Another top Capcom artist for today’s Manga Mondays, Kinu Nishimura. She was hired by Capcom way back in 1991, and is best known for her work on Street Fighter 2 Turbo and Street Fighter III. Her work is very distinctive, often using a soft watercolour-painted style. You can find out a little more about Nishimura on the Capcom Wiki website.

Deviant Art member Cati creates some really nice visuals, usually comprising of couples in love. Her line-work is great, very delicate and precise. Her colours are also well executed and her images as a whole come together very well. If you like what you see here, there is a good selection on her portfolio page here.

Now the sensational work of Alina Chau did have us saying, “it’s nice, but is it manga?”. Well, after a hearty discussion we settled on, “yes”. Her work draws inspiration from various western genres, and though it doesn’t have the familiar conventions of modern manga, it definitely has a heavy influence from traditional Japanese art, harking back to manga’s origins. Ignoring the categorisation of Chau’s work, what is not debatable is the skill it oozes. Keep up to date with her work on her blog.

Parisian illustrator Aymeric Kevin is yet another brilliant Gobelins graduate. It’s great to find such a talented manga style illustrator in Europe. You can see sometimes the European influence coming through, especially in his colours and sketches. Aymeric is an excellent visual developer and background artist, as well as having the vision to direct animation. I’m looking forward to see what he’ll do in the future. It would be great, in my opinion, to see some anime with a more European style of storytelling. East meets West; here’s hoping!

For this weeks Manga Monday we are happy to present the stunning work of Ein Lee! She is quite simply a colour-wizz! Every single one of her pieces are so exceptionally coloured that you almost take for granted her skilled draftsmanship. She also has a brilliant tutorial on the website, so you too can colour just like Ein!

German manga artist Metal Hanzo creates some awesome pin-ups…and boy, can he do action. Some of his work looks as though it jumps right off the page! The digital colours work well and often have glows and other simple digital effects to enhance the image. But also with Metal Hanzo, you feel that somehow he still has a couple more gears to go and perhaps we are still to see the best of him. Watch this space!

This week we have something a little different for our Manga Mondays post—Maruti Bitamin (I’m not sure what her real name is). She is based in Toronto, Canada where she creates these wonderful watercolour manga inspired illustrations. This effect would be incredible animated! The colours and textures are pure fantasy.