When I previewed Cowboy Bebop: Making the Netflix Series last month I’d hoped writers Jeff Bond and Gene Kozicki (a visual effects artist on the series) would dig deep into the unique style of the very futuristic series. I am happy to say I was not only not disappointed but dazzled by the level of work completed for what could have been the next major science fiction franchise. What does the future look like? Going back to Syd Mead’s future-defining work on films like Blade Runner, you must count as the next futurism visionaries production designers Grant Major and Gary Mackay. Cowboy Bebop: Making the Netflix Seriesdelivers photographs of props and sets that viewers didn’t get to see in the series, providing another level of behind-the-scenes production design not ordinarily seen in this kind of “making of” book.
Where Star Trek Shipyards is an in-universe library looking at the hundreds of ships of the franchise, Star Trek Designing Starships is a library about the creators and creative process behind those ships. The fifth volume of the encyclopedia of Star Trek ship design has arrived as publisher Hero Collector continues its series after volumes on the starships Enterprise,Voyager, the Kelvin timeline ships, and Discovery. The human adventure continues in Star Trek Designing Starships: Deep Space Nine and Beyond. It’s available now here at Amazon. As with the publisher’s previous books, Star Trek Designing Starships is known for its colorful, high quality illustrations in a coffee table-style hardcover edition, providing a near-exhaustive library to the array of the franchise’s highly-detailed spacecraft.
Sony Pictures Animation, the studio that made Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse and the LEGO movies brought its latest and greatest animated film to Netflix earlier this month with The Mitchells vs. The Machines–a sci-fi, apocalypse, coming of age story (reviewed here) about a normal but weird family that tries to dodge a planet-wide extermination resulting from the very technologies humans are so addicted to. Much of the action takes place during a cross-country trip, and it’s that imagery that is underplayed on the big screen, but really comes to life as incredible art in The Art of The Mitchells vs. The Machines, a behind the scenes book of exploration coming to Amazon here and a bookstore near you next week. Gravity Falls creators Michael Rianda and Jeff Rowe wrote and directed the film, a visually stunning spectacle, with contributions by the Academy Award winning duo of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (both known for the LEGO movies and Into the Spider-verse). Author Ramin Zahed interviews those creators and more and shares hundreds of concept art images for this next look into the development of cutting edge animation.
It’s more likely than not you haven’t heard of Galaxy’s Edge, or Black Spire Outpost, or the remote Outer Rim planet called Batuu. But you have heard of Star Wars. Billions have seen that fictional space fantasy galaxy via movies, books, and a TV series. But far fewer have made their way to Walt Disney World in Florida or Disneyworld in California, and that means a tie-in, real world location event experience is out there that most Star Wars fans haven’t tapped into yet. That’s where Abrams Books’ seventh book in their concept art library documenting the Star Wars universe comes into play. The Art of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge will take readers where they’ve never been, a world inspired by the artwork of Ralph McQuarrie just as the movies were so inspired, further springing from 11 movies, three series, and dozens of books. The result is a destination different and new that fans have never seen before. Continue reading →
Of all the attributes of Star Trek’s Deep Space Nine series, my personal favorite is the art direction. Because it is a visual account of the production of the show, the new Deep Space Nine Illustrated Handbook is a celebration of the work of key creative visionaries and futurist art designers Rick Sternbach, Michael Okuda, and Doug Drexler, and more. Reprinting key components from more than 8,500 mail order Fact Files cards published between 1997 and 2002, this attractive, hardcover, coffee table book will provide insight into Star Trek’s outlying, groundbreaking series for a new generation of fans now watching for the first time via Netflix and other streaming platforms. In this chronicle expect to find everything but a self-sealing stem bolt.
We previewed Dan Curry’s new look back at his work on Star Trek in September. The nicely designed full color hardcover, Star Trek: The Artistry of Dan Curry is designed and reads like a true sequel to Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens landmark 1995 book The Art of Star Trek, once the only definitive look at the artwork behind the franchise (we’ve covered nearly all the Star Trek art books since then here at borg). Like any professional in the art and design fields for a television or feature film crew, Dan Curry had a variety of projects he handled. This book digs into Curry’s work from 1987 to 2005, basically Star Trek: The Next Generation through Enterprise, where he served as visual effects supervisor/producer, second-unit director, title designer, and concept designer, winning seven Emmys for his effort.
Along with the hundreds of concept artists and designers that have created the look of Star Trek over the years, including Matt Jeffries, Andrew Probert, Richard Delgado, Ken Adams, Rick Sternbach, Mike Okuda, Greg Jein, Neville Page, Syd Mead, Ralph McQuarrie, and John Eaves (whose book we reviewed here at borg), you need to include Dan Curry. From The Next Generation to Enterprise, Dan’s variety of Star Trek work has resulted in some of the series’ most memorable moments. Coming soon from Titan Books, Star Trek: The Artistry of Dan Curry (available for pre-order now here at Amazon) chronicles decades of those key creations, and we have a 12-page look inside below for borg readers, courtesy of the publisher.
We’re accustomed to seeing non-fiction tie-in books digging into what makes the big sci-fi franchises so popular. But it’s only a recent trend that publishers are meeting fan demand by digging into those television series that don’t have the established fan bases and studio support. Firefly was probably the first series to break out in this way, but publishers are now seeing–thanks to streaming platforms specifically–that fans want more content about their favorite shows. Following recent books like Jeff Bond’s The World of The Orville (reviewed here at borg) and The Art and Making of the Expanse (reviewed here), the next acclaimed science fiction series has a behind-the-scenes account with Mike Avila’s The Man in the High Castle: Creating the Alt World from Titan Books.
Designed almost identically to the successfulThe World of The Orville, this look at Amazon Studios’ The Man in the High Castle: Creating the Alt World is both an overview of the series, its characters, its source material, and the creation of its detailed alternate world, and it’s also a visit with the creators behind and in front of the camera that made a complex, highly regarded work of classic sci-fi literature into a compelling benchmark in television storytelling. As we’ve seen in interviews with Lisa Henson in The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance–Inside the Epic Return to Thra and interviews about the Broccoli family in The Many Lives of Bond: How the Creators of 007 Have Decoded the Superspy, this look at the Amazon series provides one of fandom’s first glimpses at Philip K. Dick’s daughter, Dick estate trustee and series executive producer Isa Dick Hackett. So whether you liked (or not) how the series took portions of the novel, left some behind, and added new bits, Hackett explains the thought process behind the production’s choices.
The book covers the entire series–all four seasons–and is divided into four sections by theater: the Japanese Pacific States, the Neutral Zone, the Greater Nazi Reich, and Alternate Worlds, and these sections further highlight specific components of the series, including characters, locations, design, costumes, props, and music. There’s even a section on creating the creepy opening title sequence, slightly altered each season. And stills of the signage, both re-created concepts and alternate history imagery, provide fans the opportunity to at last study them in detail.
This Friday fans of the science fiction TV series The Expanseget their wish: a fourth season and new studio commitment that may yield even more seasons. Dropped by the Syfy channel more than a year ago, Amazon Studios is breathing new life into the series, taking over right where the third season left off (check out a preview for the new season below). Based on the James S.A. Corey series of novels (eight with a ninth in the works), the show has earned a fan following much like that of the Battlestar Galactica reboot, in part because of its similar dark and gritty look at the future of Earth. And as a bonus, unlike most TV series, The Expanse now has its own behind-the-scenes book digging into the production, full of concept artwork, ship and costume designs, and all the future tech that goes into a visual effects-filled show.
The Art and Making of The Expanse was created by Titan Books editor Andy Jones and Alcon Publishing’s Jeff Conner. It doesn’t skimp on the photographs, giving fans both a treasure trove of screen images while also showing how those final shots came to be. It recounts how the series made its way from video game to roleplay game to novels before getting picked up for TV. Showrunner Naren Shankar and producers Mark Fergus, Daniel Abraham, and Ty Franck tell the whole story with contributions from actors Steven Strait, Dominique Tipper, Wes Chatham, Cas Anvar, Thomas Jane, and Sadavir Errinwright, production designer Seth Reed, costume designer Joanne Hansen, construction coordinator Robert Valeriote, senior VFX supervisor Bob Munroe, and concept artist Tim Warnock.
Readers will see all the key sets, spacesuits and other costumes, props, designs, ships, ship signage, and more from the first three seasons with a look at the fourth season’s concept art. Look for layouts on each main character, the major ships and space stations, and a lot more.
Here is a preview of season four of The Expanse, with new cast members Burn Gorman (Torchwood, Forever, The Man in the High Castle),Lyndie Greenwood(Sleepy Hollow, Nikita),Jess Salgueiro(Orphan Black, The Strain),Michael Benyaer(Deadpool, Magnum PI),Chai Valladares (Star Trek Discovery, The Boys), and Kris Holden-Reid(Vikings, Lost Girl), and a new cyborg or two:
Writer Ramin Zahed is back with his next dive behind the scenes of the latest animated films (including Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Missing Link, The Little Prince, and Klaus), this time exploring this year’s CGI version of The Addams Family in The Addams Family: The Art of the Animated Movie. You might have thought you’d seen it all when it comes to the creepy, kooky, mysterious, spooky (and ooky) family that became a classic to two generations, first as a 1960s television series and later as a 1990s movie series. What you might not have known was the Addams Family dates back to a New Yorker cartoon from the 1930s.
For the 2019 movie The Addams Family, co-directors Conrad Vernon and Greg Tiernan didn’t want to make another version of the TV or film versions in animated form. So they went back to the source, creator Charles Addams. In interviews with executives and animators, Zahed explores the source material and concept artwork that inspired the new film. It turns out Charles Addams created character descriptions for each of the famous characters, Gomez, Morticia, Wednesday, Pugsley, Uncle Fester, Lurch, Grandma, Thing, and It–it was these descriptions that the character designers used to guide the personality of the new animated version of the characters.
The Addams Family: The Art of the Animated Movie walks readers through each of the above characters, supporting character art designs, a portrait gallery from the mansion, props, vehicles, and setting locations, providing images of the designs artists went through before deciding on the final, with concept art, storyboards, and production art, and inspiration from Charles Addams’ original cartoons. Contributors from the film include producers Gail Berman, Alison O’Brien, Alex Schwartz, and Danielle Sterling, character designer Craig Kellman, production designer Patricia Atchison, story lead Todd Demong, animation director Mike Linton, and animation creators Rav Grewal, Casey Kirkpatrick, Marie-Eve Kirkpatrick, Laura Brusseau, and Yiqun Chen.
