Customer Reviews

The Art and Making of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
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Length:: 0:37 Mins

The Art and Making of Star Wars Force Unleashed brings you behind the scenes into the game development process, while staying close to artists' drawing boards.

This book is choked full with breathtaking concept art, character designs, diary entries and screenshots from the game. It features over 300 pieces of art work in 168 pages. On two pages are pasted paper pockets, with each containing 5 character cards.

If you've owned the "art of" series for the Star Wars movies, expect the same high quality environment paintings. But this one goes up one notch with beautiful page layouts. It's the art magazine type of layout, so the every page design is essentially art in itself. Great effort from the book designers.

The 6 chapters in the book explains the game creation process in depth. That's from the development of a concept, to the pitch and approval stage, next to character studies, then environment and finally the technology behind.

There are lots of nitty gritty details that you won't read on Internet interviews. The authors bring you to the cutting floor and let you read all about the discarded ideas.

After reading the book, you'll literally feel like you've worked with these people (most probably as an intern).

For Star Wars fans, you have no reasons not to get this book. For people interested in concept design and animation, this book has lots of insight for you. This book is a great source of inspiration.

Be careful of the binding though. The part where the cover meets page 1 seems like they will come apart in the future. Easily fixed by pasting some clear tape to fix the problem before it develops.

(More pictures are available on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)

I recently watched The Clones Wars and thought it was average; it felt more like an homage, than the real deal. And although I enjoyed the prequels, my faith in "a galaxy far, far away" had slowly waned until I got this book. The imagery is stunning and true to form; it looks and feels like a perfect "bridge" between Ep 3 & 4.

Clearly is takes on a new realm in the Star Wars universe - "the force unleashed" but the designers give reasons why we have never seen someone of this power before; all conveyed through hundreds of amazing, beautifully presented images.

From concept to completion, this book tells the story of every facet of the games development including original titles and designs. In honesty, there was only one design (a single page) that I thought looked too far left of center. Other than that, this book is one of the finest "making of" books I have bought in years.

For any Star Wars fan - or someone interested in the tireless amount of effort that goes into making a game - this book is a must.

Hope this helps...

It's very interesting to read just how much time and effort goes into making a game, specially one within the Star Wars Universe. From all the different story concepts, to deciding on the timeline of the game, to which characters would make an appearance.

The artwork is nothing short of amazing, with all the different concepts for the Jedi characters, to the look of the Apprentice, to the characters that were not included in the game.

The book of course details the finished game as well, discussing in length the plot of the finished game, so if you don't want to be spoiled then wait until the game comes out to read it.

While the Force Unleashed wasn't the greatest video game, it did introduce a lot of fun characters and locales. This book shows you the beautiful, hand-drawn concept art (as opposed to stale CG models). I love the use of colors even in the dark atmosphere of the game. Moreover, it also takes you through the development of the story and concept. It's interesting to see how it developed and some of the original ideas. Ultimately, the development team made the right move with Vader's secret apprentice. The characters are some of the best in the entire Expanded Universe and this book does justice to the concept.

I found this book on discount and despite not having played the game, decided to pick it up. There are some great preproduction paintings and preliminary character designs, including various early designs for the Apprentice that are less humanistic and more Vader-like in appearance.

The written portion is also enlightening, walking you through the earliest concepts that led to the creation of the story. I was never a fan of the exaggerated Force powers advertised in the game, but after reading this, I could almost see where they were going with their intentions. There are also discussions of the role Lucas had in approving ideas or making suggestions for the final version of the story, and plenty of interesting concepts that were rejected from the game.

I can say to Star Wars fans that it's worth looking at.

Great book with lots of cool art that has not seen the light of day, I will reference this book often to get ideas and inspiration. If your into art or star wars a great buy.

If you have ever played The Force Unleashed you know that this is the best Star Wars material released in the last 30 years. Although Genndy Tartakovsky's Clone Wars was also great, The Force Unleashed was closer to the original trilogy.

This book is perfect for anyone interested in games, Star Wars or concept art.

Actually, I took the name with a little drawback (the art AND MAKING of the...) because I'm not that much interested in game creation. If you're like me, don't worry: the games features, development, production, character developments, voice/acting, staff meeting reports, concept art - and I mean, A LOT of those - and also a chapter about game development and technology - this the least interesting for me, but it's there if you want to check.

One of the things that strikes me the most is that they reveal what they were planning before the actual game came to be. The books features many drafts of stories that were considered but not developed... It makes one wonder what the new trilogy would be like if Mr. Lucas had had such a team with him.

Highly recommended!

Absolutely the best book I've found on the subject of developing, pitching, and creating the visual development and concept art for video games. The book is full of information about what it took to find the right concept that would work with audiences and push the Star Wars canon. This is a "must have" for anyone who wants to create art for the game industry. You can really get a sense of how much work needs to be "churned out" for a game, because the book is so full of art the binding is about to break. That's my one annoyance. This book should have been printed better. The binding on my copy, and for several other artists, is coming apart. I still can't give it 4 stars for that though, the quality of the artwork makes up for it.

The content of this book is both interesting and very pretty to look at, however the binding, specifically the glue, is defective, i've had two editions and both have separated from their cover - all the interior pages have remained bound (glued) together, just no longer attached to their cover.

I bought the book the same day when the game was released, so, i haven't finish this yet and i just take a sneak peek to the book.

But the book looks amazing, great concept art and some collectables inside.

Bought this for sure!