dewline: Doctor Who quote: Books. Best Weapons in the World (Books)
[personal profile] dewline
When you’re doing a review for a book that’s mainly about the artwork of a movie, things become a bit difficult. Not impossible, mind you. Just difficult. The reason for this is partly because you may not know how much of your audience has seen the movie in question at the point your review is expected to see print or “go live”. It’s an unavoidable issue.

So before I continue, good manners require this question: is there anyone in this audience who (a) hasn’t seen Star Wars VII yet, and (b) cares to see it without being spoiled about plot details?

(((waits for audience to respond to these questions)))


So, on the assumption that – from this point onward – no one in the audience who hasn’t seen the film is worried about that particular issue, I will continue.

We’re discussing two books: The Art of The Force Awakens by Phil Szostak and the Incredible Cross-Sections volume devoted to that same movie, text by Jason Fry and illustrated by Kemp Remillard. Each approaches the design issues of the movie from a different perspective. The first from the production design point of view, the second from the position of someone living in that “galaxy far, far away” just getting acquainted with the goings-on of the ships and vehicles shown.

Szostak takes the “diary” approach with this movie. Starting from January 2013, he takes the book through a comprehensive sampling of paintings, digital or physical, sketches (likewise), blueprints, and 3-D models taking us through to January of 2015. I emphasize “comprehensive” for a reason here. With the page count running to 250+, there’s a lot of room for a lot of stuff. Even so, there’s probably enough material in the Disney-Lucasfilm archives now for at least another three volumes like this one.

Some of that excluded material must’ve been aimed at Kemp Remillard via Dorling-Kindersley for the Incredible Cross-Sections book. I’m a little annoyed at seeing so many double-page spreads set aside for publicity shots in this book – it wasn’t an issue in any of the earlier volumes devoted to the Star Wars movies – but that seems to be a consequence of how few vehicles and vessels actually showed up in this one. Twelve such are profiled in all, along with a size comparison chart to give readers and viewers a proper sense of scale from the First Order Star Destroyer Finalizer down to Rey’s custom-built landspeeder. Each vehicle or ship gets at least two pages, with the Finalizer getting the classic double-foldout page spread treatment. Unsurprising given that ship is alleged to have a stem-to-stern length of 2.9 kilometres.

I’ll just wait a minute while you let that sink in.

Need another minute? I’m good with that too.

Anyway, I was lucky enough to get a gift card and a 30% discount-on-hardcovers day at the bookstore when I went looking for these two volumes. If you’re more patient for whatever reason, be it time or finances, I can understand that. They’re worth being patient for. Or checking with your local public library instead.

(And in Ottawa, at least, I can guarantee that patience will eventually be rewarded with both books. I've checked and they do have these volumes on order. Just FYI.)

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On the DEWLine 2.0: Dwight Williams

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