Review: Spider-Man The Art of the Game

Both Boen and Bowen have thoroughly gotten into Spider-man, as a result of playing the PS4 Game. Beon even knows how to hold his fingers in the web-shooter gesture, which is amusing as heck. I saw some pictures in a web-article from The Art of the Game, and decided to pick it up.

The darn thing is a huge coffee table book. Paper doesn't have HDR, but in the case of this book, the materials clearly came from actual painted and physically drawn work. I expected to see scenes from the game, but the book also provided many examples of concept sketches that never made it into the game, including alternate versions of the characters that were intriguing and well drawn. It's impressive seeing how many sketches artists did just to get to the final product, but what's even more impressive was how many fully-worked-up paintings, etc. there were in the book! I've seen how quickly a Pixar artist can make a few pen strokes come to life, but a fully realized painting is significant work, no matter how talented you are.

Computer games are a truly multidisciplinary art, especially the modern AAA games which have all the production values of movies and require pretty much just as many people and as much time. The art book was a lot of fun to look at, and to my surprise holds up even for adults. Recommended.