Reading – The Art of Warhammer Online

Today I’ve pulled another art book from my collection for us to enjoy, but this time it’s a book that was initially offered only in a special package for the Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning* computer game. I grabbed my copy of The Art of WarHammer Online* on eBay shortly after the game was released, but looking back at the book again I can say that it isn’t the best art book I’ve ever purchased. It’s merely okay.

224-pages long, The Art of WarHammer Online* is packed with beautiful concept art that is divided into sections for the major races in the Warhammer world and a section on monsters. Each race section shows the male and female characters, designs for different character classes in the game, weapons, and some locations. The character designs are fantastic, but a lot of times what we get is one static pose that is then dressed in numerous ways. It’s important to creating the art assets for a computer game, but as an addition to an art book these sequence/leveling images grow dull very quickly.

Even if you can find this book cheap I do not recommend it, because there are far more entertaining Warhammer books out there that give you not only great artwork but also fun background information on the world. Both The Empire at War* and Blood on the Reik* are examples of far superior Warhammer books, but now that I see the aftermarket prices for these books I have to question if there is any book from this series that I should be recommending. $200 for a simple art/story book? Ouch!

I’ve again posted a Flickr set for the book, so if you’re curious hit that to see 30 photos and to get a better idea of what the book looks like. There’s some scattered text, but most of what we get is the pure concept artwork that the artists on the game created during the game’s design. It’s an okay book, but it’s by no means a must own unless you just absolutely love Warhammer or you’re perhaps looking to get into working on artwork for computer games. And even then I don’t really recommend the book.

It’s Not a Bad Book, It’s Just Not Exciting

I think that clearly sums up my opinion of The Art of WarHammer Online*. A lot of the artwork looks great, but it’s so repetitive at times that you soon start to feel as if you’ve seen it all before. And tha’s the last thing I ever want to think as I’m flipping through an art book.

Will I dump this book from my collection? No, but then neither will I take it down often and flip through it. In fact, this is only the second time that I’ve had the book off of the shelf in the roughly two years that I’ve owned it. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it sat on the shelf for another two years before I bothered to look at it again. And that is not the sign of an awesome book.