The art of paper folding, called zhezhi, has been around a thousand years in China and Japan, and continues to manifest throughout Western culture. In children’s books, we’ve seen modern book crafters design incredible fold-out books that allow kids to interact with story characters and settings. A new book from Abrams Books for Young Readers provides another twist on fold-out book design, allowing each new page to interact with the last. Star Wars Unfolds: The Original Trilogysums up the first three Star Wars movies in a great nighttime storybook any young fan of the movies can enjoy.
Happy New Year! Let’s start the year off with a look at a great new inside look at the holiday season’s biggest hit movie, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Compared to most “art of the movie” books reviewed here at borg, a new behind-the-scenes book offers up a very different, modern update to our understanding of creating concept art for the cinema. The book is Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse — The Art of the Movie by Ramin Zahed, an account of the design development and visual production process for this latest Sony Pictures Animation/Marvel partnership.
Concept art, sketches, and storyboards take on a different flare when you’re in the digital animation tech of today. But the images still reflect that powerful, colorful, and dynamic feel in their formation of a brand new superhero universe. Readers will find hundreds of images of developmental artistry behind the film, plus read exclusive interviews with the creators, including a foreword prepared by Miles Morales co-creator Brian Michael Bendis.
As we found with George Lucas’s groundbreaking selection of screen captures or frames found in his multi-volume book Star Wars Frames (reviewed here at borg), studying the selected individual frames from the new Spider-Verse reveals a film on par with the composition of the future world of Ridley Scott’s original Blade Runner–a city that is realistic, yet futuristic and still obviously sourced in comic books. It’s a gorgeous movie–and the action sweeps by so quickly that most will miss the artistry found in Miles’ graffiti, storyboard sequences, and the nooks and crannies of each set layout. Set decoration takes on a new approach, as does prop design, art direction, and costuming, in Into the Spider-Verse.
You can also pick up a rare edition of the book, limited to 175 copies, complete with one of the prop comic books made for the film (pictured above) hand-inked by Marcelo Vignali and a signed tip-in sheet by Christopher Miller, Phil Lord, and artists from the film. Check that out and the details at the Titan Books website here. Take a look at this 12-page preview of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse — The Art of the Movie, courtesy of Titan Books:
Back in 2013 we reviewed one of the most ambitious, successful and nostalgic Star Wars products yet created. Star Wars: Frames, reviewed here, was an effort by George Lucas to file through every image, every frame, of his six Star Wars movies to select those images that best display his own cinematic artistry. The result was a boxed set of hardcover editions featuring full-color photographs of 1,472 frames. One such edition has sold for between $3,000 and more than $10,000, while a current second edition sells for a more affordable $100 range.
Published in anticipation of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Abrams Books have worked with Lucasfilm to select 100 key images from Star Wars: Frames to be included in a boxed, over-sized postcard collection called Star Wars Frames: 100 Postcards. This postcard collection includes classic characters and stunning intergalactic scenery from the Original and Prequel Trilogies. The deluxe keepsake box also functions as a display frame: the box features a die-cut window, so fans can rotate their favorite scenes into view. Like Star Wars: Frames, these postcards are a celebration of Star Wars as a masterpiece of cinematography and design.
Star Wars Frames: 100 Postcards is one of those rare collectibles that allows you to show off your love of the Star Wars saga in a stylish way.
After the completion of the Star Wars prequels, George Lucas sat down and went frame by frame through all six Star Wars movies, examining literally hundreds of thousands of images and selecting about 250 screen grabs from each film, frames that he believed showed particular artistry, each in its own right. The result was 2011’s limited edition of 1,138 boxed sets called Star Wars: Frames, sold for $3,000, and now only rarely available with one set being sold at Amazon.com for a whopping $11,500. Thanks to Abrams Books, Star Wars: Frames is being re-released this month in a far less expensive but complete edition, collecting 1,472 stills from all six films in the Star Wars saga. It is without a doubt the definitive visual work on Star Wars, in a rare league of deluxe book editions along with long out-of-print Dressing a Galaxy: The Costume of Star Wars and Sculpting a Galaxy: Inside the Star Wars Model Shop as the best Star Wars books ever released.
This more affordable, unabridged version of Star Wars: Frames includes two hardcover books, each covering one of the two movie trilogies in 368 pages, housed in a hefty Death Star-themed silver box. Listing at a published price of $150, you can buy it for less than $100 at Amazon.com. The only difference between the $3,000 version and this version is the original was issued in a six-book set (one book for each film instead of one for each trilogy), with each image taking up a full page, packaged in a wooden crate instead of cardboard. The content is the same. Star Wars: Frames will be released November 5, 2013, but we received an early review copy this week. The book lives up to its promise, in surprising ways.
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. This postcard collection includes classic characters and stunning intergalactic scenery from the Original and Prequel Trilogies. The deluxe keepsake box also functions as a display frame: the box features a die-cut window, so fans can rotate their favorite scenes into view. Like 
being sold at Amazon.com for a whopping $11,500. Thanks to Abrams Books, 
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as the best Star Wars books ever released.
