Marvelous Books

Thanks!

Cheers,
Brian

I just got expose 2 and 3 in the mail only because they had a 40% off promotion though. Is 1 permanently out of print now that it sold out?



Since you mentioned that it caught my interest, lately I have been messing with animating using expressions and equations so it might be fun to learn more of what I can do.


Wow that Invisible Art: The Legends of Movie Matte Painting sounds amazing, too bad the cheapest online is at least a hundred bucks. FXguide even posted about it to show how much they liked it.


So many books jumping onto my wish list from this thread already hah, many I have seen around or heard of but it helps me go in the right direction when others personally recommend them. If you are trying to post tumbnails/links like I did, when I pop a book image up I just go to the amazon search of the book, click and drag the preview image into the message box and it puts it there including the link to the amazon page. I figured this made it easier to see the book and look up info/cost on it, I always check ebay and google shopping as well because amazon often does, though not always have the lowest cost new/used.

Agree about the Art of Brave book which is amazing despite the movie IMO being awful.

I love the Terada Katsuya artbook:

I'm also a HUGE HUGE fan of Tatsuyuki Tanaka's Cannabis Works

collecting artbooks is an obession for me too, and I'd say every book from Weta workshop has been fabulous so far. I particularly recommend the District 9 and Narnia books.

The District 9 one is a must own for collectors IMO. I wish they'd release the graphic novel they did in house for the movie.

I'd still like to get that. Craig Barron showed me some of the art he had picked out for it back in 2000 (it was getting very pricey trying to get permissions to use a lot of it) and years later I used to leaf through it in stores. Don't think it ever showed up in a discount remainder bin or I'd have pounced.

Don't know how many of you know of it, but THE STORY OF THE FIFTH ELEMENT is a huge large format book of concept art, lots of paths not taken, just superb. I've looked at mine very gingerly over the years (cost $150 about 15 years back.)

Books of Ken Adam's work just blow me away. He had a very out-there vision of the Enterprise for an unmade TREK movie in the 70s ... the entire saucer was kind of like a French airport, where you could see down from the bridge several decks below, and there were diagonal tubes (like a habitrail for hamster?) connecting various sections. Kind of like his later MOONRAKER, but on genetically-engineered steroids with 'five times your physical strength, Captain.' Ralph McQuarrie butchered his design for the exterior, but that Trek movie is still one of those paths-not-taken I've always been fascinated by (it had Jordan Belson for optical effects and Derek Meddings for miniatures, and Phil Kaufman was directing and wanted Toshiro Mifune as a Klingon.) Sounds like a win - win - win ... so of course it didn't get made!

Dang, you guys are sharing some awesome books that sound great but they are so rare and expensive. I plopped the District 9 book onto my "future buys" list as well, I would love to see some of the concept work they did on that between those wicked guns and the mech suit.

Some of the greatest in-depth Maya training I ever found was from Hyper Realistic Character Creation, it's a 2 book set though each can be fairly standalone as far as instruction. They cover some fantastic topics including making very realistic forms with great topology to yield realistic deformation when rigged/animated. The key subject is a werewolf type character meaning some tricky pipeline challenges to make a character that can morph into a werewolf, realistic muscle simulation and anatomy.


(all 3 books include digital content as well for reference and further info)

Oh, and an amazing, monstrous effort that is generally considered a must-read mostly everywhere:
http://www.hdrlabs.com/book/

I love all his stuff but my favorite is probably RAKUGAKING, the 1000 page sketchbook. He's just so good it's awesome to see his stream of consciousness, such random and endlessly changing styles and insane ideas.

http://cdn.halcyonrealms.com/illust...tches-art-book/

On that same note Claire Wendling's Drawers (or any of her stuff) have amazing flow and character, she's amazing at drawing animals too.

Kim Hyung-Tae's Oxide books while exaggerated are also full of some cool ideas.

Obvious stuff like Masamune Shirow, Syd Mead, Moebius, etc. more on this later, have a wall full of recommendations but should put pics and links.

Kazuo Oga complete works background artbook


Oga Kazuo Animation Artworks 2

Agree about Rakugaking, and even his smaller stuff (i get it from a Japanese bookstore here in San Diego0 is awesome IMO. I agree about Claire Wendling, I had a good conversation at Comic-Con while getting some tips from Michael Golden, we were talking about how she came out of that pack of artists of her ilk and now sort of is head and shoulders above others in terms of her character. Not sure what happened but she's great.

Agree about Tae also, his use of gradients and gray as an ambient color changed the way I rendered certain things.

I dont think this has been mentioned but for animators "The Illusion of Life" is a must though REALLY hard to find an inexpensive copy.


Also Muscles in motion is aimed at 2d comic artist, but is a really great study of muscles in motion, albeit crazy pumped up muscles.


EDIT: I just looked on amazon and apparently illusion of life is only like $35. Last time I looked it was like $300, guess its a reprinting or something. Even asked a used book dealer and he pretty much laughed when I said I wanted to spend under $100

The Gurney book

I have 3




http://www.amazon.com/Art-Spirit-Ro...i/dp/0465002633

http://www.amazon.com/Art-Visual-Pe...y/dp/0520243838

Don't forget:
hr giger necronomicon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necron...8H._R._Giger%29

Or anything else about his work (Alien or otherwise) for that matter.

@Andrewty07 I like Barlowe's 'Inferno' a lot too BTW.