Customer Reviews

Shadowline: The Art of Iain McCaig

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Length:: 0:28 Mins

Iain McCaig has been in the art industry doing work for movie studios for a long time. In this book contains the work done for Star Wars prequel, Harry Potter and his concept art for other projects. Most of his work are belong to the fantasy genre.

In this book, a fictional interviewer called Bryon is created to introduce readers to the artwork and bring them into Iain McCaig's imaginative world. It's pretty amusing and reads like some fantasy adventure. My minor quibble would be that there isn't a biography of his illustrious career.

Insight Editions is the publisher of this thick and big book at 240 pages. It's hardcover with a beautiful matte dust jacket.

Inside are lots of glorious concept art, mainly to character designs. They are made up of paintings and sketches. Each is reproduced brilliantly on the glossy paper, showing intricate details of ink, pencil or colour strokes as well as the texture of the medium. The large pages enhance the viewing pleasure.

While there are some digital paintings, most of the illustrations featured are done using traditional medium, showing texture and grain.

This book is highly recommended to fans of Iain McCaig, fantasy artists, concept artists and character designers. It's very inspiring and overflows with creativity.

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

Nice large coffee-table size book filled with fantasy art by the author in a variety of media ranging from pencil sketches and mixed media to digital painting. It includes six small booklets on art fundamentals and story-boarding basics that echo McCaig entertaining conceptual art workshops at the Game Developers conference and provide useful exercises and a good starting point for beginning artists. The downside of the booklets is in that they are held in six separate tight paper sleeves mounted on 3 regular pages roughly in the middle of the book. Perhaps a sturdier and more elegant solution would have been to include them on an envelope/folio attached to the back of the book or to use thicker paper for those pages. While its nice to see much of his Star Wars work in a larger format, this material has already been published in the "Art of Star Wars" series. Personally I would have preferred to see more of McCaig unused Star Wars concepts, though probably Lucas owns the rights to those while saving them for future projects.

Art Books can be so predictable: A little art, a short biography, some more art, some sketches, and perhaps a listing of published art/projects. Shadowline is different. Yes, some of the art has been already been published in the Star Wars book, but some of the art has never been seen outside of Lucasfilm offices and sketchbooks. That is the cool part of the book, visually speaking. The concept/storyboards from unfinished projects like Peter pan, and John Carter of Mars is very welcome.

I have always wanted to see an animated version of John Carter, and perhaps the 3rd version from Disney will finally come through, although Dejah Thoris is always beautiful!

The imaginative part of this book is the interviewers journey to meeting Mr McCaig. The truth of the matter is that, the 10 year old concept of art is very true. When we draw withouth thinking what others think, we truly create. Nick Sagan and Mccaig give us a journey into art via the creative process, sorted by themes and storage locations.

Shadowlines is truly a unique book that lovers of fine art will appreciate.

Tim Lasiuta

I found it hard to not gush while I opened the cover once Shadowline arrived in the mail.

As an artist myself I often find it hard to get inspiration and motivated to draw. Leafing through McCaigs sketches I couldn't help but let my imagination drift off. McCaig is a great storyteller both and images and words and has interlaced a charming tale into the book giving the book an added dimension I really didn't expect.

I bought this book expecting a bundle of his sketches with a quick foreword. Instead I got a fantastic tale interweaved with great sketches, illustrations and how-to booklets.

Thanks Ian, you've made another grown-up young again. Bring on the crayons!

As an aspiring artist myself I find this book to be extra inspirational! It has not only awesome art, but story to it as well! I was taken aback by this book, I personally have never encountered an "art of" book quite like this. This is a must buy in my eyes.

My reaction to moving through this book was a little unexpected.
Usually when I go through a good art book the artist that I am is a little discouraged, my own progress being lacking when compared to my mentors and some of my peers. However, my reaction to this book was a bout of chills and an exhuberant desire to draw like mad. One might conclude that I was underwhelmed, disappointed- a sense that I'm "much better than this loser". Instead, I was impressed in ways that have a hard time meeting any valued description.
Iain McCaig does not make it look simple.
He makes it look deep, fascinating and utterly approachable. He's an example of what being excited about one's work should look like.
I have to recommend this book to artists, particularly those struggling to find a reason to put pencil to good paper (any paper to take a mark is good paper). This is not your run-of-the-mill "art book". It's a celebration of the act of creation in which every mark the artist makes is potentially a portal to a world you want to visit, whether for good or for ill. The creature images run from whimsical in nature to terrible if ever met. The people are heroic, horrific and all points in between. Examples of sketches run throughout the book but they are eleborate, evocative hints when they are run up against full blown painted productions of characters and the worlds where they live.
I see a little Claire Wendling here and the recent work of Mathieu Lauffray there and this is all good. It's not that McCaig is copying anyone or vice versa. It's that they (and others not named) have such an obvious, shared passion for their work that it is an inspiration to both stragglers and jaded professionals in the field (or, at least it should have that effect).

I can only hope there will some day be another book.

My last comment is to see this man's production work for the upcoming film adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' "A Princess of Mars", leaves me anxious. Can, or will the film look this good? And his depiction of the actor to (possibly?) play John Carter is more than a little inspiring.

Well this is my first review on any book to date and I am drawn
to give this book a quick one do to the other reviews posted here.

I am a professional artist which has worked in the film and game industries
for years and I have to say that the format and layout of the book was done
very well with the exception of the inserts of the some what how to pages which
in my opinion could have been placed on a heavier stock of paper.

I understand what the other reviewers are saying when it comes to the
work which was included in the book from the Star Wars films but one
must have to take in to consideration that this is a book based on the mans
past work or if I may say a show case of work that he has taken to hart
as his best work or more important work up to date. With this said I would highly
recommend this Book to other artists and to up and coming professionals that are
going to Enter in to the entertainment business as a motivational tool.

I REALLY don't understand the few negative stars/comments this book has recieved. Being an artist myself, to view this work is fabluous and extremely insightful. The advice given by Iain is what people have paid to hear. Here you can purchase a beautifully crafted book for a fraction of that and see great concept/completed work to boot. Sure, an insight on the life of Iain would have been nice but the content within the book really does suffice. There are even some lessons added to the book for the straight newbie. This is really nice. Well worth the purchase.

This book is filled with character design and just awesomeness. A must have for anyone who likes to draw characters, etc. I especially like the small lesson pamphlets , its a great book.

I am re-posting this from a response I wrote to the 1 star slam of this incredible book. I decided to post it as a review to have it count in the ratings.

You absolutely HAVE to be kidding! Why do I get the feeling this person would be mesmerized by the finger paintings of preschoolers? Touchy-feely?? New age?? It is PURE fantasy art and is jammed FULL of some of the most fabulous conceptual art in the business. This reviewer is artistically clueless. I am a professional freelance, commercial and conceptual artist of 35 years. I have a massive library full of art books and this is by far one of my favorites. It is put together beautifully with a wonderful blend of thumbnails and finished full color art. Conceptual art from films is one of my passions and McCaig is one of the best in the industry. If you want to miss a marvelous journey into this genre, by all means take this person's ridiculous advice and pass it up. It was worth every penny and then some. There should be nothing less than five stars across the board on this one.

Note to those who do not understand thumbnails... they are the skeletons upon which all things wonderful are built. They hold the excitement and the rawness of the work. Many times the final has lost the urgency and inspiration the thumbnail holds. I find that anyone who labels sketches as filler and irrelevant has NO understanding of art. They are the foundation and to leave them out would be absurd.

Again, a STUNNING book! To say it was inspirational to me as a fellow artist would be a gross understatement. Thanks Iain McCaig for sharing your gift with us!