Each hardcover book in The Sky Slipcased Edition is 11 5/8" high by 10 5/8" wide, and printed on glossy stock. Volume 1 contains Amano's work for Final Fantasy I-III, Volume 2 his contributions for Final Fantasy IV-VI, and Volume 3 features his art for Final Fantasy VII-X. The elegant slipcase containing The Sky I, II, and III features the same wraparound exterior artwork as The Sky Boxed Set, with a double-hinged flap that folds around the open edge and is held flat to the back side with a hidden magnetic closure, making it easy both to remove the books and to display the set closed.

    Slight of build, shy by nature, prone to fits of depression, the 28-year-old Beijing photographer was nonetheless at the forefront of Chinese artists' battle for creative freedom. Like his champion Ai Weiwei, Ren was controversial in his homeland and wildly popular in the rest of the world. He said, -I don't really view my work as taboo, because I don't think so much in cultural context, or political context. I don't intentionally push boundaries, I just do what I do.- Why? Because his models, friends, and increasingly, fans, are naked, often outdoors, high in the trees or on the terrifyingly vertiginous rooftops of Beijing, stacked like building blocks, heads wrapped in octopi, body cavities sprouting phone cords and flowers, whatever enters his mind at the moment. He denies his intentions are sexual, and there is a clean detachment about even his most extreme images: the urine, the insertions, the many, many erections. In a 2013 interview VICE magazine asked, -there are a lot of dicks ... do you just like dicks?- Ren responded, -It's not just dicks I'm interested in, I like to portray every organ in a fresh, vivid and emotional way.- True though that may be, the penises Ren photographed are not just fresh and vivid, but unusually large, making one wonder just where he met his friends. In the same piece, Hang also stated, -Gender isn't important when I'm taking pictures, it only matters to me when I'm having sex, - making him a pioneer of gender inclusiveness. Young fans still eagerly flock to his website, Facebook, Instagram, and Flickr accounts. His photographs, all produced on film, have been the subject of over 20 solo and 70 group shows in his brief six-year career, in cities as disparate as Tokyo, Athens, Paris, New York, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Vienna, and yes, even Beijing. He self-published 16 monographs, in tiny print runs, that now sell for up to $600. TASCHEN's Ren Hang is his only international collection, covering his entire career, with well-loved favorites and many never-before-seen photos of men, women, Beijing, and those many, many erections. We take solace remembering Ren's joy when he first held the book, shared by his long-time partner Jiaqi, featured on the cover.Text in English, French, and German

    But a courageous and visionary young woman-Katharine Kuh-defied the odds and opened a gallery in Chicago, where she exhibited such relatively unknown artists as Fernand L ger, Paul Klee, Joan Mir, Ansel Adams, Marc Chagall, and Alexander Calder, to name but a few. Not only did Kuh survive these rocky early years but most of the artists became increasingly famous. In 1954, the Art Institute of Chicago named her its first curator of modern painting and sculpture. Kuh's prestigious position at the museum led to friendships with Marcel Duchamp, Mark Rothko, Mies van der Rohe, and Edward Hopper. In writing her memoir, she hoped to offer intimate portraits of these luminaries and contribute to a fuller understanding of their achievements. Her book also reveals how and why America became a major force in the world of contemporary art.After Katharine Kuh's death, Avis Berman-noted art historian and Kuh's close friend and literary executor-selected, edited, and completed her writings for this book.

    More often than not, these manifestations have been the result of a few like-minded people coming together to create something new and original for no other purpose than a common love of doing it. In the 1990s, a loose-knit group of American artists and creators, many just out of their teens, began their careers in just such a way. Influenced by the popular underground youth subcultures of the day, such as skateboarding, graffiti, street fashion and independent music, artists like Shepard Fairey, Mark Gonzales, Spike Jonze, Margaret Kilgallen, Mike Mills, Barry McGee, Phil Frost, Chris Johanson, Harmony Korine and Ed Templeton began to create art that reflected the lifestyles they led. Many had no formal training and almost no conception of the inner workings of the art world. They learned their crafts through practice, trial and error, and good old-fashioned innovation. Not since the Beat Generation have we seen a group of creative individuals with such a unified aesthetic sense and varied cultural facets. The world of art has been greatly affected by their accomplishments as have the worlds of fashion, music, literature, film, and, ironically, athletics. Beautiful Losers is a retrospective celebration of this spirit, with hundreds of artworks by over two dozen artists, from precursors like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring and Larry Clark, to more recent adherents Ryan McGinness, KAWS and Geoff McFetridge. Work in all conceivable mediums is included, plus reproductions of reams of ephemera. The accompanying essays are contributed by a half-dozen writers who have championed these beautiful losers from the start. This paperback reprint includes more pages, more images, an exhibition checklist, installation shots from a variety of exhibitions and an interview with Beautiful Losers advocate Agnes B.

    Art Fundamentals addresses key basic subjects such as color and light, composition, perspective and depth, anatomy, and portraying emotions in a series of insightful chapters. Find out about color relationships and how to choose colors that work well together. Learn about the Rule of Thirds, Rule of Odds, Golden Triangle, and Divine Proportions, all of which are key when it comes to creating a realistic and dynamic composition. Discover the power of storytelling in an image and how the slightest tilt of an eyebrow can transform happiness into anger.Written by some of the most experienced artists in the games and film industries, including Gilles Beloeil (Assassin's Creed series) and Andrei Riabovitchev (Prometheus and X-Men: First Class), this title gives newcomers the tools they need to get them started on their artistic journey and offers veterans a chance to brush up on their theory.Gilles Beloeil is a senior concept artist and matte painter at Ubisoft Montreal who has spent the last several years working on titles in the best-selling Assassin's Creed video game series.Andrei Riabovitchev works for MPC in the United Kingdom as a concept artist and has an impressive résumé that includes Prometheus, X-Men: First Class, and Snow White and the Huntsman.

    This mystical adventure has such a huge cult following that when the film was recently re-released on video and DVD, it quickly sold a million copies. Just as remarkable is the cult status of The World of The Dark Crystal, Froud's book on the film. Originally published in 1982 and long out of print, this definitive volume--packed with brilliant artwork--has been in such demand that used copies can sell for well over $400. Abrams is now proudly reissuing this sought-after book in a brand new collector's edition. This beautifully printed reproduction of the original volume contains all of its stunning art and text--plus a new essay by Froud, illustrated with never-before-published paintings, drawings, and sculptures from the film's archives. And this new edition features a facsimile of a 20-page booklet Froud and Henson created to present the film to backers--a gorgeous overview of the story so rare only a few copies are known to exist. This collector's edition of The World of The Dark Crystal, like the re-released film, will truly be a must-have for Henson and Froud fans.

    From Respawn Entertainment comes a brand-new action adventure game which tells an original Star Wars(TM) story around a surviving Padawan set shortly after the events of Star Wars(TM): Revenge of the Sith(TM).

    Released ahead of the start of the 3rd season, this book will bring Fannibals into the world of secrets, lies, and intrigue of their beloved show.With stars including Mads Mikkelsen, Hugh Dancy, Laurence Fishburne, Caroline Dhavernas and guest spots by Gillian Anderson, Eddie Izzard and Michael Pitt, Hannibal is one of the most elegant, engrossing and deliciously haunting shows on television today. The Art & Making of Hannibal: The Television Series celebrates all aspects of this unique show. A highly stylized illustrated book featuring extracts of the shooting scripts of the first and second seasons, exclusive cast and crew interviews, behind-the-scenes photography, production notes, storyboards, alongside Hannibal's sketches and music notations. Hannibal Lecter was a brilliant psychiatrist in the employ of the FBI. His task: to help an unusually gifted criminal profiler, Will Graham, who is haunted by his ability to see into the minds of serial killers.

    People are waking up to the seedy history of the world's art collections, and are starting to ask difficult questions about what the future of museums should look like. In The Whole Picture, art historian and Uncomfortable Art Tour guide Alice Procter provides a manual for deconstructing everything you thought you knew about art, and fills in the blanks with the stories that have been left out of the art history canon for centuries. The book is divided into four chronological sections, named after four different kinds of art space:The Palace The Classroom The Memorial The Playground Each section tackles the fascinating and often shocking stories of five different art pieces, including the propaganda painting that the East India Company used to justify its control in India; the Maori mokomokai skulls that were traded and collected by Europeans as 'art objects'; and Kara Walker's controversial contemporary sculpture A Subtlety, which raised questions about 'appropriate' interactions with art. Through these stories, Alice brings out the underlying colonial narrative lurking beneath the art industry today, and suggests different ways of seeing and thinking about art in the modern world.The Whole Picture is a much-needed provocation to look more critically at the accepted narratives about art, and rethink and disrupt the way we interact with the museums and galleries that display it.

    Inside you'll find guidelines for rendering accurate skin tones in a variety of media, including watercolor, oil and pastel.You'll begin with a review of the five essential painting elements (drawing, value, color, composition and edges), then learn how light and color influence the appearance of skin tones. Artist Chris Saper provides the advice and examples that make every lesson and technique easy to understand--immediately improving the quality of your work. You'll discover how to:Paint the four major skin color groups (Caucasian, African American, Asian and Hispanic)Refine these colors into dozens of possible variations within each groupSelect your palette and mix hues for clean, beautiful colorsDetermine the color and temperature of light that falls on your subjectPaint direct and indirect sunlight, artificial light and highlights of lightMaster the four elements that determine color in shadowUse photographic references when you can't paint directly from lifeYou'll also find seven step-by-step demonstrations and an appendix of sample color charts for each major skin type under a range of lighting variations. It's all you need to bring your portraits to life!

    It captures bygone New York at its most raucous, dangerous, and outrageous. Grisly murders, tragic accidents, gawking crowds, along with intimate human-interest and high-society images, are all captured by Weegee's flash. Interpretive essays, an annotated chronology, bibliography, filmography, and a list of exhibitions complete this comprehensive volume.

    1 is an all-color manga compilation and edited by the elite manga artist Range Murata, character designer for Studio Gonzo's Last Exile and Blue Submarine No. 6. His hand-picked contributors come together in a mind blowing experiment of what happens when top manga artists work in the unusual medium of color. From Range Murata's picturesque portrayal of a long and hot motorcycle ride through the countryside to Yoshitoshi Abe's tale of dark fantasy resembleing a D&D campaign gone horribly wrong, narrative diversity competes with high level artistic experimentation in this monumental work.

    As war raged on in Vietnam and the cold war continued to escalate, Hollywood began to heat up, recovering from its commercial crisis with box-office successes such as Star Wars, Jaws, The Exorcist, and The Godfather. Thanks to directors like Spielberg and Lucas, American cinema gave birth to a new phenomenon: the blockbuster. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, while the Nouvelle Vague died out in France, its influence extended to Germany, where the New German Cinema of Fassbinder, Wenders, and Herzog had its heyday. The sexual revolution made its way to the silver screen (cautiously in the US, more freely in Europe) most notably in Bertolucci's steamy, scandalous Last Tango in Paris. Amidst all this came a wave of nostalgic films (The Sting, American Graffiti) and Vietnam pictures (Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter), the rise of the anti-hero (Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman), and the prestigious short-lived genre, blaxploitation.

    All three were created in close collaboration with renowned cartoonist and illustrator Gerald Scarfe. Here, for the first time, Scarfe shares his experiences with the band and reveals the inside story behind The Wall's development in the studio, on the stage, in front of the camera, and for the 2010 tour.Beautifully illustrated, The Making of Pink Floyd: The Wall contains hundreds of unseen photos as well as exclusive interviews with Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Nick Mason, and more. The result is a book Waters calls "brilliant" and "absolutely amazing."

    The lavishly illustrated book brings the artist's exotic women, sinewy men, and fantasy worlds to life in over 110 full-color paintings. There are images of stunning winged women and muscled men fighting ferocious beasts, as well as strange alien worlds filled with metallic spacecraft and colorful citizens. Renowned fantasy author Nigel Suckling offers insight into Vallejo's work with fascinating and informative extended captions.