Art Of IDW's Transformers (Hardcover)

by E.J. Su (Illustrator), Don Figueroa (Illustrator), Nick Roche (Illustrator), Alex Milne (Illustrator), Robby Musso (Illustrator), Andrew Wildman (Illustrator), Rob Ruffolo (Illustrator), James Raiz (Illustrator), Klaus Scherwinski (Illustrator), Josh Burcham (Colorist)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
It can be impossible to find all the sketch and variant covers published for IDW's line of Transformers comics, so we're here to help the fans! In The Art of IDW's Transformers you'll find each and every limited edition or sketch cover IDW published for Beast Wars, Generations, Infiltration, Spotlights, Escalation, Stormbringer and Evolutions, collected together in one hardcover, oversized volume. The perfect addition to any Transformers collection, this volume also includes sketches from fan-favorite artists E.J. Su and Don Figueroa!

Product Details

• Hardcover: 216 pages
• Publisher: IDW Publishing; illustrated edition edition (October 10, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1600101178
• ISBN-13: 978-1600101175
• Product Dimensions: 12.1 x 8.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #792,209 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not everything, March 12, 2008

By	M. Pantoja "Tintin P" (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

THE GOOD: There's a large selection of very nice art, handsomely reproduced, on very good paper (matte, not glossy stock, alas). Some nice pullouts of work by Don Figueroa and my personal favorite, EJ Su.
Also a few great covers by others, including Ashley Wood, whose conceptual, abtsracted approach to mecha designs expands the range of possibilities regarding Transformers imagery. Some nice interviews with IDW's main Tf artists (the non-Japanese ones anyway). Looks nice on a shelf or coffee table.

THE BAD: The product solicitation is wrong, this isn't every alternate cover or pinup by IDW as of mid-2007, it's not even half of it (ex: The excellent Graham Crackers Seekers alternate cover for Infiltration).

Moreover many of the images are merely blown-up panels or page fragments from the interior IDW comics art, reprinted without reference or context, which would've helped if they wanted to promote their individual stories. Images are simply plopped unto the page with no accompanying information: appeared, the dates, the context, character names, the stories, etc. Didn't know what I was looking at half the time.

I would've preferred having only cover and pinup/poster art, and perhaps character designs, rather than slivers of stories I have no intention of reading and/ or have seen elsewhere.

Also, the cover you see here is not the actual book cover, much to my disappointment. The actual cover is a detail from Don Figueroa's Stormbringer super-cover, which is impressive but somewhat less iconic. Annoyingly, the white-bottomed dust jacket catches dirt easily due to the thin matte coating.

VERDICT: Overall a good purchase for fans of the IDW universe and mecha art in general, but perhaps not crucial for the general 1980's fan who isn't into the IDW interpretations. Not very informative either. I'm a bit angry that the book profiled in the description is not the book this ultimately turned out to be. Still, a handsome purchase.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Action-packed artwork, November 14, 2008

By	Parka (Singapore) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Art of IDW's Transformers (Paperback)

Length:: 0:32 Mins

I don't have much knowledge of Transformers. Much of that comes from the old Transformer cartoons and the movie by Michael Bay. So I got this book just for the fun of it. I can't really differentiate which paintings come from which Transformers series.

This soft covered art book has contributions from 16 artists. They are MD Bright, Don Figueroa, Guido Guidi, Bob LeFevre, Marcelo Matere, Ed McGuiness, Alex Milne, Milx, Robby Musso, James Raiz, Nick Roche, Rob Ruffolo, Klaus Scherwinski, E.J. Su, Andrew Wildman and Ashley Wood. There's a short interview with each of them before pages of their artwork.

There are full page paintings, comic panels and a few line drawings. Most of the art pieces are highly polished. Each artist presents a different style which makes for great variety. I particularly like Ashley Wood's style, which is very raw and has lots of blacks.

To me, the actual genre of Transformer is war. That coupled with art makes for action packed panels which fills most of the pages. Every one is attention grabbing, if printed on comic book covers, screams "Buy me to find out what happened!".

This book is also available in hard cover, but at twice the price on Amazon. The soft cover's not too bad either, at least the paper stock used is good. The soft cover was published in 2008, the hard cover, 2007.

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

1.0 out of 5 stars no no no, February 19, 2009

By	Massobrio Davide "www.m-d-sounds-com" (Italy) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Art of IDW's Transformers (Paperback)

It' s not a real art book the way I mean: only few pictures are "previously unreleased", most of them are covers or (especially) pages from various comic books from IDW. Only few pictures are displayed in different versions (pencils + inks + coloured final picture). The images themselves chosen for the books are not the best from all the available Transformers material....