My favorites are probably from the KeroQ group.
Sca-ji: I love his unique designs and overall art skills. He can shade, design, and even do his own backgrounds. The way he illustrates fight scenes is awesome. His creativity his unmatched just like his love for futa.
Motoyon: Cute long haired girls and nice designs. [size=50]Major appeal being the designer for Ayana [/size]
Suzuri: Awesome girls with guns
There’s a bunch of other artists in their group but I don’t really care much for them. Nishimata and Mitha are also pretty nice.
I like Alpha (Akabeesoft + some sub companies) a lot for her extraordinary sense in striking character and CG designs.
I like the KeroQ artists too, although I’m not always sure who is responsible for what, exactly. I think Motoyon is my favourite though- simply because I can see that great style in Tousui Kitan that I sure can’t see in the BLUEWATER games.
However, I will make one specific call- there’s one CG in H2O that I always found particularly striking (link, semi-NSFW) so I’ll change my favourite in this group to whoever drew that-- although a good portion of my adoration for that is in the colouring as well, but whatever.
I still think CARNELIAN does great technical work, even if her character designs are occasionally somewhat iffy. Many of the titles she’s worked on are just filled to the brim with brilliant art, although as before there’s typically one CG that comes to mind when I think of a particular artist and with CARNELIAN it’s definitely this one from Quilt - just awesome stuff, jeez.
Eroge artist KusuKusu - much like scenario writer NYAON who works with him - probably hit his peak with Moshimo Ashita ga Hare Naraba. Later titles have art that is technically good but Moshiraba’s art had FEELING, which is something I’m just not seeing in the later titles.
I also think Bekkankou is really good at drawing four different character designs over and over again. I guess the moral here is: practice makes perfect.
I probably forgot a bunch of people. There’s a lot of eroge art I really love so it’s hard to choose.
Finally, Nagaoka Hirofumi for doing things with a limited palette that I wouldn’t have thought possible. YU-NO is easily the nicest looking PC-98 game (in fact, I’d say it was the nicest looking video game ever when it came out)- there is no contest whatsoever. He only worked on that one game though
Ooishi Tatsuko from Sekien no Inganock and other WaB games (though only played Inganock) must be one of my favorites. Also from Liar Soft I liked the art in Kusarihime, so I guess Nakamura Tetsuya (though again haven’t played other games illustrated by him).
I also like the art of Fue from Tarte/Rococo Works.
And then I must mention Ryukishi07; Higurashi was really bad, but I liked Umineko designs and what little I’ve seen of Higanbana.
I’ll take this moment to continue my masturbation the KeroQ’s art.
Why do people say the overall art quality in Tsui no Sora is bad? Ignoring the outdated shading everything else is splendidly illustrated. There’s a particular cg with Takuji and his fellow classmates on the roof and it’s simply badass.
There’s also a decent amount of tachie expressions and poses… I’d say the overall art quality is above Moekan, imo. Sca-ji’s monster designs are some of the most surreal designs I’ve seen in eroge or Japanese media in general.
Their artwork is currently my main motivation for learning Japanese. 15 years from now maybe i’ll actually be talking about something other than Sca-jis glorious designs.
Maybe. Moekan has this though. I’m such a sucker for that light-through-treetops effect though. I’ll agree it’s certainly not as nice-looking as Nijuuei.
