The Art of Alice: Madness Returns

 I'll say it though - I am an occasional gamer and not a big fan alice in wonderland or wizard of oz but got to say though I recently began playing the game Alice: Madness Returns and OMG i'm loving it very much indeed and amazingly enough I found an ARC/galley of its production design book on netgalley, The Art of Alice: Madness Returns and i'm loving it.

Here is the book summary:

Legendary game designer American McGee created one of the most visually arresting games of all time in Alice. Eleven years later, McGee returns with a sequel just as groundbreaking as his critically acclaimed classic - Alice: Madness Returns! Just in time for Madness Returns, Dark Horse and Spicy Horse studio invite Alice fans to take a journey through the wonderland of American McGee's imagination for a look at this magnificent and disturbing world. With text by Madness Returns lead writer and executive producer R. J. Berg, and featuring an introduction by McGee, The Art of Alice offers an intimate look into the artwork behind this blockbuster interpretation of Lewis Carroll's enduring masterpiece.

Before a game, movie or even anything new is about to be made or is in its stages of production the said team begins about it by brain storming new ideas. Sometimes those ideas are not adopted in the final play but they pave the way for the final product. And the 184 paged hardcover art book based around all that was involved with the creation of American McGee's Alice sequel proves just that.

When you mix a classic like Alice in Wonderland with pop culture, video game designers, concept artists and throw in a Victorian-gothic theme, you get very strange new world. A world so dangerous Alice has to be equipped with a kitchen knife at all times or sometimes a Bazooka firing hammer (yes, hammer) or a teapot cannon. Every page brings a little element of surprise and twist. You can see crows with baby faces, Jack the Ripper with tentacles, Alice helping a mother giving birth to a load of kids (gruesome concept), an angler fish with human legs, cow birds, steampunk-like contraptions, a Chinese Humpty Dumpty, flying pig snout, embellished pieces of weaponry, etc. There are lots of mix and matches for things that shouldn't go together.

The reader/viewer is taken through a full range of things that might be found in the game. The many variations that were tried for the characters, and Alice in particular are just amazing - down to dress designs and hair styles. I loved seeing the evolution of ideas and characters, different artists takes on things. The book is filled with gorgeous art work and makes the reader really appreciate just how much work and thought goes into the making of a game.

Not only is the artwork absolutely breathtaking, it is also very iteresting to see the different renditions of things and to see how the art progressed as planning for the game evolved. There is a whole chapter just on Alice and her dress and all the thought that went into how Alice would portray the game. There are chapters on the worlds and why they were decided on and how they were built. The developers went to great lengths to make sure scenarios from the first game are echoed and portrayed similarly in this game; it is apparent that this is the Wonderland Alice originally went to but somewhat changed.

The content is beyond incredible. The art in the book comes with blurbs about the piece from the artist or a producer, and it often goes into detail about the piece, why it was made, and what the goal for the piece was. Most of the work is concept art, but they are of high quality. There is a lot of complete pieces with full color and depth. Not just sketches or storyboards which is common in alot of artbooks you get as preorder bonuses with games. The book is broken into chapters, with each chapter giving insight on an aspect of the game, such as pre-production or Wonderland locations. Each chapter has art pertaining to the theme. So in pre-production, you see alot of the brainstorming and ideas that came up early in the game's development that ended up getting cut from the game. It's a real treat to see. Even the design of the characters are in detail.

All things said and done if you enjoy graphic novels and art books, are an Alice aficionado and love gothic, gloomy styling you'll dig this book for sure.

Genre :      Production artwork


Publisher: Dark Horse Comics


My Copy : Courtesy of netgalley and the publisher


Rate:              5/5 (It was Amazing)

CorelDRAW : The Official Guide

This is the first time i’m reviewing a course reference book. Well never done CorelDRAW all my life so now that it is in my course, i had to do something. So, i searched Amazon and came across this book because i knew only attending class would do me no good where i can only learn something from here and something from there so i decided to get the book (i know version X5 is out in the market now but i had already downloaded X4 so i decided to get this X4 guide to go through with it and it was the best decision of my life.

The author (oh i owe him so much), Gary David Bouton has used CorelDRAW professionally for more than 15 years and is the author of five books covering previous versions. He was a 1992 finalist in the CorelDRAW World Design Contest. A former advertising agency art director, Gary has received four international awards in design and desktop publishing and has written several guides on digital graphics covering the fields of photography, special effects, video editing, and 3D modeling.

The book is concise and covers all facets of the software in very good detail and with numerous example illustrations. The author understands very well to highlight each feature an make it interesting and innovative enough to set this book apart from the actual manual.

The book contains hundreds of tips and techniques and spans from basic information like how to customize the user interface over an eight-page shortcutsguide all the way to various lens and transparency effects with a full-color insert. (The remainder of the book is printed in B&W.)

He highlights the power of exciting effects such as blends, contours, distortions, and drop shadows and helps to create animations and use Web-relateddocument properties.

Even the DTP functions of CorelDraw (i.e. write text to paths and objects, and support text in multiple languages) are covered in depth and some examples show nicely the capability of the software while sparking ideas. Of course bitmap commands, vector drawing tools, effect presets, and many more things are covered on the 928 pages as well. 

The book is our handbook to the most feature-filled drawing application you could hope for, and as you’d rightly expect, the chapters contain comprehensive explanations of what tools, pop-up menus, commands, dockers, and other elements do. But the prize in this book is that you’ll learn not only the value of the features, but also what they’re good for—how each tool, command, option, and feature can be used to best serve a design problem you want to solve. Knowledge is fine—you can get facts from Wikipedia and around every corner on the Web, the bookstore, and your friends and family. When you put facts to use, however, you eventually gain skill you can tap into in the future, build upon, and eventually your knowledge becomes wisdom—something an ambitious, expressive designer has an affinity for— right up there with water and oxygen.

This book is divided into eight parts plus an appendix listing keyboard shortcuts that’ll

speed up your work in CorelDRAW. As you might expect, the parts follow a progression, from

a very basic introduction to later chapters that delve into special effects and even photo editing. If you’re the type of reader who likes to begin at the beginning and make a linear voyage to finish at the appendix, you won’t be surprised. However, the chapters are structured and fairly compartmentalized to address a specific topic; if you want fast solutions for specific areas within CorelDRAW, you can also “pick and choose.” One of the wonderful things about books is that you can skip ahead and rewind—just as you do with DVD movies!

This guide for using CorelDraw is an extremely well written book for a beginner with CorelDraw. It is very comprehensive. It is organized well enough so that even if you are not familiar with any special jargon, you can find the drawing functions that you are looking for quite easily.

Genre :       Reference


Publisher : McGraw-Hill Osborne Media


Rate :         5/5 (It was amazing)

Harry Potter Film Wizardry

Normally I don’t elaborate on products or production based book, but this one is good enough to do just that.

With the end of the Harry Potter film franchise nearing, it seemed the right time to go back and savour the highlights of the ten-year long series. Harry Potter: Film Wizardry does just that: a scrapbook that encompassed the decade-long saga, where everyone from the producers, directors, and production designer explain in details how they conceptualised some of the plot points and settings; and the actors, including the three stars, Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson, hit memory lane to disclose some of the best, funniest, and sometimes most uncomfortable times they had playing Harry, Ron, and Hermione in the films.

The book begins with a foreward from Dan, Rupert, and Emma, who gush about how much of an impact the series made in their lives. Dan remarked on the journey both he and Harry endured in the ten years; Rupert took pride in playing brave Ron Weasley, the "ultimate ginger," in his words; and Emma voiced her respect for her young, annoying, brainy Muggle-born fictional counterpart she thought she had nothing in common with early in the series, but who she embraced with all her heart by the end. It then lead into the first of many producer's notes scattered throughout the book, where David Heyman, the man who read the first Harry Potter book, fell in love, and immediately insisted on making the films, explained how he began to piece the movies together well over ten years ago. 

Author Brian Sibley compiled the scrapbook with a combination of production notes, countless cast and crew interviews, set visits, knowledge of the book and film series, and production photos and movie stills to make the quintessential anthology of the Harry Potter film series. The book itself ended with a sneak preview of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II, with nothing more than image captions under a dozen or so small photos from Gringotts and Hogwarts. Just enough of a teaser to make the reader wish there were a few more pages at the end, chronicling the end of the saga.

One of best features of the book, however, was that it focuses on so many of the minor details fans could never have been expected to notice, and the production teams that worked endlessly to make them. Here you have clear shots of Daily Prophetarticles and issues, rooms filled with creatures like Buckbeak and thestrals, various angles of the Room of Requirement both from Order of the Phoenix and Deathly Hallows: Part II, Privet Drive and Diagon Alley, and countless rooms, corridors, and facets from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. (I definitely wished there were more photos than only the sneak-peek of Gringotts). 

"Everybody involved in these eight films knows that we have been part of something very special, and that there will never be another experience like this one," proclaims producer David Heyman in the introduction. He's right, of course, and while the people who made the movies were there for births, marriages, divorces and even deaths, fans have been along for the ride, hoping for a chance to sit in the front seat. This is finally it!

From tidbits like how Helena Bonham Carter perforated Matthew Lewis's eardrum with her magic wand in Order of the Phoenix, to grand designs like how the filmmakers created an entire Hogsmeade miniature village with intricately detailed micro-window displays the size of a £1 note, the book simply doesn't disappoint. It's the perfect mix of fact and -- as McGonagall would say -- "well-mannered frivolity."

On top of all that publisher Harper-Collins inserted over half a dozen prop replicas, like your very own sealed invitation to attend Hogwarts (addressed to Mr H Potter, The Cupboard under the Stairs, naturally), a Quidditch World Cup programme, and even a "real" Maurader's Map. There are also several fold-out pages, one of which contains the Black Family Tree Tapestry.

I highly recommend 'Harry Potter Film Wizardry' for any passionate Harry Potter fan, from one proud owner of this marvelous book to you all.

Genre :       Movie Tie-in, Production design


Publisher : Collins Design


Rate :         5/5 (It was amazing)


              (a necessary commodity 
                    every  Potter fan should own)