The complete Otomo Katsuhiro Works

I guess it is not news anymore but I should post it anyway. Next year will see the start of a new edition of the whole Otomo ouvre. As a die-hard fan, this is great news to me, relatively. I have been collecting Otomo stuff since 1989. I believe I have everything available so I am pretty much set. However a new edition is wonderful news anyway as new stuff will be released, like a scripts book and Domu will be in bigger size and a new scan (I have the deluxe Domu edition but the new scan definitely I want), and me being me, well, I will buy everything again. Anwyay, here are some images found on the official twitter, official website and some other places on the net I cant remember now. Now, will the blu-rays of Akira and Mushishi include new content? Probably not, I have the feeling they will be the same movies again, but anyway, we will see next year. So here you have some preorder links and the official sites.

DOMU

AKIRA Storyboards 1

Twitter

Website

Criterion Designs

Criterion is a wonderful company  that releases amazing blu-ray and dvd editions of  important films. As they like to say “A continuing series of important classic and contemporary films”. I started collecting them with the “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” laserdisc, around 1992. I also got their LD editions of Robocop, Seven, Brazil, Life of Brian and a few more. It was always expensive to get their discs but you got amazing quality in return: director and d.o.p. approved transfers, interviews, extras. They were the ones that created what we all know now as Special Editions. From LD they went to DVD and then BR discs. The list of their releases is huge (almost 1.000 titles on DVD and BR but more on LD that were never released in the new formats like Akira or 2001: A Space Odyssey) and I wish I had all.

Criterion always had good taste when it came to design their products and in the last few years they started working with some brilliant collaborators: Bill Sienkiewicz, Yuko Shimizu, Kent Williams, Mike Allred,  Daniel Clowes, Sam Smith, Eric Skillman… The amount of high quality art and design made me wonder when they would release a book showcasing all of it.

Well, 2014 was the year it came out.

Huge hardcover book, beautifully art directed by Eric Skillman and Sarah Habibi (the regular art directors of the collection) showcasing the art of 150 films and over 100 different artists.  306 pages and god it is heavy.

Part of the fun of the book is discovering what film will appear next and what kind of materials they show: sketches, rejected art, work with typography, etc, so I won´t spoil that for you,. Every design presented here has some short text where they explain some details about how it was created and the reasons for this or that creative option. Also at the end there is a collection of ALL the LD, DVD and BR covers of the company.

This book is a dream come true for designers an even though it is a bit expensive (not too much) you get a great art collection in return. As I mentioned before I am also an occasional film poster designer (you can check my company USER T38´s work at IMP Awards,  just a few of them are mine) so to me this book is a treasure and I absolutely recommend it.

PD: Eric Skillman, art director, used to have a blog where he explained from time to time the design process and some of this Criterion designs. Not updated anymore but still a great read: Cozy Lummox.

This!!!!!

Pledgeeeee!!!

The Art of Dean Cornwell

Today we have a book about Dean Cornwell, also known as The Dean of Illustrators. Painter and illustrator, he worked in many of the same fields as other famous artists of his time as Norman Rockwell and particularly he excelled at murals.

 

For some reason there are not so many books as it should be about Cornwell. There is an excellent one called Dean Of Illustrators, by Patricia Janis Broder but it is out of print (I was lucky to get the re-print made in 2000) and not much more to my knowledge.

Enter The Art of Dean Cornwell. This is a limited edition book (1.000 copies) funded by crowd-funding and edited by the Illustrated Press. Unfortunately is already out of print too but still is worthy talking about (even if only to show off). The book comes with a slipcase (it is not to easy to get the book out of it) and it is a 224 pages hardcover book of super high quality content. My copy is signed by the author Daniel Zimmer, number 19 out of 100 signed books.

After a pretty good introduction about Dean´s life and story (with some great pictures of the man himself and models) we get straight into the art. And what art. I always loved Cornwell but there is so much stuff I had not seen before. We get the whole range of his work: book art, magazine work, mural, paintings, sketches… He was incredibly skilled and with  great knowledge of anatomy so he could tackle practically any subject.

As I said both of his books are out of print. This is really terrible news and I hope this situation gets fixed as soon as possible.

 

I am back!!

After an incredible busy time of my life finally I am able to start posting here again.

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