The Art of Overwatch Hardcover – October 24, 2017

(Quick aside, page 224 was dirty or came with a bad print job in my copy. Middle image shows much many white pages are in Overwatch's book, and the last picture are art books from American McGee's Alice and Spirited Away which include far more color. There's an argument to be had Overwatch's book is thicker, but I would have trade out a thicker book without filler for a cheaper book with better quality personally.)

As a collector despite this being the thickest art book I now own, it lacks more than any of my other books in details. I understand most people buy art books for visuals over exposition, but I find that to be a lackluster excuse for such empty content in this particular case. Especially when you consider the $50.00 USD asking price.

Very little is explained as to the thought process behind the visual designs, and what is there is so short or so trivial in detail it belongs more on a twitter feed than a book. Also, even for the most basic overwatch fan you've probably already seen a good chunk of the concept character art included here. So there's very little new content or a majority of engaged fans, the very fans who are mostly likely to BUY this book. If you happen to be a proactively engaged fan, outside of the 2D drawings of already in-game environments, there's very little here as far as new or unseen content goes. There's no info on rejected heroes that didn't make the cut, the holidays and events are featured barely at all, and there's no inclusion or better visuals of already shown NPC ex-overwatch heroes. (Youtube "Overwatch Recall" and skip to the ending if you haven't seen them already.)

So how does it fare as far the the art alone? Well, what it lacks in thoughtful layouts, new context, raw concept art (lacking that corporate polish), page to page images, and awe inspiring scenery; it makes up for in pure quantity. That's about all the good I can say. What the Art of Overwatch fails in giving you lore-wise and behind the scenes depth, it compensates by throwing as much content at you as possible. Of the massive repetitive content being shown, a majority is pasted on a stark white backgrounds.

Even for the most hardcore Overwtach fan, either borrow it from a friend or wait for it to drop in price. Your money is better spent on other game merch. The concept art pictures that were leaked are the only new content you'll get outside of some unused environment posters.

(Read on for more personal criticisms.)

At the most basic, any artbook should cover the behind the scenes of the work involved. What were the employees thinking during process, what breakthroughs lead to final concepts, where did the artists look to for big inspiration? SOME of that is touched on, but not very much, and what little there is not very deep.

The Overwatch game itself has a problem of making big promises; sweeping lore with grand backstories that have barely been touched on since the game's release. After a year of little progression in the main story or character stories (most released so far being minor details that don't actually further the plot), I wasn't so hopefully as to believe this book would tap into story progression. But at the very least I had hoped this book would offer new details about the characters that at least explained where they were in the current lore, like more insight to their personalities and their motivations. Which can be done through visuals alone! After a year of waiting on plot details (the most we've gotten is Doomfist's involvement with Talon) this book at the very least should have teased future feature animations, comics, or possible new heroes. Especially out of respect for its harcore audiance who has already seen 90% or more of what this entire book has to offer.

As an artist myself with many artist friends, it's easy to get lost in explaining your creations with overly enthusiastic and lengthy descriptions. Usually our biggest challenge is forcing ourselves to pull back and NOT overwhelm people. This just feels so void of passion, or as if people involved were kept under oath not to say too much. I lucked out and had $10 left on a gift card. Had I paid more than $20.00 usd I would have returned it. In fact I'm still considering it if I have the time to deal with shipping.

** I work in the Video Game Industry and bought this Artbook for insight into design decisions **

- Art is beautiful and displayed well as expected from Blizzard, most of the value I got from this book was by having all the images organized in a way where I can try to pick apart how they arrived at the final product. If all you want is Overwatch art organized in a nice way this book is for you. The book is made of high quality materials.

- Seems to me all descriptions in this book were done by someone at Dark Horse who interviewed Blizzard devs, and then translated that commentary. I was dissapointed to see that many times it felt like the book was talking down to me when explaining why a choice was made, how different crafts would provide input into a character, ect. As an example many times a character or environment is shown, and they would just say "And this was handed off to the Game team create".

tl;dr i wouldnt really get this book if youre hoping to see a lot of concept or behind the scenes art

as a huge fan of overwatch with hundreds of hours in the game itself, i had to have the art book. the quality is great - the pages are really thick and glossy. i was so excited to get to see concept art and details about the world and designs you dont get from the game, however there is not much if any commentary on all the pages, and not a lot of concept art. some characters have WAY more details and pages than others (and by way more i mean about 7 pages with maybe two small paragraphs). pharah has a whole page dedicated to very early concept sketches, but ana doesn't really have any kind of concept art... just the ana we see now. a lot of sprays are excluded from the pages showcasing character sprays and so on. i felt like a lot was missing or left out and that i was just being shown things i had already seen.

Bigger book than I expected and soooooo fine with that! I love this book. Great for any fan, especially ones who happen to be artists as well. Looking through it makes me want to draw so bad already. It's great to see which characters went through the most changes and read about the inspiration for each one, even their skin designs.

I had never heard of Overwatch before I purchased this book and did so strictly for the artwork. I am completely satisfied with this book it is full of characters and concept work all in full color. I'd recommend this for fans of the video game or for anyone interested in comic/manga/story board/video game artwork. It is excellent reference material.

The team Jeff drives at Blizzard has single handedly turned the FPS competitive scene into something other than a flash-bang and a knife and this book reflects all of that work.

This book takes the hard work of the OverWatch team and expands on all that we have learned plus adds in aspects some of us may have not seen published as of yet. I feel the character drawings are inspirational and show a lot of evolution through of how the team has grown and adds to the history and storylines to almost all the characters.

If you are looking for a coffee book table, a book for inspiration on drawing game art or character modeling this dives pretty deep not into the mechanics of it but the actual though process expressed through art. I could easily see even if you are not an OverWatch fan how this could be enjoyed over and over again and possibly do like I have and start framing some of the pages.

The book it self is constructed well, its sturdy, the pages are thick and glossy but not to the point you will go blind reading it under a light. I would highly recommend this book as a gift to yourself or others who are involved in Overwatch as you will not be disappointed.