You can skip buying that expensive graphic drawing tablet as long as you’ve got the ubiquitous spreadsheet program and some serious skill.

Even as someone who has the utmost respect for the discipline of accounting, I have to admit that spreadsheet programs are usually some of the dullest bits of software you’ll find in your PC. Whereas other programs and applications can help you compose sonnets, create symphonies, or paint the images from your mind’s eye, when you sit down and open Excel, all you’re going to be doing is crunching numbers, right?

Not if you’re Japanese Twitter user @Maruraba_2, because to him Excel isn’t a spreadsheet program, but the ultimate art creation tool.

https://twitter.com/Maruraba_2/status/955040540042567680

@Maruraba_2 recently shared his latest creation, a determined-looking portrait of tank-loving Miho Nishino, star of anime TV series Girls und Panzer. While the series’ character designs are a bit more angular than the current middle-of-bell-curve for anime schoolgirls, it’s still shocking to think that all of those confident, bold lines were produced with a program intended to be used to manipulate numerical data.

Girls und Panzer is known as having one of the most loyal fanbases in anime these days, but @Maruraba_2 still has room in his heart for other anime heroines, such as Eromanga Sensei’s Sagiri…

…and Rize, from Is the Order A Rabbit?”, whose showing off a particularly intense example of anime hair shine.

Actually, @Maruraba_2 looks to be building himself his own personal Excel harem, as his other muses have been Kemono Friends snake-girl Tsuchinoko…

…High School Fleet’s Mashimo…

…YuriYuri’s Kyoko…

…and, in his only instance so far of taking inspiration from the same series twice, Maika and Mafuyu, from Blend S.

@Maruraba_2 jokes that when people ask “There are so many kinds of art software. Which do you recommend?” he likes to give them the “insane” answer of “Excel.” With results like these, thought, it seems like there’s definitely a method to his madness, as he’s proving that if Excel can be used to create such Japanese art as nengajo New Year’s cards, there’s no reason it can’t be used for anime characters too.

Source: Twitter/@Maruraba_2 via IT Media

Follow Casey on Twitter, where he’s also as skilled at making art with Excel as he is with pencils (in that he’s terrible at both).