Customer Reviews

SF20: The Art of Street Fighter

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
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Length:: 0:24 Mins

SF20: The Art of Street Fighter is actually a translated edition of the Japanese art book Street Fighter Art Works (ISBN:4862332145). It's really great that Capcom (or Udon Entertainment) has decided to translate it and pushed it out so fast.

SF20 is a 20th anniversary tribute art book to Street Fighter, which was actually released in 1987. This is a pretty thick 320-page paperback. It doesn't come with a dust jacket like the Japanese edition. On the non-glossy pages are printed with over 1500 illustrations, paintings and sketches. The spine is a bit inflexible for a book this thick and will definitely have wrinkles if you open the pages too wide.

The illustrations are divided into chapters by artists, namely:

* Akiman
* Kinu Nishimura
* CRMK
* Daigo Ikeno
* Daichan
* Edayan
* Shinkiro

Akiman is the designer for the classic Street Fighter characters. Daigo Ikeno is the art director and character designer for Street Fighter IV. The last chapter is a collection of work from other artists.

Since this is a character based game, you'll see a lot of character designs. They are a mixture in sizes from small portraits to the full page group splash art. Most are full colored illustrations in myriad manga styles. There are captions for everything and several artists interviews.

Work comes from all the various different versions of Street Fighter, including spin-offs like Super Puzzle Fighter II, or even some SNK-vs-CAPCOM illustrations -- rivalry between King of Fighters and Street Fighter is strong and burning. Included also are the latest Street Fighter IV character profile designs used in the game.

The art here spans over an impressive 20 years, I'm very sure there will be more to come. This satisfying thick compilation is recommended to all Street Fighter fans and collectors.

If you have bought Street Fighter Tribute and Udon's Art of Capcom and like them, I'm very sure you'll like this book as well.

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

Something that makes this book extremely special to my mind is the illustrators comment on their work or a particular illustration. There are a few short interviews on their experiences working with Street Fighter. The art is divided into to sections devoted to Akiman, Shinkiro, Ikeno, and much more. I am very happy with my copy and appreciate the love and detail that obviously went into compiling this volume.

One note though, not all the pictures are large, but its perfectly understandable with the sheer volume of illustrations in this already very loaded book.

Highly Recommend.

I had the Street Fighter art book that came out 5 years before this one, and up until now, regretted selling it when I needed extra money. It had practically every bit of official artwork related to Street Fighter, along with tons of other pieces that were for Japanese magazines and promotions- things we never got to see in the US until everything was a click away thanks to the internet. SF20 has everything that book had and much, much more, and it goes without saying that any fan of Street Fighter needs to track down a copy before it becomes even harder to find (it went out of print in the last couple of weeks).

Divided into chapters by artist, SF20 is a sight to behold. Akiman, Nishimura, CRMK, Ikeno, Daichan, Edayan, Shinkiro and many others all have their artwork from the SF games that they worked on. From character portraits to promotional calendars, there was never a dull moment on any page. Even simple black and white drawings or rough drafts had me analyzing everything that I saw, and I appreciated the time that went into even the most basic character designs. If you remember an illustration from an instruction manual, or even an ad in a comic book that had something to do with Street Fighter, you'll find it here.

Every game up until Street Fighter 4 is covered here in one way or another, and the only time non-SF characters appear is if it's in a group shot, and that's understandable. An example being Hsien-Ko or Felicia showing up in a group shot for Puzzle Fighter, but you won't see individual drawings of them anywhere. Yep, they did a great job being strict on trying to only show the SF cast, and I appreciate that. I also loved reading the little notes from the artists, found on 3/4 of the pages, giving us an insight on what they were thinking about when working on a piece, or talking about how tough the deadline was and what they did to make things go in their favor. At the end of each chapter is a short interview with the artist, but it's a bunch of basic questions like who they liked drawing the most, what SF character they play as, etc.

The only negative things I can say about this book would be that there are some typos here and there, and that I wish it would've been divided into sections by both game and artist. But those are very minor complaints, and after looking through the book long enough (I think I spent 3 hours going through everything slowly), you recognize individual styles and should quickly find what you're looking for if there's something you want to show a friend. Also, if you can, track down the hardcover version. The paperback is nice, but the binding isn't that strong and it cracks very easily. The hardcover version isn't even listed on Amazon, but it's out there, and was a limited edition.

What more can I say? This book is full of beautiful art, and just when I thought I'd seen the best picture of Chun-Li ever, another one would show up, and then another. SF20 is easily one of my favorite art books, and I'm wondering if a SF25 could be even better.

This book is great.

Only cons are:

Arranged only by artist.

No index or appendix.

Binding comes lose quickly.

Other than that it's a great book. Brings all the major stuff together so you don't have to search the internet for it.

This book contains so much great art, if you are a fan of street fighter you must have it. There are goodies in here that you wont be able to find anywhere else. My personal favorite are the sketches from the opening of Super Street Fighter 2 where Ryu is focusing and then throws the hadouken. It's just great to be able to see sketches of the characters and even the old character illustrations from the booklets that came with the game on consoles like super nes were in there. Just Awesome. If you are an artist, prepare to be inspired by the great pieces in here.

This is for ANY fan of quality, detailed art. For the excellent price, you are getting a huge book filled with top notch
art geared towards anyone with an eye for talent. As a Street Fighter fan, this book also garners my accolades as an
excellent Street Fighter art resource. Makes a great coffee table book, or collector's book.

Excellent quality in ONE THICK book!! I highly recommend this whether or not you care about SF.

Wonderful addition to anyone's collection.

5 stars, marvelous.....

What are you doing even reading this review? A true Street Fighter fan would've already had this at their house by now. Shame on you.

What can I say? The book itself it's great. Some of the pictures will take you back to those cherished 90's days when you were reading the manual of the game, being amazed by the characters.

There are tons of artwork here, some of these I've never seen before, and I love that. Practically every version of SF games has some of it's artwork put in here. If you're like me who likes to look at the book to get some ideas of what do you want to draw next, you'll find this book very pleasing.

The one issue I have with this item, it's the binding. If anything, it is at least uncomfortable. When you are browsing through the pages I would really like to open the book a little bit more to have a better view of the pages works, but I'm just to afraid I might take a page off the book. It's the only issue I find in this.

For everything else, I really recommend you to check it out, specially if you're a fan of the game.

Regards.

I'm thrilled to have both SF20 & SF15, and I'm definitely looking forward to SF25.

I might actually prefer SF15, a.k.a. Street Fighter: Eternal Challenge, to SF20- even though I'm happy I have both. SF15 has more actual video game screenshots than SF20, and it includes a detailed history of this amazing game series. Starting in 1987 with the original Street Fighter arcade game, it progresses to detail the landmark success of Street Fighter II in '91, its many editions, the Alpha series, and then Street Fighter III in '97, with its various follow-ups. 1987-1997? That's an *amazingly* progressive 10-year period.

I guess because this detailed history is in SF15, UDON didn't want to cover all that exact same material again, so SF20 is dedicated primarily to art & character design, with brief artist comments & interviews mixed-in all throughout. Both volumes share a lot of the same artwork, but SF20 often reprints it at a different size & includes all-new Street Fighter IV related material, so fans will be able to appreciate the differences. I love all these great artists, with Kinu Nishimura probably being my favorite. I highly recommend getting both these anniversary editions, if you can find a decent price.

Artists here are presented in this order: Akiman; Kinu Nishimura; CRMK; Ikeno; Dai-Chan; Edayan; Shinkiro; Shoei; Sensei; Shima Maeda; Harumaru; Akiko Nishizawa; Hideki Ishikawa; Uji; Shinsuke Komaki; Ooishi; L. George; Sakura; UDON; Polygon Pictures; Tamio; Syukou Murase; Falcoon; Nona (SNK Playmore); Takuji Kawano (Bandai Namco Games); "Namco x Capcom" Team; Collaborative Illustrations; and then Capcom Design Team.

I'm hoping SF25 includes a brief history similar to SF15, with a greater amount of in-game screenshots. I'm sure it'll be a successful book, however they intend to present it.

This book is amazing. Its thick pages hold all sorts of amazing things. For fans of any of the series (alpha, EX, e.t.c) it has everything. From the original line up to the original art work. To all the new characters and even more artwork. This was a great buy. It fills in any gaps in the street fighter universe that your heart could possibly of imagined. You get to see any and all the characters and how some of them have developed over there years.


One of my best buys yet.