Avatar The Last Airbender: The Art of the Animated Series


Michael Dante DiMartino - 2010
    Join series creators Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino for an unprecendented behind-the-scenes look at hundres of pieces of concept, design, and production art--most of which Nickelodeon has never before released to the public--as they take you on a guided tour through the development of this smash-hit television series. Learn how Avatar: The Last Airbender took shape, from the very first sketch to the series finale, and beyond!

Femina & Fauna: The Art of Camilla d'Errico


Camilla d'Errico - 2011
    Her handiwork captivates admirers around the world, and some of herbest-known creations are these, her studies of beautiful women and their animalcompanions. Playful and flamboyant, exotic and enigmatic, the women who inhabitthese striking paintings embody a fascinating array of contradictions . . . anda hint of something sinister lurks behind their eyes. They dwell in a fantasticworld - a circus of color and impossibility - where nothing is quite as itseems.Perfect for fans of pop art, fine art, manga, and anime, thisdeluxe hardcover is the largest and most comprehensive collection of Camilla'swork to date!

Red Colored Elegy


Seiichi Hayashi - 1970
    With a combination of sparse line work and visual codes borrowed from animation and film, the quiet, melancholy lives of a young couple struggling to make ends meet are beautifully captured in this poetic masterpiece. Uninvolved with the political movements of the time, Ichiro and Sachiko hope for something better, but they’re no revolutionaries; their spare time is spent drinking, smoking, daydreaming, and sleeping—together and at times with others. While Ichiro attempts to make a living from his comics, Sachiko’s parents are eager to arrange a marriage for her, but Ichiro doesn’t seem interested. Both in their relationship and at work, Ichiro and Sachiko are unable to say the things they need to say, and like any couple, at times say things to each other that they do not mean, ultimately communicating as much with their body language and what remains unsaid as with words. Red Colored Elegy is informed as much by underground Japanese comics of the time as it is by the French nouvelle vague, and its cultural referents range from James Dean to Ken Takakura. Its influence in Japan was so great that Morio Agata, a prominent Japanese folk musician and singer/songwriter, debuted with a love song written and named after it.

Black Jack Volume 2: Two-Fisted Surgeon (Black Jack)


Osamu Tezuka - 1999
    In this volume, the risk-taking Black Jack is at the mercy of a doctor after a horrible car wreck.

The Art of Robert E. McGinnis


Robert McGinnis - 2014
    McGinnis began his career in 1947 as a cartoonist, and produced his first cover illustrations for 1956 issues of the magazines True Detective and Master Detective. Then in 1958, he painted his first paperback book cover, and from that day forward his work was in demand.   The emergence of the “McGinnis Woman”—long-legged, intelligent, alluring, and enigmatic—established him as the go-to artist for detective novels. His work appeared on Mike Shayne titles and the Perry Mason series, and he produced 100 paintings for the Carter Brown adventures. Yet McGinnis became famous for his work in other genres as well: espionage, romance, historicals, gothics, and Westerns.   McGinnis’s first major magazine assignments were for The Saturday Evening Post, and his work has graced the pages of Cosmopolitan, National Geographic, Good Housekeeping, Guideposts, and others. McGinnis women frequently cropped up in the men’s magazines of the ’60s and ’70s.   His first movie poster was for Breakfast at Tiffany’s, with an iconic rendering of Audrey Hepburn. Almost instantly, his poster artwork could be seen everywhere—in theaters, on billboards, in newspapers, and even on soundtrack albums. His work for Hollywood became a who’s-who, with posters for James Bond, The Odd Couple, Woody Allen, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, and many more.   Some of his most ambitious works have been his gallery paintings, often depicting stunning American landscapes, vast Western vistas, and of course, beautiful women. The Art of Robert E. McGinnis collection reveals the full scope and beauty of the work of a true American master—one whose legacy continues today.

Grant Morrison's 18 Days


Grant Morrison - 2010
    18 Days

Temperance


Cathy Malkasian - 2010
    Malkasian creates, as she did in the critically acclaimed Percy Gloom, a fully realized, multi-layered world, inhabited by vividly realized characters. After a brutal injury in battle, Lester has no memory of his prior life. For the next thirty years his wife does everything to keep him from remembering—and re-constructing—a society, Blessedbowl, that elevates him as a hero. Blessedbowl is a cultural convergence of lies, memories, stories, and beliefs. Its people thrive on ideas of persecution, exceptionality, and enemies, convinced that war lurks just outside their walls. They have come to depend on Lester, their greatest war hero, to lead the charge once the Final Battle begins. What kind of enemy could topple such a people and its walls? Mere memory, it seems, as Lester gradually emerges from his amnesia. Temperance is an eyewitness’s account of recovery and awakening. The graphic novel works on two levels. It considers the concepts of violence, stories, and belief, and their place in holding a culture together, slyly echoing contemporary political issues in a nation at a stressful time currently at war with a ubiquitous enemy. Secondly, the fissures in Lester and Minerva’s marriage is echoed in the greater political upheaval around them. Malkasian creates a densely textured social context, masterfully conveying the idiosyncratic physical domain with its spiraling structures and quasi-medieval architecture along with intimate yet plastic portraits of her characters in a rich, tonal pencil line. Temperance is a galvanizing work of empathy and violence by one of today’s the most thoughtful and accomplished cartoonists.

The Art of Fallout 4


Bethesda Softworks - 2015
    Featuring 368 oversize pages, never-before-seen designs, and concept art from the game's dynamic environments, iconic characters, detailed weapons, and more -- along with commentary from the developers themselves.

Misery Loves Comedy


Ivan Brunetti - 2007
    Misery Loves Comedy collects the first three issues of the legendary comic book series Schizo in their entirety, as well as a host of miscellaneous flotsam and jetsam from various anthologies, c. 1992-2005. Readers will find the author's unwitting self-caricature as a paranoid, deluded young man intriguingly repugnant and often chuckle-inducing. Besides Brunetti's trademark nihilism, self-loathing, relentless depression, and inchoate, spittle-soaked misanthropy, these earlier comics offer a dollop of scatology and blasphemy for that extra puerile, lowbrow tang. These are comics for those who enjoy witnessing one man's sanity in its final death rattle, swinging its tail from anhedonia to schadenfreude and back again. Also: lots and lots of filthy jokes.

The Art of Pixar


Amid Amidi - 2011
    From classics such as Toy Story and A Bug's Life to recent masterpieces such as Up, Toy Story 3, and Cars 2, this comprehensive collection offers a behind-the-scenes tour of every Pixar film to date. Featuring a foreword by Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter, the complete color scripts for every film published in full for the first time as well as stunning visual development art, The Art of Pixar is a treasure trove of rare artwork and an essential addition to the library of animation fans and Pixar enthusiasts.

The Essential Calvin and Hobbes: A Calvin and Hobbes Treasury


Bill Watterson - 1988
    The strip follows the richly imaginative adventures of Calvin and his trusty tiger, Hobbes. Whether a poignant look at serious family issues or a round of time-travel (with the aid of a well-labeled cardboard box), Calvin and Hobbes will astound and delight you.Beginning with the day Hobbes sprang into Calvin's tuna fish trap, the first two Calvin and Hobbes collections, Calvin and Hobbes and Something Under The Bed Is Drooling, are brought together in this treasury. Including black-and-white dailies and color Sundays, The Essential Calvin and Hobbes also features an original full-color 16-page story.

99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style


Matt Madden - 2005
    99 Ways to Tell a Story is a series of engrossing one page comics that tell the same story ninety nine different ways Inspired by Raymond Queneau s 1947 Exercises in Style a mainstay of creative writing courses Madden s project demonstrates the expansive range of possibilities available to all storytellers Readers are taken on an enlightening tour sometimes amusing always surprising through the world of the story Writers and artists in every media will find Madden s collection especially useful even revelatory Here is a chance to see the full scope of opportunities available to the storyteller each applied to a single scenario varying points of view visual and verbal parodies formal reimaginings and radical shuffling of the basic components of the story Madden s amazing series of approaches will inspire storytellers to think through and around obstacles that might otherwise prevent them from getting good ideas onto the page 99 Ways to Tell a Story provides a model that will spark productive conversations among all types of creative people novelists screenwriters graphic designers and cartoonists

Jean Haines' World of Watercolour


Jean Haines - 2015
    Jean's loose, expressive paintings are filled with colour and personality, and embrace a range of subjects that includes flowers, animals, people and places, all influenced by the countries and cities she's lived in and the people she's met during her life. This beautiful book contains easy-to-follow and inspiring introductory sections such as ‘an artist’s treasure chest’ and ‘the colour gym’, offering practical guidance and in-depth exercises in an innovative and accessible way, and the numerous examples of Jean’s work will inspire and encourage novice as well as experienced artists. After this introductory section, the book shows the reader how to put the skills they've learned into practice with gorgeous step-by-step projects packed full of expert tips and advice, encouraging them to move forward and develop their own style of working. Like her painting, Jean's writing is filled with passion and enthusiasm, transporting the reader through a world of watercolour that will not fail to excite and inspire.

Crying Freeman, Vol. 1


Kazuo Koike - 1989
    But to the criminal underworld who fear him, he is known as Crying Freeman, the killer who sheds tears at the fate of his victims. A young, handsome, sensitive artist, Yo has been hypnotically programmed by his Dragon masters to kill on command: he cannot resists his masters' commands to kill; his masters cannot stop his tears of remorse.Written by the legendary Kazuo Koike, creator of Lone Wolf and Cub, and illustrated by the incomparable Ryoichi Ikegami, Crying Freeman is adult manga at its most challenging: dark, violent, morally complex, erotically charged and regarded worldwide as one of the classics of adult graphic fiction. Dark Horse Manga is proud to present Crying Freeman, yet another of the jewels in the crown of manga classics, presented in its original right-to-left reading orientation.

Purushottam Dev and Padmavati


Manoj Das
    During a ride in a forest he meets and falls in love with Princess Padmavati of Kanchi. According to tradition, Purushottam Dev sweeps the chariot of Jagannath during the Car Festival. Padmavati's father is furious when he hears of this and refuses to marry his daughter to one who wields a broom. He humiliates Purushottam Dev who vows to take revenge despite his love for the princess. Padmavati despairs and is ready to end her life. But things suddenly take a turn for the better after Lord Jagannath himself assures Purushottam of his support.This Amar Chitra Katha is based on a legend from Orissa.