Rainbow Spectrum: Colors Haimura Kiyotaka Illustrations5 min read
Reading Time: 3 minutesRainbow Spectrum: Colors Haimura Kiyotaka Illustrations is a collection from light novels, most notably including Toaru Majutsu no Index. The art book incorporates color and monochrome works from the novels in chronological order. There are shorter sections from Sprite Spiegel and Maid DEKA, too.
Rainbow Spectrum: Colors is a lengthy A4-size art book weighing in at 192 pages. Though there are plenty of illustrations, the presentation is severely lacking. Illustration sizes range from full page to tiny, thumbnail-sized pictures. The smallest sizes seem reserved for the monochrome works.
Very few illustrations receive a full page presentation, though there are a few spreads. The art in Rainbow Spectrum: Colors has no overlap and unfortunately the layout has several illustrations overlap the gutter.
The art work is in chronological order, so you can really see the progression of Haimura Kiyotaka’s techniques. I wouldn’t say the older illustrations are lacking, but they’re different from what we usually see today. Some of the older works in the book weren’t adequate for print so there is some pixelation. The upscaled images are blurry and lack the crisp line work you’d expect in an art book.
The Toaru Majutsu no Index portion of the art book ends on page 110. It finishes with a cross-talk between Haimura Kiyotaka and the author Kamachi Kazuma. After, the illustrations resume for another 50 pages. This time we have works from Sprite Speigel and Maid DEKA, and a few pages of original and tribute illustrations.
Last are 12 pages of interviews and a quick how-to-illustrate section featuring an illustration of Index. The book ends with 14 pages of concept art, which are mostly low quality images. On the whole this book felt unorganized in its layout and sloppy in the editing especially with upscaled images. I’m sure most fans would be quite happy with the collection but it really deserves a better presentation than this.
Title: Rainbow Spectrum: Colors Haimura Kiyotaka Illustrations タイトル: 灰村キヨタカ画集 Author: Haimura Kiyotaka Publication Date: 02/28/2011 Size: 192p NDL: https://id.ndl.go.jp/bib/000011135491
