Customer Reviews

Star Wars: The Art of the Brothers Hildebrandt

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This book would have been more appropriately titled Star Wars: The Art of Shadows of the Empire.

While this book showcases most if not all of the Star Wars art by the Brothers Hildebrandt, it centers on the SotE story. It has all of their many paintings depicting the story in chronological order, along with quotes from the book, photos of their various models and references, early sketches, them at work, and commentary on their creative process. All of the art is beautifully rendered on the glossy pages.

After the are depicting the main story, there are 10 large portraits, one each of all the main characters, which are, if anything, more breathtaking than the story paintings, followed by six renditions of the characters' ships, including the stinger and virago. After that there are six paintings of Boba Fetts adventures in the comics and six paintings of Dash's adventures in the game. If you are a star wars or SotE or just a sci-fi art enthusiast, you should have this book. Forget the SotE comic, this one is much more well done and it is simply stunning.

I place very high recommendation on this book.

Besides being extremely fun for Star Wars fans to see their heroes represented in art, this book, like Dorman's book, is great for art students because it shows the painting's process from concept to live model to finished work.

Greg and Tim Hildebrandt are American illustrators best known for painting the original Star Wars movie poster, the groundbreaking Tolkien calendars of the 70s, and Marvel artwork of the 90s.

This volume covers the 100 paintings they completed for the "Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire" trading card set that was released in 1996 as part of the Lucasfilm multimedia project that included a novel, comic series, and video game. The paintings illustrate scenes from Steve Perry's novel, telling of events that took place between "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi".

The artwork is presented much larger than its intended trading card finished size, so there is less detail in the blown up images than you'll find in their larger formatted paintings. But they are masters of light, color, and design. Included are many behind-the-scenes photos of their working methods in their studio, sketches used to develop the paintings, how they posed live models, and chose the multitude of props from the Skywalker Ranch.

Their joy and excitement for fantasy and imagination really comes through in their work. It's astounding how prolific and energetic they are (they were given less then a year to complete the project!). Their style here is looser, more fluid, expressionistic, and less "Old Master-y" than their Tolkien years, but it fits the format and action-oriented subject matter of the Lucas universe.

THIS WAS A GREAT BOOK, ME BEING A HUGE SCIFI FAN THIS IS ONE OF THE BEST STARWARS BOOKS EVER WRITTEN. I WAS GLAD TO GIVE IT FIVE STARS.

THIS WAS A GREAT BOOK, ME BEING A HUGE SCIFI FAN THIS IS ONE OF THE BEST STARWARS BOOKS EVER WRITTEN. I WAS GLAD TO GIVE IT FIVE STARS.