials”, it has over fifty illustrations that were not in those two previous books, such as the CD cover art, anime series DVD cover art as well as other works.

That makes this book the ultimate “Shining” art collection and a well worth purchase to me, I’m sure it’ll be a great addition to any Tony Taka or “Shining Tears/Wind” fan out there.

Quite a bit of illustrations in the book feature the girls are clad in bikini, we can only be thankful for that.
Xecty, Kureha, Seena, Clalaclan… delicious! Who would be your pick?

A heavy, over 200 pages long hardcover book, “Tony’s ARTworks from Shining World” comes in a cardboard slipcase that has several especially cut holes in it, allowing one to view the lovely cover art of Elwing and Xecty.

The book has four main sections, the first features art that wasn’t in the previous books, the next two sections have art from “Shining Tears” and “Shining Wind” respectively and the book closes off with a shorter character sheet section.
While the “Shining Tears” and “Shining Wind” sections contain much art that was in the previous books, they also have pieces that hadn’t been published in those yet.

Like how in below illustration the girl’s school uniform skirts and ties are color assorted with their hair, gives it an extra cute touch.
Tony Taka’s line art is truly amazing, has expert coloring and shading to boot.

Nice interludes between the sections are ‘Tony’s Atelier’, where the process of creating the cover art is shown, and a two part interview with Tony Taka himself, including photos of his work studio.

Who would not love to wake up to the following sight every day?
What a sublime illustration of Xecty, with an irresistible atmosphere where Tony Taka shows masterful use of combining elements like facial expression, pose, angle, body language to craft an image that holds a lethal mix of cuteness and sensuality.
One has to also recognize the attention to detail too, notice how her right elf ear is bent in what presumingly looks like a natural way.

Being a hardcover, it’s a very sturdy book, the print is crisp and very sharp, with vivid colors on nice smooth paper.

The images included here are a few scans found on moe.imouto which don’t really do the book justice since there’s no trace on the book’s pages of the screening pattern you see in some of the scans.

All that stunning art of Kureha, Blanc Neige, Seena, Elwing, Xecty, Clalaclan, Mao,… Tony Taka remains one of my favorite artists.

No one can render girls the way he does, with such a mix of disarming cuteness, femininity and sensuality that one is literally absorbed by the art and lusts for the lovely girls portrayed in it, wishing they were real and tangible.