Thursday, December 25, 2008

Book Review: The Cinematic Art of World of Warcraft: The Wrath of the Lich King

The publisher of this book is Insights Editions, one of my favourite publishers. Their art books always have extra goodies, at least for the ones I bought. In this case, there are two 8” x 10” original art cards in a tipped-in-vellum sleeve and a 12-page booklet on the creation of Sindragosa.

This is a paperback book and the binding doesn't look strong (see an example). Strangely, no hardcover version alternative is available. The pages are rather glossy and oily fingers will definitely leave smudges. They are given the silver-color treatment and the text printed on these silver "plates" is extremely classy.

The book details the production process of the animation in great detail. There is conceptualization, story development, character development, production design and even the 3D execution. To make the book complete, they also included how they did the soundtrack and audio.

On the art side, it starts off with storyboards on the introduction of Tuskassr and Lich King's entrance. Following that are pages of characters, armour, monsters, dragons and environment paintings. There's a generous amount of concept art on Sindragosa and the undead. Also included are multiple screenshots of their 3D creation process like creating matte paintings, composition, animating, rendering, etc. This book is literally packed with artwork.

Blizzard has done a tremendous job with the book and with their game. They have brought together a brilliant team of artists to showcase their talent to the world.

The Cinematic Art of World of Warcraft: The Wrath of the Lich King is a stunning art book. I recommend it to all fans of World of Warcraft, or any fantasy concept artists.

Special thanks to Kelvin Chan for providing the book for this short review.

The Cinematic Art of World of Warcraft: The Wrath of the Lich King

The Cinematic Art of World of Warcraft: The Wrath of the Lich King

The Cinematic Art of World of Warcraft: The Wrath of the Lich King

The Cinematic Art of World of Warcraft: The Wrath of the Lich King

The Cinematic Art of World of Warcraft: The Wrath of the Lich King

The Cinematic Art of World of Warcraft: The Wrath of the Lich King

The Cinematic Art of World of Warcraft: The Wrath of the Lich King

The Cinematic Art of World of Warcraft: The Wrath of the Lich King

The Cinematic Art of World of Warcraft: The Wrath of the Lich King

The Cinematic Art of World of Warcraft: The Wrath of the Lich King



Visit the link beside to read more reviews on Amazon. If you buy from the link, I get a little commission that helps me get more art books for review.

Country-specific Amazon links for this book:
Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.fr | Amazon.de

1 comment:

  1. i have this book, and he is very GREAT and beautiful !

    I hope the book of "the art of cinematic of starcraft 2" will be release

    ReplyDelete

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