Locating an Artist

An Image Is Posted On Shuu

We're going to assume that the Pixiv link is provided in the misc. metadata field.

Click the link to go to Pixiv.

Get to the artist's main page.

Scroll down: is there a website in their profile information? It may either be in the HPアドレス (basically, website) slot {ex} or somewhere within the writing at the bottom {ex}.

The important sites to look for are:

• websites/blogs
• Piapro accounts
• DA accounts

The artist does not have a website

Artists like these are the most convenient, but often the most annoying as well.

I will use http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=610073 as an example of an easy artist.

Their Pixiv name is listed as イチゼン (Ichizen). So, "Ichizen" will be the tag created.

If, however, you are, unfortunately, like most of us here and do not know hiragana/katakana/kanji, the romanizing of these names will be challenging. I recommend http://www.romaji.org/ for romanizing, though you should note it's not very good with kanji (hiragana/katakana are done well though). If you ever feel like Romanji.org isn't giving you a very good result (this often happens with complex kanji, and you can tell it's likely to be wrong if it gives you a name like, "Goto maka kono koto jisa urujesai". That's just long and unlikely.

My recommendation then is to do one of two things.

Check it on http://oldnihongo.j-talk.com/parser/search/ > more options > proper names.

Or, open one of the artist's images, right click, and go down to either a) properties or b) copy image location. Paste the image location into your address bar, if you chose the second option.

This will allow you to see the artist's sign in name.

For example: http://img27.pixiv.net/img/o_tori/6743488_s.png

"o_tori" is the sign in name of our friend Ichizen. So, in this case, the sign in name is useless and unrelated to the artist's name.

However, the pixiv sign in name can be a powerful tool when coupled with wiktionary.org. Paste kanji into the wiktionary one at a time and scroll down to the area that looks like this.

Let's say our artist's name is 亜 (since that is what I looked up there). You think, "oh, their name is 'a'!" Normally, the assumption may be right, but the pixiv sign in name is "Atsu", one of the listed alternate romanizations. In a case like this, you would want to side with the pixiv sign in name.

Anyway, you have the artist's name now, and you've added a tag. Congrats, you're done!

The artist has a website.

Scroll down and open all websites the artist has listed.

Often, artists will just have a blog, and not an actual website. So I'll start there.

All blogs are set up differently, and some can be very annoying to navigate, but here are a few important notes:

• If it's REALLY hard to navigate, it's probably Chinese.
• Korean blogs often have a romanized name hiding somewhere.
• Blogs usually have either a place that says "author", "about" or "profile", and that is where you'll find the name.
• Click around! Random clicks can often net you nice gains.

I can't go into more detail there without looking up and showing tons of examples, so I'll leave it at that. Any concerns may be left in a response to this thread or a PM to me.

Artists may also have a proper website, with multiple pages, etc. Oooh~

To find an artist's name on a proper website, you employ a similar method to finding it on the blog. Look for an "about", "info", "profile", or "links" page, primarily. If the site page names are in Japanese, look for "プロファイル", "インフォ", "アバウト", or "管理人". Sometimes the main page will contain names, and sometimes an "offline" or simply "off" page will have it hidden.

In any case, if you simply open all of the links you'll stumble onto it eventually.

On these pages, the information usually comes after either "PN", "HN", "管理人", "名前", etc.

Things like "サイト名" or "HP" are generally the name of the website. These are never the artist's name.

For romanizing purposes, follow the guide above. However, I would like to expand upon a point: that some artists give you their names.

Aside from it being pre-romanized, names may also be found in other manners. Artists will often list their names like this:

• 管理人: 主水 (シュミズ)
• Name: Shumizu (shumizu)

This way, you can see their name in kanji, as they would write it, and you can also see the way that they read the kanji. This is an especially useful tool, but sometimes parenthesis can contain things like "temporary" as text instead, so it's best to translate things before assuming they're readings.

In this case, by the way, the artist's tag would be added as "Shumizu". Not "Shumizu (shumizu)" or anything of that sort.

And if we assume that the pixiv link is not provided, you can still get to the artist's pixiv account by opening up the full information on an image, and copy-pasting the original filename. This will only work if it's a file saved directly from pixiv, without the filename being changed.

You can then open an image on pixiv, switch the numbers at the end of the url with what you have copied, and hit enter. You should be taken to the right image. (These Numbers)

And to test it, here's a sample: http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php? ... id=8194785

Replace the 8194785 with 8193668 (random other image). See what I mean?

You should be seeing this image.

Alternately, you can take the image and run it through iqdb: http://iqdb.org/

Then you can grab the pixiv link from the "source" slot of the image's booru page.

Or, you can run it through SauceNAO: http://saucenao.com/

Copy the source for the image on shuu as you would do to get the artist's pixiv sign in name. Then, go to SauceNAO > advanced options > check the "URL" box > past in your url > change "all databases" to "pixiv". Then you can click the image ID it gives to link straight to it.

Wiki Entries

Read Help:Editing.

It needs a little editing, but it's better than nothing.

I am not going to rewrite this entire thing right now.

Basic things to remember about the wiki though:

• Hepburn romanization.
• No spaces in kanji in the title (but yes within the entry).
• Search the kanji before making an entry, so you're more likely to catch dupes.

General notes on artist names through a translator online

• They don't provide alternate readings, example: 紅, which means "red", has 5 different readings: Kurenai, Kou, Ku, Beni and Mochi.

Romaji.org only gives you "Kurenai".

• Different combination of kanji will "break" the translation, example, 華月 is usually read as "hana gatsu", and Romaji.org will give you the same reading, but many artists prefer "Kazuki" instead.

• "バージニア*コンプレックス" google language tool will translate it correctly, but romaji.org will not.

• Romaji.org use Nihon-shiki romanization, which isn't suitable for an "english-speaking community".

Example: a very common error found on the Shuu wiki when reading the recent changelog:

ヅ/づ, ヂ/ぢ Zu and Ji respectively and that is Hepburn Romanization, not "Du" and "Di", which is Nihon-Shiki Romanization.

• Another common "error" found on shuu wiki, 月.

It's actually Tsuki, or Zuki. Gatsu is a common reading, but not for Japanese names.

And also, 夜, Yoru. Many artists prefer "ya".

• The iteration mark, 々, I don't know about other online translator, bur Romaji.org will ignore this word,

which will cause the translation to become incomplete.