The Art of BioShock Infinite [Hardcover]

Irrational Games (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 9, 2013

In The Art of BioShock Infinite, delve deeper into the city of Columbia-the fabled floating metropolis that serves as a beacon of technology and achievement for the early 1900s! This deluxe hardcover features production designs and concept illustrations focusing on main characters Booker DeWitt, Elizabeth, and Songbird from the highly anticipated BioShock Infinite video game. See the evolution of the Heavy Hitters, the populace of Columbia, the Sky-Hook, vigors, airships, and much more! This deluxe hardcover also features an introduction from BioShock Infinite Creative Director Ken Levine!

Product Details

• Hardcover: 184 pages
• Publisher: Dark Horse (April 9, 2013)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1595829946
• ISBN-13: 978-1595829948
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 0.9 x 12 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (61 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,834 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #1 in Books > Arts & Photography > History & Criticism > Themes
  • #3 in Books > Arts & Photography > History & Criticism > History
  • #3 in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Pop Culture > Art

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Welcome to the floating city of Columbia April 8, 2013

By Parka TOP 50 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Length: 1:25 Mins

A lot of games these days have pretty weird characters. BioShock is one of them with its own kind of weirdness, especially the characters.

This is a large 184-page hardcover concept artbook published by Dark Horse.

The concept art features the environment, characters, weapons and other props such as propaganda posters. I like the environment art for the floating city of Columbia. It's beautiful yet mysterious.

There's plenty of character art, that of Elizabeth, Booker, Songbird and many of the grotesque and mechanical enemies, Heavy Hitters. It makes you wonder about the twisted minds of those in Columbia who created these monstrous beings. They have included quite a bit of discarded art that couldn't make it to the game as well.

The art is accompanied by some commentary and annotated handwritten text. No much. If you've not played the game, it's quite impossible to know what the game is about by looking at the art.

It's a nice companion video game artbook, but overall, I felt the art is not as refine as Deco Devolution: The Art of BioShock 2, but this is also sort of a different title.

A Kindle edition for this is also available. You can check out the preview pages on Amazon.

(There are more pictures of the book on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars this isn't my first art book, but it is certainly the finest. April 1, 2013

By Mindful Consumer

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

as soon as this was available for pre-order, i had been waiting anxiously to see it. seeing it now, i am so happy with the contents!

the book is a quality publication, from the hardcover, to the printed endpapers, to the sturdy pages. this book could easily be dismembered (as sad as it would be) to have images framed. it is a slick tome all the way around.

the chapters are as follows:

finding columbia
elizabeth
booker dewitt
songbird
founders, citizens, & vox populi
heavy hitters
advertisements & propaganda
vigors
sky-hook
weapons & airships
columbia

i was thoroughly impressed with each chapter, but my favorites were finding columbia, advertisements & propaganda, vigors, and columbia. the concept art for the environments is AMAZING. beautiful, colorful, full-page images that are fine art in their own right. there are three full-page advertisements for vigors (shock jockey, devil's kiss, and possession) which are more than suitable for framing (which i very well might). the concept art for the vigors, showing their progression from start to finished product, is just unreal. there are so many talented folks at irrational.

some of what i enjoyed most was what DIDN'T make it into the game. it must be a shame to have created such beautiful things, only to have them left out of the finished product. it makes me appreciate this book even more, as it is a love letter to all those gems we otherwise would never have gotten to see.

my ONLY disappointment was that all the advertisements for the vigors weren't present. i would have loved to see bucking bronco and the rest of them. i was a huge fan of plasmids in the first and second bioshock, and vigors in the third, and the advertisement posters were some of my favorite art pieces.

in conclusion, this book is the finest video game art book i've seen. from the quality of the publication itself, to the incredible images inside, it is worth ten times the price. if you are fan of bioshock, irrational games, video games, or art in general, you will be highly pleased with this purchase.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A good artbook, but no commentary April 4, 2013

By Nerdcromancer

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

This book is packed with unused concepts, as well as visual development of characters and concepts that did make it into the game, such as Elizabeth, Booker, and Songbird. The book itself is quite large and the artwork is arranged very well. The one thing that this book is lacking is commentary; there's almost none. There's quite a few little captions that don't say anything about the artwork that isn't already obvious, and the names of the artists are not clearly mentioned, there was a total lack of effort to get the artists involved with the book. The artwork alone is worth the money, but I really wanted to see what the artists themselves had to say about the process. The best artbook I have ever seen is the Art of the Hobbit, which was written by an actual member of the design team that worked on the movie, and was full to the brim with artist commentary on the process. I have seen a lot of artbooks that assume the reader has an extremely low attention span and isn't interested in anything except finished promotional art. This book doesn't stoop that low, but a caption did refer to a brilliant and detailed color painting as "a sketch." As an artist, it would have frustrated me to no end to see a concept I had spent so much time on referred to as simply a sketch. Having ranted a bit about the lack of commentary, I have to say that this is not actually a bad artbook. In my opinion it is worth 20 bucks just to see the pages dedicated to Songbird. If you ravenously devour all things Bioshock Infinite like I do, then you will probably want this on your shelf. We are going to need a more in depth look at the process somewhere down the road though, and I don't think the job of explaining how great the team at irrational is should be relegated to youtube videos of Ken Levine, as brilliant as he is.