Concept Design 2: Works from Seven Los Angeles Entertainment Designers and Seventeen Guest Artists

Simply amazing. A must buy.

I bought this item from my son's wish list as a gift, so I personally don't know how to rate it.

This book is filled with beautiful prints from professional illustrators. There are concept designs for creatures, vehicles, environment (sci-fi and fantasy) and a few sketches. Each illustration is explained by the respective artist the concept behind and sometimes the workflow. The technical quality of work is great, as one can guess by the names of artists included.This is actually a portfolio art book and not one that teaches concept design. The variety of style is great and ideas amazing.The book is hardcover and the illustrations are printed on semi gloss paper. A lot of illustrations are given full page treatment. Some are printed a double-page pull out. They look really great printed big.In terms of focus, the 17 guest artists are given over 30 pages compared to the 120 pages for the featured concept designers. If you like to see more of their artwork, the short biography pages at the back contains their website addresses.Here's the list of 7 concept designers and guest artists: * Mark Goerner * Nick Pugh * Scott Robertson * James Clyne * Steve Burg * Neville Page * Harald Belker * Nicolas Bouvier * Ryan Church * Dylan Cole * Kasra Farahani * Sean Hargreaves * Khang Le * Ed Natividad * Warren Manser * Stephan Martiniere * Rick O'Brien * Dan Quarnstrom * Christian Lorenz * Scheurer * Oliver Scholl * Farzad Varahramyan * Mike Yamada * Felix Yoon * Feng Zhu(More pictures are available on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)

I bought this book on a wim. The title and the size of the book led me to believe it would have some descent sized pictures and would be a good collection of original ideas. I wanted something that would inspire me to work harder on my own work. And that is exactly what I got.I am quite pleased with this book. It is worth the price. There is a good variety of subjects, some that impress me, some that don't. But all the work is skillfully done. There is little in the way of artist comments or direction on how to achieve the effects they achieve, but that is the way I like it. This is more about the work. More text would mean less space for artwork. The artwork is mostly digital, however, there is an appropriate amount of sketches, too. The last few pages have information on the artists and their websites(if an artist has one).I am disappointed there aren't more sketches or character designs. Most of the work is mechanical or environmental. It needed more character designs to balance it out, in my opinion.There are some artists I didn't care for, subject matter I didn't care for(the concept cars for one), but nothing irritating or offensive.The wide range of subject matter means there is something for everyone in this book. I gave it four stars, mainly because it doesn't contain more of the type of work I'm interested in. But if I could give it 4.5 stars, I would. It works great as reference material and is a good addition to any digital artists collection.

First - What's wrong Jaw Line? Did you not get accepted to Art Center or were you rejected by Industrial Light & Magic? You're not even a blip on the radar of these artists until you do something worth recognizing so please indicate where your book is on Amazon or keep your envious mouth shut.Now, on to the review - The book is comprised of some of the better artists working in film and entertainment design today. Please keep in mind, this book is a nice reference tool for artists looking for a way to keep motivated and learn a few things along the way. I agree, there could have been more sketches and character development, but I'll take this for what it is - a pleasing reference tool for those of us who obviously haven't reached Jaw Line's impeccable talent.Enjoy the fine work.

You should definitely get this book if you want to learn how far self-promotion can take you. Or alternately, you could save your 30-some-odd bucks and just take this review to heart.I bought the book to keep around as inspiration--printed out jpeg's just don't cut it and they don't last, right? I also bought it to check out what my competition was doing out on the Left Coast, sort of to light the fire under me.Well.The book is printed nicely, and I felt that a lot of the text was pertinent and interesting. The images, though?Well.The bulk of the book (the first part) is the seven LA guys showing off their work, and a lot of it. Some were pretty ok, but there are several guys who may be experienced, commercially viable pros, but whose work blows. I mainly found the best images to be in the "and friends" part, which is the second half of the book where various other guys get an image or two displayed.There are some nice visual pauses that come from z-brush and sculpy images, but there are just too many instances of very high-tech high school art. There were no Craig Mullins, Dussos or Syd Meads in the bunch, it's safe to say.So, take the tip: even if you suck or are abysmally average...promote, promote, promote--and one day, you too can get seen!

An interesting book as these artists are now moving on in their careers and we see the results of their work in film and other entertainment.

Very slick images and insightful commentaries about these images by the concept artists themselves.

amazing, crazy illustrations