Fun with Pixiv Image Response Materials

Pixiv has a really neat feature that is somewhat akin to YouTube’s video response feature, except on Pixiv, you respond with artwork rather than video. This is a feature that Deviant Art lacks, although Deviant Art does have those “art memes” that float around. On Pixiv, the images that are made to be “responded” to are tagged as イメージレスポンス (Image Response), イメージレスポンス素材 (Image Response Souzai) or イメレス (abbreviation of “image response”).

On dA, these sorts of memes are oftentimes a chart where you draw a character of yours in different situations or portraying different moods. Pixiv image responses have the same thing, but they aren’t limited to “fill in the blank” type charts. Pixiv image response materials refer to a vast array of things like lineart that you can color in, templates for items that you can design, mood charts and a whole lot of other things. Browsing through this category can be a lot of fun and it is the perfect way to get your creative juices flowing if you just can’t think of a new idea from scratch.

When you view images on Pixiv, they sometimes have a red link under them that says a number followed by “res”. (Ex: 3 res) This is an indicator of how many image responses it has. Most of the time these responses are to art memes; occasionally they are not. Most images on Pixiv do not have any image responses, which is normal, as it does not refer to “comments” on the image; only replies to the artwork in the form of other artwork contributions.

Nendoroid Template by lynx

One of my favorite image responses on Pixiv is this Nendoroid template by lynx. It’s great if you’ve always wanted to design your own Nendoroid; perhaps one of your favorite character that has never been made into a figure! Check out all of the responses it has. There’s over 10 pages of them!

Touhou Line Art by 桐原夏樹

Here’s a nice example of one that features line art that you can color in; a beautiful piece of Touhou line art! Line art that is posted for this purpose is sometimes tagged as ぬりえ (nurie) which means “picture for coloring” or むしろ塗ってください (mushiro nurutte kudasai) which means something along the lines of “please give this picture better coloring”.

PSP 2000 Template by 浅見屋

You never know what you’ll find when browsing souzai; maybe even something useful. Senkenya has submitted this marvelous PSP 2000 template. You can use it to make your own PSP skin. Sa-weet! There’s also a PSP 3000 template and a PSP screen template that you can use to draw devious things upon, such as your own ero game. ;O

ものすごいエロオーラが！by よるむん

If humor is what you seek,  this image response material, hilariously titled ものすごいエロオーラ (which can be roughly translated as “An Earth-shattering Sex Aura!”) encourages you to design and color a girl’s (or a guy if you please) reaction to a guy who is supposed to be mind-blowingly sexy. (He looks creepily like the kind of dude Shinjo Mayu would draw…) Make sure you view the responses to this meme! They’re quite amusing.

Those are just a few great examples of what you’ll find when looking through Pixiv’s image response tags. If you’re wondering how to properly submit a response to such materials, there’s a special field when you contribute a piece artwork to Pixiv where you can insert the ID number of the image you are responding to. The artist may have to “approve” your response for it to show up in the response box, or they may have the automated acception of responses enabled. I would probably avoid submitting responses to Pixiv works on other sites such as Deviant Art unless you can contact the artist and receive permission. It’s important for an artist to receive proper credit when you’re doing derivative works, and on Pixiv all you need to do is submit the image as a response. (That way you don’t have to go to the trouble of emailing or messaging someone in Japanese.)