Hola!
Here we come with a very special book: The Art of Ralp McQuarrie, mammoth book about the art of one of the most influential designers and artists of the second half of the 20th century. I would say that Ralph together with Syd Mead are the fathers of modern film concept design and you can see the influence of both titans in todays most famous conceptual artists.
Ralph unfortunately died recently (march, 2012) just a few days before another master left us, Jean Giraud – Moebius (a guy that will appear around here sooner than later). What sad days those were. But for the fans we have this wonderful book: The Art of Ralph McQuarrie, published by Dreams and Visions Press.
Of course Ralph is best known for the groundbreaking and outstanding art he created for the Star Wars movies, but his career was long before and after Lucasfilm and he worked in all kind of fields like industrial design, book covers or advertising. This book we have here includes lots of images and artwork of all those fields, most of them never before seen. As you can imagine, this book is really a treasure.
The book is a thick hardcover that comes inside a slip case (394 pages). The book itself comes with a dust cover. After a foreword by George Lucas (and introduction by Doug Chiang) we go straight into the art. The index tells us some about what we are going to see: technical illustration, book cover and interior illustration, film and tv, a huge chunk about star wars, commercial illustration and personal work. Also we have some words by Ken Ralston and Anthony Daniels. There is a huge amount of images from pencli sketches to color comps to final art and alternates, and the text is concise and very informative.
The quality of the printing is excellent, the paper is great and the production values are of very high standards. Also, and this is important, the costumer service of Dreams and Visions Press is really great.
This is a big and important book, so the price is high. 250 US dollars if you buy them at the Dreams and Visions website. It is a limited edition of 2.000, so hurry up because I am sure there are just a few left and in Amazon some people are already asking for double the price on this in the second-hand market. The 250$ price is absolutely right for what you are buying and unless they decide to release a cheaper soft cover edition I would say that this is the only way to enjoy this wonderful art in the best way possible right now.
A no brainer, a must and a jewel.
Ralph we miss you.
Some Artbooks 