Customer Reviews

Coraline: A Visual Companion

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

They had this book at the Art of Coraline Exhibit in SF. After viewing the astoundingly beautiful artwork in the show I was excited to crack this book open in hopes of finding even more gorgeous concept art, etc. from the film only to find barely any of it in the tome. Why would we want a book full of pictures from the film (which are poorly printed) when we can view them in all their glory (and animated) on the screen? We want a true Art of Coraline book (the publishers need to go look at some of Insight Editions books for "Open Season", "Kung Fu Panda" and "Madagascar" to find out what their book should have been). Don't waste your money on this book. If you want to read about how the film came about I suggest buying a cup of coffee in the bookstore and read it while you sip. Then you'll only have had to spend $2-3 to get the info.

It looks like the film will be completely amazing but the visual companion was pretty disappointing. The images are low resolution (72 dpi some of them). And the book only really features the artwork of one of the artists involved. There was an amazingly talented team working on this film and I would have liked to have a selection of artwork from all of them....and I would have liked to have seen that selection at a decent resolution, not pixelated screen grabs. Avoid this book....perhaps they'll re-release it down the track with better quality images (and a better representeation of the talent that was involved).

This book looks like something your grandmother might print with her ten-year-old ink-jet printer. The photographs are dark, muddy, pixelized, and full of JPEG artifacts. William Morrow should be ashamed of themselves for publishing this. The talented artists who worked on this movie deserve much better, as do Neil Gaiman's dedicated fans.

I'm very very very disappointed...
Why?, because the quality of picture are very bad, not all but the half have big big pixel and i found it's incerdible for a movie with picture in hd.
And this book are not very good (i prefere the book of nightmare before christmas) because if you search a book with good picture about making of, armature face or explanation about how they make puppet. it's not the good book.
SORRY

I read not so glowing reviews about the book. I suspect that others expected a lot and by reading their reviews, I expected less. I was after the reading material more than the pictures.

However, as much as the quality of pictures shared in this book are not the best, I understand why others were disappointed.

As a fan, it's a good read if you want to know what happened behind the scenes and how the movie, crew and cast came to be.

Um, looks like this whole picture bad resolution thing is an issue only with the US edition of this book - I received the UK edition yesterday and it's absolutely razor-sharp beautiful! Sorry you guys got burned...

In the UK the government board of film classification - in their infinite wisdom - classified the DVD extras of Neil Gaiman's "Stardust" HIGHER than the actual movie itself (!?!). Naturally, if the producers were to retain the DVD extras they would have to reclassify the entire DVD... result? NO extras on the UK DVD release of "Stardust". For that reason I bought Stephen Jones's "Stardust: A Visual Companion", which has been an absolute joy to dip into.

Based on that experience I immediately bought "Coraline: A Visual Companion", and find its images bright and vibrant.

I for one hope Stephen Jones also does "The Graveyard Book: A Visual Companion" which Neil Gaiman recently announced has a director attached to it!

After reading the reviews for this book, I wasn't sure it would be any good. I guess I was expecting *really crappy* pictures because the pictures I've seen look great, in my unprofessional opinion... I can't wait to dive into this book! Looks very informative and just all-around great for any Coraline "fan" :) If you must, check it out at a bookstore first, but I think this book is fabulous!

I just came back from "The Art of Coraline" exhibit at The Cartoon Museum here in San Francisco. And have to agree. I just flipped through this book in the bookstore of the museum post-exhibit, with the impulse possibility of purchasing this. NO WAY. The images look like photos taken from someone's personal digital camera of maybe actual stills from the movie. I was shocked at how poor the quality universally was. Even the drawings and other artistic renderings are equally bad. To charge $35 for this is an insult. And I agree again: the massive team involved in creating such a wonderful piece of art deserver a helluva lot better of a compilation.

i absolutely loved this book. there was alot behind the scenes info , storyboards,design concepts and so on. i know alot of people complained of poor picture quality. but i found the copy i recieved to have excellent pictures. over all the book was very informative and well organized.

what a sad sad excuse for an art of book..
the worst quality photographs i have ever seen. some looked taken
by a cell phone.

considering the amazing work the artist did to make this....
the worst part is that obviously they wont make another one on the film.
so were stuck with this...

pathetic