art book reviews

This is quite a good companion to the 2012 film Dredd. It has the full script for the movie and also the a complete graphic novel adaptation.

I like the layout of the book. The left page comprises the script, concept art, film stills, photographs of props and artist commentary.

The artist is Jock who got into the job because he took it upon himself to create several unofficial Dredd concept artworks that got picked up the British film production company DNA Films.

Based on the script that Alex Garland has written, Jock adapted that into a complete graphic novel that's pretty loose in style but with enough details to make out what's going on, and it also works like storyboards. This is actually the comic book that was distributed to the financiers and crew. The story is pretty straightforward and Jock's interpretation in graphic form is quite strong visually — I guess that's why the movie was made.

This isn't the usual movie production companion so there aren't much written about the movie production, although I wished there could be more though.

Overall, it's a good book worth collecting for Dredd fans. It works well even you haven't watch the movie.

DREDD: The Illustrated Movie Script and Visuals is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN) and Book Depository

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魔女と百騎兵公式アートブック is the official artbook for the action role-playing game The Witch and the Hundred Knight that was released for the Playstation 3 in 2013.

The character designs are from Takehito Harada who has also designed games like Disgaea, Prinny 1 & 2, Makai Kingdom and Phantom Brave. Takehito Harada has several artbooks and this one feels like his as well due to the art direction.

The book is a large 178-page paperback. There are plenty of commentary but all in Japanese. Hopefully, this is one book that Udon will translate.

The first 60 pages are the art gallery featuring splash art pages from Takehito Harada and other artists. You can see various artists' interpretation of the characters in their own style of drawing but they all use the similar bright anime-like colour palette. The illustrations are beautiful. I like the comic style drawing and colouring, and there are chibi versions also. The style of art is very typical of Japanese games that feature comic-like characters.

The rest of the book features concept art such as character and creature designs, environment art, followed by an interview with the game director and more miscellaneous drawings.

Each character is given a nice coverage. The characters are shown in various poses, facial expressions and costumes. There are plenty of commentary. The cutest character to me is the White Knight which is actually a short soldier with blacked out face with red concentric circles for eyes. The weapons he wields are larger than him so he looks quite comical.

Creature designs are also quite nice to look at. They are fleshed out more compared to the human characters and come with more commentary.

The environment artworks are beautiful also but could be bigger as they are squeezed three onto a page. For each environment, there's the final painting as used in the game plus a concept art thumbnail that looks almost the same as the large painting which makes me wonder why it's included.

It's quite a nice video game art book. It can also be mistaken for Takehito Harada's personal artbook because of his very recognisable character designs, but that's just for the characters and not the creatures and environment art.

Majo to Hyakkihei ~ The Witch and the Hundred Knight ~ Official Art Book (TAKEHITO HARADA) [JAPANESE EDITION JE] is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | FR | JP | CN) and CDJapan

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Makoto Kobayashi (小林誠) is a Japanese artist and designer who has worked on many Japanese anime, notably those that involve mechas and things related to mechanical stuff. Some of the titles he has worked on includes Last Exile, Gundam, Steamboy and more.

Hyperweapon 2014 is an artbook that features the projects that Makoto Kobayashi has been involved in. This includes Dragon's Heaven, Raison Du Vol, Space Battleship Yamato 2199, Space Battleship Yamato: Resurrection, Bye-Bye Gundam and other miscellaneous art and model kits created from 1979.

The book for the most part features the concept art for all 26 episodes of Space Battleship Yamato 2199. The incredibly detailed artworks comprise mainly designs for space environment and structures. The designs are quite interesting. Their style of portraying advanced civilization and technology is the opposite of creating buildings with shiny surfaces, hard edges and streamlined modern look. The elements are more rounded, often with vein or root inspired textures. There's a very organic look and feel to the environment.

Concept art for other projects come mainly in the form of 3D rendered models or just real life model kits. These are spread out in the book.

The model kits look great. At times you can see some influence from another well known model designer Kow Yokoyama. In addition to mechas, there are also huge models of spaceships, space stations and cities. They are just as detailed as the pencil drawings. The mecha robots sport very cool worn out looks, some look like they have been rolled around in mud with those earth line cracks. Makoto Kobayashi works with other artists on creating these model kits.

All the commentary are in Japanese, and whenever there are English words, it's not difficult to spot spelling errors.

It's a good artbook for fans of Space Battleship Yamato 2199 and model kits.

HyperWeapon 2014 ~ THE WAY TO VARELLOUS ~ [JAPANESE EDITION] is available at Amazon (US | JP | CDJapan)

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UDON's Art of Capcom: Complete Edition is quite an artbook to behold. This is the largest artbook ever from Udon at 600 pages. Very impressive indeed.

The first thing to note is this is actually the compilation of two earlier artbooks from Udon, namely Udon's Art of Capcom (304 pages) released in 2007 and UDON's Art of Capcom 2 (284 pages) released in 2010. So if you have those two artbooks, you're going to see mostly duplicated artworks, and hence it's not going to be worth buying it again. If you don't have those two artbooks, then this is a great collection to get into Capcom art.

Unlike most of Udon's artbooks, this is a hardcover edition. The cover art is beautiful. Binding is great for a book this thick. The book looks and feels great overall. However, I feel that the paper is slightly thinner but not really a major issue. The reproduction quality is still top notch with good colours and sharpness.

The content in the book are arranged by the games, namely Street Fighter (342 pages), Darkstalkers (64 pages), Rival Schools (22 pages), World of Capcom (48 pages) and other game projects (119 pages). The edge of the pages are colour coded to these five sections.

The last section on other game projects is actually also based on the main games such as Street Fighter, Darkstalkers etc. The main difference is here the artworks aren't splash art pages but miscellaneous art like game sprites, ending cut scenes, environment art for the stages, comic panels based off the games, and other stuff.

So what's new?

Well, the new artworks are the ones created after 2010 when UDON's Art of Capcom 2 came out. It can be difficult to spot the new ones because artworks in the books are credited with the artist names and purpose but the year is usually left out. But from the few I know are new, they are the box art for Marvel vs Capcom 3 Collector's Edition, cover art for the hardcover limited editions artbooks, Marvel vs Capcom 2 promo art and storyboards, and a handful of others.

All in all, this is an amazing artbook. The art is fantastic and it's definitely value for money. Highly recommended.

If you're shipping this book out of USA, watch out for the additional weight surcharge just before you confirm your purchase. For overseas buyers, you might want to compare prices with your local bookstore and consider getting it locally, or get it from Book Depository where the shipping cost is included in the price.

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映画ベルセルク ART BOOK 美術編 is the companion artbook for the Berserk: The Golden Arc films that came out in 2012 and 2013, so that includes The Egg of the King, The Battle of Doldrey and Descent.

The book's a wide-format 192-page hardcover. There are two bonus illustrated postcards thrown in.

The bulk of the book are on the environment art. They are, if you've watched the films, of wide vistas, open fields, mountains, forests, towns, castles and more. These are all in full colour, drawn in a style that's very typical of Japanese environment art for animated film.

There are the architectural sketches for buildings, castles and interiors. Those are pencil sketches in full detail. As someone who likes to look at architectural detail, I find the sketches amazing because of the amount of fine work and composition. The overall vibe you get from the artworks is quite solemn.

Other miscellaneous artworks are the character illustrations. There are some digital paintings and some are watercolour artworks. As for creature designs, there are a bit more pages, two pages of small drawings and at the back are several pages of detailed drawings in larger sizes. Designs for the soldiers, armour, horses, flags make up the rest of all the artworks.

It's a beautiful artbook but I feel it's more suitable for those who've watched the films unless you're into Japanese drawn background art. if so then you should also check out some Kusanagi artbooks.

This book was borrowed from Basheer Graphic Books for review purposes. You can order the book from them. Check with Basheer on Facebook.

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This book was borrowed from Basheer Graphic Books for review purposes. You can order the book from them. Check with Basheer on Facebook.

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Greg Spalenka's started his art career in the 80s and we're now finally being treated to a selection of his artworks.

Spalenka is a multi-disciplinary artist who loves to work with different mediums. He uses paint, charcoal, coloured pencils, pastels, collage, photography and digital software. Many mixed media creations are included. He even embraces digital by having QR codes on the index pages where you can be linked to webpages showing his inspiration, film reel and other resources.

The book collects his personal works as well as commissioned pieces. There are his early works, paintings, polaroid photos, sketches, portraits of contemporary artists living in New York, illustrations for magazines, ads book cover, visualisations he created for movies and more. It seems Mike Tyson is one of his inspiration and there are a few pages of art on him and his quotes. The spectrum of work he has created over three decades is interesting.

Greg Spalenka's style is difficult to describe. What's clear is the images he creates often have some sort of spiritual subtext or in some dream-like state. Visually, other than the portraits, the other works are like a meld of ideas and style. The paintings have a very textural feel, while the collages feel more spiritual with the blend of different medium and subject matter. Just look at the cover art for example. There's a nude figure with the face replaced by a butterfly, the background is very textural and there's some sort of graphic design motif blending the whole image together. Other artworks in the book evoke the same feeling.

There aren't much text other than the introduction for each chapter. I wished there were stories included behind each artwork because it would give more context to the work.

Those who follow Greg Spalenka's work or like more spiritual art can check out this book.

The Art of Greg Spalenka is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN) and Book Depository

There's also a 500-copy limited deluxe edition that's sold from Greg Spalenka. This slipcase hardcover edition includes a different cover, one signed print (Impromptu), a signed and numbered signature plate on parchment paper (Desert Mistress) that is tipped into the book.

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When Ken Taya opened the floodgates of cuteness, this book came out. But don't let the cuteness deceive you, there's more than that in the book.

Ken Taya is a talented and hardworking artist who has worked on several big name game titles, commissioned jobs and on his free time draws cute stuff. Enfu: Cute Grit features his personal works as well as the commissioned projects but leaves out those created for games. Game art would feel out of place in the book.

This book is huge. 248 pages. Hardcover. As if the cover is not striking enough, the page edges are treated with bright pink colours.

Flipping over the cover, a bunch of cute glittering Chinese gods await to greet you. The juxtaposition of style and subject matter is quite amusing, and that applies to most of his illustrations.

The first section of the book is filled with daily items turned cute, drawings with cartoon-like simplicity dosed with welcoming subdued colours. They are laid out in a 5 by 5 grid and there are over 60 pages of them. The last few pages features pop culture characters, such as Naruto, Batman, Totoro and more.

The next few pages show his enterprising nature with designs for clothing and furniture. Then there are the splash pages, comic strips and characters he has created, and many other funny ideas. If you're one who's into pop culture, you might be able to spot inside jokes in his illustrations.

The latter half of the book has more serious work. There are sketches of life figures, cars, digital paintings, graphic creations, thoughts and doodles, and even step-by-step screenshots of how he creates his illustrations. So it's not just cute, but you get to see the more technical side. The artworks are beautiful and Ken Taya's work rate is really inspiring. The book has over hundreds of illustrations from his wild imagination as well as those inspired by pop culture.

There are some text in the form of acknowledgement from other artists, and Ken Taya also talks briefly about his work, inspiration and what is Enfu. Inspiring and often encouraging quotes known as Enfuism are placed randomly throughout the book.

Delightful book.

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This is the fifth book in the Star Wars Art series and it's one of my favourites. The earlier four books are Visions, Comics, Illustration and Concept, and they all look at different type of art.

My favourite is still Star Wars Art: Illustration but I'm loving this poster artbook too.

Star Wars Art: Posters is almost as thick as the earlier books at 180 pages. It's still hardcover and it's still huge.

There's a nice foreword written by movie poster master artist Drew Struzan and an introduction by artist Roger Kastel, both reminiscing the early days of painting Star Wars posters.

All the posters in the book are reproduced without any type or logos. You get to view the artworks in their full glory. The reproduction is fantastic. Many of the artworks are printed right to the edge of the paper. Selected pieces are zoomed in even further. It's wonderful to look at them huge and scrutinise the details.

There are more posters than I expected. In addition to the many poster variations to the original and prequel trilogies, there are also those created for spin-offs such as for video games like LEGO Star Wars, animation like Star Wars: Clone Wars, advertising, exhibitions and limited edition poster art commissioned by Mondo Tees and Acme Archives.

There's a nice variety of styles, especially in the more recent years when the franchise expanded beyond the movies. It's quite cool to see the cartoon style posters for the animation, or Star Wars characters appearing in their LEGO form.

While most are the finalised full coloured paintings, there are also concept treatment for the posters in colour in black and white. 53 artists are featured and all their works are top notch. You'll get to see artworks from Drew Struzan, John Alvin, Howard Chaykin, Tom Jung, Ralph McQuarrie, Adam Hughes and many more. It's quite interesting to find out who are the artists who have contributed art to the Star Wars universe.

This is a fantastic artbook certainly not just for Star Wars fans.

Highly recommended.

Star Wars Art: Posters is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN) and Book Depository

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Adventure Time fans would be delighted with this humungous 352-page hardcover. It's really worth the money considering the price and how much content there is.

Adventure Time: The Art of Ooo provides an in-depth look at the origin of the animation and the creative process of making one. It's packed with concept art of the characters, environments and the early sketches used by creator Pendleton Ward's for pitching to studios. The characters are amusing and the art style is certainly very "Adventure Time".

The highlight of the book is the lengthy interview-style text from the start to the end of the book. The staff artists talk about the stories, characters and art. It's written in a casual manner but yet is very insightful. You'll read about the history of Adventure Time, the story pitches and changes that led to Cartoon Network picking it up, style guides on how to draw the characters, interviews with voice actors, and a lot of interesting things that happen behind the scenes, the many side stories, muses.

For the artworks, there are lots of character designs. Finn the human, Jake the dog, Fionna and Cake, Ice King, Bumblegum Princess, Rainicorn, Earl of Lemongrab and many others. Environment art are of the various kingdoms, space, the Tree House, "Beautopia" and other settings in the post-apocalyptic, magical land of Ooo.

The character designs are unusual. The artists explain the style guides, like why Finn only has dots for eyes, the rules for the world of Ooo, e.g. if you're born with dots as eyes, you're not supposed to grow sclera, the white part of the eye. The Cosmic Owl's design was inspired by a light pattern that hits the urinals in the toilet at the workplace. Many of the designs look like they could be doodles from some kid's textbook. But that's also part of the charm because not everyone can draw like that. Pendleton Ward had great difficulty assembling a crew of artists who can draw just like that. All images are captioned to explain what they are and where they come from.

The last section of the book is dedicated to fan art. This section also has the staff artists drawing the characters in any style they like, e.g. such as in Street Fighter style.

Adventure Time: The Art of Ooo is a wonderful book that looks at the work it takes to make such as animation possible. It's well written, insightful and fun to read. Highly recommended to fans of Adventure Time.

There are two publishers for this book, Titan Books and Abrams. Abrams seems to be distributing for USA and Canada, and Abrams for Europe.

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I only got to know of Naughty Dog from the Uncharted series. Through this book, I found out that they have actually been in the video game industry for 30 years already.

The Art of Naughty Dog is a nice retrospective artbook that tracks the evolution of the studio. They were founded in 1984 as Jam Software before being renamed to Naughty Dog in 1989.

This 184-page hardcover is filled with the concept art of the games that were published over the years. Many are previously unpublished artworks, the character and environment designs, for their early games, e.g. Crash Bandicoot and Jax and Daxter. And then there are the artworks for the extremely popular Uncharted series and The Last of Us.

The book starts with the early years from 1984 to 1996 recollecting how the company was started by Andrew Gavin and Jason Rubin. Both founders wrote about their experiences in game making, their ideology and eventual departure from the company. When they first started out, they were just creating games for Apple II.

The next chapter looks at the Crash Bandicoot years from 1996-1999. In this franchise, there are Crash Bandicoot 1, 2, 3 and Crash Team Racing. I've played the racing game before but did not know that it was created by Naughty Dog. Not only that, there were three Crash Bandicoot games before. I never knew where Crash came from but now it's quite cool to see his other iterations.

After Crash Bandicoot, Naughty Dog moved on to Jax and Daxter from 2001-2005. You can see the evolution from the cartoony characters to more mature character-driven games. There are lots of wonderful character designs included.

From 2007 to present day, we have the Uncharted series and The Last of Us. There are only 54 pages so they are not as complete as their dedicated artbooks, namely The Art of Uncharted 2 and The Art of The Last of Us. To me, Naughty Dog's best artworks come from these games, and they will tempt you to get the other artbooks if you haven't. The studios' emphasis on lush environments actually had its origins from the Crash Bandicoot days.

The next chapter collects artworks from undeveloped projects, one was for Jak 4 and the other an untitled sci-fi game. Then there are a six pages of teasing environment art from Uncharted 4.

The last chapter features fan art and some are really quite good, especially the full page and double page splash art. It's great to see how fans interpret the games in their own styles.

The downside of the book? I was expecting a bit more writeup for the games. Each franchise only had two pages of text. There are lots of captions for all images provided though. Maybe I was expecting too much but hey, this is a 30-year old company, so there should be many things to write about.

As a new Naughty Dog fan, I found it interesting to read about the history and see for the first time their early artworks before Uncharted came out.

All in all, this is definitely a good book for Naughty Dog fans. The art is great.

However, if you don't care for Crash Bandicoot or Jax and Daxter, you would be better off getting the dedicated artbooks for Uncharted and The Last of Us. The Art of the Uncharted Trilogy is coming in 2015 and will have 240 pages, so I'm expecting a lot of duplicated art.

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Alien: Isolation is a breath of fresh air among the video games that nowadays depend on more gore and grotesque creatures to up the shock and horror. If you want grotesque creature designs, go for the Resident Evil artbooks. This game is designed more towards Ridley Scott's Alien which uses the-less-you-see-the-more-frightening-it-is concept. It works very well in the movie, in this game and even in this artbook.

If you don't already know, there's only one alien in the game, which means in this artbook, the bulk of the concept art on the characters, weapons, spaceships, interior design and environment.

I love the style of the character designs. They are drawn in anime style with thin outlines and simple shading but are based on real human proportions of course. There are lots of character designs and iterations. The cool part for me are the 3D models based off the crew from the original Alien movie. It's really nostalgic. Not only that, it's quite amazing to see them back.

The spaceship designs are really beautiful. The high resolution 3D renders are just gorgeous to look at. There are the textured versions as well as simple grey monotone renders. The details are amazing. There are a few ships and they are rendered from different angles, some with the blueprints provided. What's weird though is there are wireframes for Nostromo but it's not actually rendered.

The same level of intricate detail is used for Sevastopol space station and all the interiors. By the way, the designs are all inspired by the original Alien movie. Creative Assembly managed to get the production art from the movie studio and expanded on the source materials to include new locations, equipment, costumes and the characters. The result is a coherent design that's consistent with the original movie. It's really well executed.

The environment art are beautiful. For some reason, it does feel scary looking at them, especially when they are empty and devoid of people. You can almost feel the stillness.

And finally, spoiler alert, the alien Xenomorph reveals itself. The concept art pencil sketches are marvelous and the alien looks great. There's also art for the alien hive.

The last few pages are the storyboards.

Throughout the book, there's a generous amount of commentary alongside all the artworks that really give insight to what the designers are trying to achieve.

Overall, the art direction is brilliant. To say that about this game is to say the same for the original movie. The game really nailed the mood and vibe of the movie.

This is an excellent video game artbook and companion to the game. Highly recommended to the fans. Those who love mechanical or sci-fi architecture would also love the book.

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If you're fans of The Evil Within, you'll be glad to know that this is a great companion artbook to the game.

This game is directed by Shinji Mikami, the creator of the Resident Evil series. In some ways, this book does feel like a spin-off of Resident Evil.

The book's a 224 page hardcover. It's quite thick because the paper is thick, and the good low gloss type.

The concept art is fantastic. For the humans in their normal uninfected form, there's really nothing to shout about. But I'm seriously impressed by the 3D renders for the human characters. Yeah, you know that they are still 3D models but they look real good. The infected human form are more interesting.

Highlight of the book is of course the grotesque human and creature designs. There's plenty of blood stain, skin lesions, burns, mutation, exposed flesh, and more blood stains. Things like intestines falling out of an open stomach in this game looks pretty mild by comparison. In terms of the gore factor, it's close to Resident Evil. I wonder what it would be like if one day Shinji Mikami decides to create a Resident Evil and Evil Within crossover.

The creature and enemy designs are great. There's no shortage of ideas when it comes to designing scary enemies. All of them look great, and by great I mean gross. There's a good mix of 2D and 3D art. I'm not sure if it's because of the PS4, but the 3D rendered graphics for games nowadays are just getting better. The amount of detail for the artworks are incredible.

The textures of the skin, veins and meat mesh from the 3D monotone renders are amazing. I actually do not mind if this book shows only monotone renders. The designs are good regardless of whether they are in colour or not.

The last section of the book has a generous amount of beautiful moody environment art. They are also painted in great detail just like all other artworks in the book.

I can't think of any downsides to this book. Maybe they could have included more commentary. But that's about it.

This is a great art book. Highly recommended.

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Here's the artbook for director Jorge R Gutierrez's 3D animated film The Book of Life. Gutierrez was born in Mexico City and raised in Tijuana, and in this 192-page hardcover artbook, you'll see that the inspiration for this film comes from his hometown and the rich history of Mexico.

Highlights of the book are the designs for the characters and environment.

As far as character designs go, The Book of Life definitely has some of the weirdest and quirkiest designs compared to other 3D animated movies. Their costumes are heavily decorated and lushly coloured. For example, the goddess La Muerte wears a huge red hat with burning candles on top and little skulls hanging around the rim, and the bottom of her red dress is also covered with burning candles.

Many characters are actually puppets with exposed joints. Main character Manolo has stars, hearts and skulls plastered all over his boxy costume. Skeleton versions of the characters look great with fanciful skull designs just like how some tribes like to create artworks out of skulls. Even the bull Toro Muerto has its horns intricately carved with symbols.

The artworks are very much inspired by Mexican folk art. Gutierrez gets his inspiration from lucha libre, mustaches, street taco stands, bullfighting posters, Spanish comics, spaghetti Westerns, etc. The result is a very colourful and visual world.

The environment art for the Land of the Living, Remembered and Forgotten have influences from ancient civilisation such as Aztec, Mayan and Olmec. It's interesting to see the artists use those influences and design them for an animated film. If I don't know anything about the film, I would have thought the civilisation in the film celebrates colour.

There are lots of details to look out for. In the Land of the Living, there are several buildings with shapes inspired by Mayan temples. Tombstones are lavishly decorated with ornaments and offerings. Houses in the town are top heavy just like the characters to make them feel more macho. There are commentary throughout that talks about the designs.

The Art of The Book of Life is a wonderful, vibrant and quirky artbook. Highly recommended.

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So it's finally Blue Sky Studios' turn to have an artbook for themselves. It's well worth the wait.

This is a huge book. 304 pages. Hardcover. And it's heavy too. Note that if you're buying from Amazon, there might be an additional weight surcharge depending on the shipping location and speed. Also note that there are two publishers for this book, namely Insight Editions and Titan Books, distributing for different countries.

It's always a joy to look at artbooks of animation studios. DreamWorks Animation had The Art of DreamWorks Animation also in this year and Pixar had To Infinity and Beyond!: The Story of Pixar Animation Studios in 2007. The Art of Blue Sky is a wonderful addition. Now I'm waiting for one from Sony Pictures Animation.

This artbook tells the inspiring story of how the Blue Sky got started and the stories behind how each film got made. They worked their way from creating commercials to producing the Oscar winning animated short Bunny, and then moved on to creating feature length films. Along the way they grew from 6 founders to 150 employees while they were working on Ice Age and now they have 600 employees

The text talks about the themes, story arcs, characters, and even technical stuff like how rust is created in Robots, or the fur on animals in Ice Age. You'll read and find out how films evolved through production, the story rewrites, where the jokes from Scrat shorts come from, which are difficult special effects to pull off and more. There are plenty of interesting details and anecdotes.

For years, I've been wondering why there aren't any artbooks for some of their films, most notably the Ice Age films and Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!. But now I can finally see all the artworks that I've been expecting to see. There's a generous amount of work for Ice Age since there are four films. Horton's concept artworks are also very beautiful. Many artworks are previously unpublished ones that I've not see before since there weren't any dedicated artbooks for them. I do see bits and pieces floating around online but it's good to have them all in one place in this book.

Beautiful artworks are reproduced big to accompany the text. It's a pleasure to flip through each page slowly to admire the artworks, a mixture of sketches, digital paintings and artworks created from traditional media. There are works from Peter de Seve, Daisuke Tsutsumi, Peter Clarke, Kyle Macnaughton and a whole bunch of talented artists.

This book includes their first film Ice Age in 2002 to their latest Rio 2 in 2014. It's really great to see a Blue Sky Studios artbook that looks back at the art and work they have created over the years.

This is definitely one of my favourite artbooks in 2014.

Highly recommended.

The Art of Blue Sky Studios is slightly taller than The Art of DreamWorks Animation

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Where to buy
For international buyers, it might be cheaper to buy the Titan Books version from Book Depository where the price is inclusive of shipping charges. I recommend checking the prices using the links I've provided above to know who provides the best price.

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I was thrilled when this collection arrived. It looks and feels amazing. It is amazing.

This is a huge two-volume slipcased set. It's quite heavy so if you're buying from Amazon, there might be an additional weight surcharge depending on the shipping location and speed. For overseas buyers, I recommend checking out the book at Book Depository because their prices are inclusive of shipping and the overall price may be slightly cheaper.

The slipcase is gorgeous and stunning. It holds two hardcovers within, namely Weta Workshop: Celebrating 20 Years of Creativity and Weta Digital: 20 Years of Imagination on Screen, for a total of 464 pages. Weta today is made up of Weta Workshop and Weta Digital, and hence the books are split as such.

The books detail the history of Weta and all the work they have done for over two decades in chronological order. It's filled with insightful writeup that's bound to delight movie fans, especially those who like reading behind-the-scenes materials.

There are many little bits of interesting information, like where their name Weta came from, the puppets they made for theatre, props for advertising, the sleep-deprived nights spent traveling from sets to sets. Those were the early days for Weta Workshop. They were already quite good and then came the big break that is The Lord of The Rings that made them even more prominent as a special effects company.

Other then films, they have also created a lot of non-film related projects, such as TV programs like Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess, shows for children, high-end collectibles, published artbooks and even put up public sculptures. All those are in the books, complete with commentary talking about their other ventures and challenges.

The pictures included comprise behind-the-scenes photos, graphics on how they create digital effects, film stills and more. You'll see photos of armour, weapons, miniatures, creatures and prosthetic make up. There are also pictures looking at how they do motion capture, editing, blending live backgrounds with computer graphics, rotoscoping, compositing and many more. It's an insightful look at film production from the perspective of Weta.

You'll read about stuff like how they manage battle scenes in LOTR, create skin textures for the Na'vis in Avatar, use digi-doubles in films such as the digital Captain America that jumped out of the jet in Avengers, and many more. All the films that they have worked on are given a decent amount of writeup. It's very satisfying to read through all the information.

Authors Luke Hawker and Clare Burgess have both worked at Weta Workshop and Digital respectively for more than a decade. They have done a terrific job with the books.

The Art of Film Magic: 20 Years of Weta is an wonderful collection of stories and images from a very well respected high calibre company in the movie industry.

This is one of my favourite books from 2014.

Highly recommended to movie fans, digital artists and those who love movie companion books.

The two hardcovers within the slipcase.

Location of the Weta companies

The various Weta artbooks published, namely, The World of Kong, The Crafting of Narnia, The Art of the Adventures of Tintin, The Art of District 9: Weta Workshop and The Hobbit artbooks.

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There are two publishers, Harper Design and HarperCollins. Actually Harper Design is the imprint of HarperCollins. The books are the same, just that the distribution channel is different so the prices will also vary slightly. Readers in USA should get the one from Harper Design.

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This book features the first original story conceived by Hayao Miyazaki in 1980 for Princess Mononoke. And the original Japanese book titled just もののけ姫 (Princess Mononoke) was published in 1993.

The story in this book is totally different from the actual animated film that came out in 1997.

This is actually more like a children book with large drawings and a few lines of text on each page. The beautiful drawings are done in typical Miyazaki style in pencils and watercolours. The story is simple and straightforward.

The book includes an afterword by Miyazaki that explains the purpose of the drawings. They are actually for selling the project to a film company or TV station. So actually, the drawings are considered pretty rough although most parts are coloured in, some bits not. Overall, the book feels unfinished because of that.

The drawings work like storyboards and you may be able to learn something by looking at how Miyazaki stages the scenes.

I'm not sure if it's a worthwhile purchase, but if you're a Miyazaki fan, then you could consider it.

3.5 out of 5 stars.

Princess Mononoke: The First Story is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN) and Book Depository

The page flipping video is on Amazon US and CA.

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Adventure Kartel is an intellectual property created by Ashley Wood and TP Louise that consists collectible figures and artworks. In the universe, Adventure Kartel is the name of a team of misfits and oddball characters lead by Tommy Mission and Fighting JC who have to fight against Zomb MD.

Adventure Kartel the book collects the mini-comics and oil paintings created by Ashley Wood for the characters. It's a huge hardcover, almost A3 size. The gigantic size is looks impressive.

The book starts off with a ten-page comic that introduces the premise, and then it's followed by the characters being revealed one by one. There's not much of a coherent narrative as you just get bits of the story with each character. And the language is full of slangs and curse words. "Wanna go on some sh't hot adventure? Well, do ya?"

The highlight of the book is Ashley Wood's style of art. There are his characteristic rough strokes, the halftones and in this particular book the use of very toned down desaturated primary colours of yellow, red and blue. With the large page sizes, those mini comics and posters can actually fit onto one page and you can still read whatever words that are on it. The overall feel is somewhat casual, loud and spontaneous, just like artworks you may have seen in other Ashley Wood artbooks.

A few Adventure Kartel characters have been released as collectible figures under the company ThreeA. And some of the artworks in this book are seen in the posters that come with the figures.

The characters included in the book are:

Boiler Zomb
Acolyte Zomb
Dead Astronaut Gangsta
King Thumb of Nefarious 10 Finger Robot Gang
Little Shadow
Tommy Mission
Fighting JC
Ankou
Ankou EX
Zombkin
黑夜熊猫 (Soot Wu or S8t Wu)
Hot Foot
The Golden Dolphin
Ka-Numb
Peppermint Groove
Zomb MB's Dead Easy Corp

A lot of other characters are not featured so I suppose there might be another book in the future.

This book is going to appeal specifically to fans of Ashley Wood's art and Adventure Kartel. Because it's quite a pricy, I recommend at least flipping through before purchase.

If you like this style of art, you might want to check out the book Visual Funk: Jim Mahfood Art also.

Adventure Kartel is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN) and Book Depository

That's an A3 size watercolour pad by the side.

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Publisher IDW hits another one out of the park with this artbook on Russ Heath.

Flesh & Steel: The Art of Russ Heath is also the name of the exhibition that was held on 24 January 2013 at Casal Solleric gallery in Palma, Spain. So this is the companion book to the exhibition and it even uses the same logo which is embossed on the cover.

This book chronicles Heath's entire career from the time when he was freelancing for comics in high school to working for DC and Marvel later on. His blibliography and comicgraphy starts from 1944 to a decade into the 21st century. There are over 50 years of artworks included, a mixture contributed by other collectors, publishers and many previously unseen personal works.

Heath is a very versatile artist and has worked on a wide ranging number of genres, drawing soldiers, gladiators, dinosaurs, Dracula, for Playboy and many other subjects. One thing he doesn't draw much are superhero comics. The art is fantastic with wonderful inking and preference for realism.

His best works are arguably for the exciting Our Army at War, Haunted Tank and Sgt Rock which are prominently featured throughout the book. He has also worked on numerous Western stories and had many of his personal cowboy paintings shown in the first few pages. Other titles he has worked on included Sea Devils, G.I. Combat, Little Annie Fanny, Creepy, Vampirella, The Lone Ranger and many more.

To record Heath's work over the decades is an incredible challenge. People who read his comics back then are probably many decades older now. So everything you read in the book is nostalgic in a way, and a reflection of those times when the comics were published.

Florentino Florez spent three years curating all the artworks and wrote the extensive text that fills this huge 320-page hardcover artbook. Text is in English and Spanish.

Great book for all fans of Russ Heath.

Flesh & Steel: The Art of Russ Heath is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN) and Book Depository

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Beautiful artbook for Disney's Big Hero 6

I find this to be an interesting artbook particularly because of the environment designs. About half the book is dedicated to the environment designs which includes the city San Fransokyo, Hiro's house, the cafe, San Fransokyo Institute of Technology, Fred's mansion and the portal.

The San Fransokyo is like a character by itself with its blend of architecture and aesthetics from west and east. It's fun to see how the artists create a populated city inspired by San Francisco and Tokyo.

Cited by art director Scott Watanabe, there are also influences from anime films such as Tekkonkinkreet, Ghost in the Shell and Akira. Indeed when I look at some of the environment sketches, they remind me of sketches from the Tekkon Kinkreet anime artbook. The vibe is certainly present.

Looking at the city's environment concept art, you'll be able to spot Japanese elements such as the tapered rooftops, Koinobori (carp-shaped wind socks), a Golden Gate Bridge lookalike with Torii design elements, signboards with Japanese typography, wooden curved bridges, cherry-blossom trees, etc. There are also major characteristic San Francisco elements such as the roads with very recognisable cable cars, sloping hills, Victorian-style houses, etc.

There's an emphasis on function and a sense of feeling lived-in for the environments, so buildings aren't just designed to look cool. For example, city streets or Hiro's rooms are made to look a bit more messy or wonky.

The second half of the book features the character designs for the heroes, villains and side characters. Again, there's noticeable Japanese influence in the designs. Early designs for Hiro shows off costumes that look like ninjas or even Patlabor. There are more pages for Baymax because he's has a big role. Go Go's hero suit reminded me of Tron and some Japanese toy/game/anime that I can't remember. The characters in their non-hero forms are pretty standard and do not stand out, but their hero costumes look quite good.

Finally the last part of the book talks briefly about the cinematography used, such as lighting, the new Disney Hyperion renderer and colour script.

There's a good amount of text included in the form of introductions for each environment and character, and quotes from the staff talking about the designs. It's a book solely on the designs, with nothing being mentioned about the movie's plot.

Overall a nice film companion.

4.5 out of 5 stars.

The Art of Big Hero 6 is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN) and Book Depository

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When I bought this book, I had the fear that there's going to be a rehash of content that has already appeared in Alien Vault whose content was also a rehash of an earlier book called The Book of Alien.

With the book in hand, I do see that there are duplication but it's perhaps unavoidable because it covers all the four films from the franchise. Duplication mainly comes the from the first film with some similar pictures and stories from Alien Vault being reused, just laid out differently. For me, it's not a major bummer because the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Alien the Archive is presented as a huge 304-page hardcover published by Titan Books, who have also recently released another Alien-related book called The Art of Alien: Isolation, an awesome video game artbook by the way.

This is a visually driven book with the large pictures and supporting text. From cover to cover, it's filled with wonderful photographs and artworks that are gloriously reproduced on the huge pages.

The book starts off an interesting analysis of Sigourney Weaver's character Ellen Ripley before going into the specific films. It looks at the casting and at how Ripley had evolved in the Alien universe. It's a nice way to connect the films together using a common element.

Content for each film features the history and production process, the cast, designs for the environment, spaceships, and the alien, all in the at order.

The text overall is insightful and informative. However, history for each film is rather brief but this isn't a detailed production diary so it's not surprising. The other text comes in the form of interviews, captions and commentary explaining the designs, filming process and the work that is done. The paragraphs here and there plus snippets of text all add up to a huge amount of content to read.

The text reveals interesting details like how they construct the spaceships, art direction, the artists who are involved, difficulties on filming Alien 3, creating of sets and of course the alien, and the different aspects that each film faces.

The behind the scenes photographs are really great and fun to look at. You can see the actual models for spaceships and sets, alien suits, many of the alien props including the mechanical parts that control the movements, actors, the filming process and more. There are many new pictures that I've not seen before because I've not seen companion books for the second to fourth film.

The included artworks are fantastic. There are artworks from Chris Foss, Moebius, H.R. Giger and other artists. H.R. Giger contribution is the most significant with designs for the alien, its environment and other elements. You'll also see concept art and sketches for the spaceship interiors, vehicles, props, storyboards and physical models such as maquettes and miniatures.

So despite some duplication of content from other books, I still think this is a fine companion to the Alien franchise. Highly recommended to the fans.

Alien the Archive: The Ultimate Guide to the Classic Movies is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN) and Book Depository