welcome to the live house!
Welcome to the Live House! is a free, digital collaborative illustration fanzine I put together for the first anniversary of Nijisanji EN's 11th generation, By The Beat. I started organizing it around September of 2025 after roping in my friend, Pat, to do cover and interior design. Fun fact: She actually did Kaelix's most recent stream overlays! Originally, I thought I'd draw the cover, but I just couldn't get it to work on my end. So I pushed it over to Pat, which was a really good idea in hindsight. She turned out something way more fun than what I had in mind, even incorporating ideas I shared and inviting me to draw the mascots. She also made a pattern to use as the base for the introductory and credit pages, a favorite detail of mine.
1: The front cover of Welcome to the Live House! by Pat.
2: A background used for some pages in Welcome to the Live House! with drawings of the mascots by me, and design by Pat.
For the zine, I decided to draw the boys into existing album covers, a concept which I've done before. (I drew them as Gorillaz's Demon Days way back when but I didn't think it was very good, so I quickly deleted it.) I also did a lot of type, which was a fun exercise. I don't typically use type in my drawings. I tried really hard not to just do, like, The Beatles or something, but if I'm being real, it was the idea of the boys as Julian Opie's Blur cover that sealed the deal. The colors were a dead giveaway (well, kinda). F(x) and Fishmans were personal picks, though, based on what I was listening to at the time... I'm aware they're both orange! I hope you can appreciate the variety in style (and sound) anyway.
You can check out the full zine as a PDF here.
3: By The Beat as Blur's 2000 greatest hits album, Blur: The Best Of.
4: By The Beat as f(x)'s 2015 album, 4 Walls.
5: By The Beat as Fishmans' 1994 album, Orange.