Reading – Sci-Fi Art Now
While I was at Pandemonium Books & Games in Cambridge a few nights ago I spotted Sci-Fi Art Now*, a new 192-page hardcover artbook edited by John Freeman. After a few minutes of flipping through the book I decided to buy it . . . and now I’ve completely finished reading the book and staring at the artwork. I am a sucker for art books, and this one has a fabulous blend of digital art and digitally-altered/enhanced line art.
Divided into seven chapters, Sci-Fi Art Now* runs the range from robots to steampunk, with a mix of aliens, landscapes, and spaceships tossed in to give us a peek at everything that comes together to create “sci-fi.” This is less a discussion of the artwork in sci-fi today than it is just a collection of artwork by comic, film, and game artists, and that was a little sad for me since I kind of expected to see some comparisons of today’s sci-fi art to the sci-fi artwork of the past fifty or sixty years.
But please don’t take that as a complaint. The bulk of the artwork in the book is run quite large — I hate it when artbooks run a ton of tiny images in place of one large image — and everything inside is perfectly reproduced and legible. And for art directors and art lovers the book closes with an artist directory that includes website addresses and e-mail addresses for the artists featured in the book. I’m no longer an art director, but I spotted a couple of guys in here who I’m going to suggest to our art director at the office.
Closing Thoughts
Sci-Fi Art Now* is one of those books that you’re either already excited about after these few words and pics — and you can see several more shots of the pages in the book at this Flickr set. Kinda like a story anthology of compilation CD artbooks featuring the work of many artists are an acquired taste and not for everyone.
Fortunately for me, my brain is random and scattered enough that I absolutely dig the mix of artists and art styles showcased in the book. And this makes an excellent addition to my collection of art books.
I should really dig out some of the older books and share them here one of these days.
Thanks so much for the detailed review of my book.
The format of the book was dictated by the range – ILEX have done a series of books in the same style and they have proven popular.
I hope you don’t mind, I’ve added a clip from it to my blog about the book (http://scifiartnow.blogspot.com/) and linked to this post.
There are quite a few interviews with the illustrators in the book on the blog which give more detail about their careers and feelings about science fiction art. They also offer their own suggestions to aspiring artists.
Interesting idea about a book that offers more of a history of SF art. That would be quite a mammoth task. You might want to check out my friend Steve Holland’s book, SciFi Art – I think that might cover some of what you were hoping for. There’s a link to it on the blog