The Art of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Other Media
The Art of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag Details
Review "Ubisoft has definitely set the bar high for artistic design in their games and Titan Books should be the standard that any game related artbook strives towards, both in quality and price." - Game Skinny"Stunning and beautiful" - Atomic Moo"For those on the fence about the book itself, I’ll give you the two scenarios that will net you the book 1) you are an avid video game art book aficionado who collects these for the love of the art, or 2) someone who really likes the game and wants to see the color commentary of the art and effort put in to creating the stunning images that keep the gamer enthralled in the game." - Urban Vinyl Daily"Gamers who follow the Assassin’s Creed franchise will find this massive art book breathtaking. With literally hundreds of illustrations that depict Edward Kenway’s evolution from pirate to assassin, this book is a visual feast that will intrigue and mesmerize anyone who has ever played the game." - Barnes and Noble Book Blog "Clocking in at 192 pages, The Art of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag is a visual record of the game's most captivating characters and locales. It's arguably the best art book in the series too" - Destructoid"If you love the game and the art involved then I absolutely recommend picking up this book." - Diehard GameFAN"AC4‘s book delivers on every level when it comes to art books. There’s really no comparison, the book is so intoxicating you’ll want to reread the damn thing." - Adventures in Poor Taste"As a point of fact, there is absolutely nothing about this book that isn’t incredible. Titan has nailed down the physical construction of the book, delivering high quality binding and beautiful color saturation wrapped in a protective jacket around a solid binding. The material is equally substantive, showing off the collective work of hundreds of man hours from a team that is clearly passionate about their work. If you are a fan of Assassin’s Creed or just an aficionado of incredible artwork from The Golden Age of Pirates, you cannot go wrong with this book." - Gaming Trend "With current generation games hitting their heights and next generation titles launching, there are a slew of art books detailing some of the year's biggest releases." - Yahoo Games "Fans of Assassin’s Creed and pirate collectors will definitely want to pick up this beautifully collected art book." - Retrenders"If you are a fan, you want this." - Next Power Up "Gorgeous hard-cover" - Destructoid"Highly recommended for rabid fans" - Project Fandom "...a detail walk through of the design choices and concept art that went into the look and feel of the game...really fascinating..." - Twin Geeks “Absolutely stunning... a great addition to your gaming memorabilia or to gain deeper insight into the development of the Black Flag itself.” - This is Xbox"The book gives a good view of what it takes to create a truly beautiful world that the game takes place in...artwork...is very impressive." - Pissed Off Geek"Frankly, whether you are a fan of the game or not, it is gorgeous." - SFF World"There’s a feeling of bonding between yourself, the book, and the game that keeps you engaged and eager to read on." - Gaming Bolt"If you love pirates, shipwrecks, gorgeous art, and Assassin’s Creed, be sure to snag this one!" - Nerdy But Flirty"For enthusiasts of the Assassin’s Creed series, or for anyone that appreciates an insider glimpse of what goes into creating the aesthetic trappings of a big budget game, The Art of Assasin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is a jewel just waiting to be unearthed." - Delta Attack"With all the commentary and high quality art to look at, it’s definitely worth the money for anyone that’s a fan of the series." - Critiques 4 Geeks"In a year of good art books, this stands out as one of the must-haves." - Video Game Writers"I think it is the most beautiful and fully packed art book I have read.” - Giant Bomb"This is quite possibly the best Assassin's Creed artbook so far. It's a terrific video game artbook....Highly recommended to those who like concept art and fans of the game." - Parka"A gorgeous companion to a gorgeous game." - Only SP"Ubisoft’s vision of ‘The Golden Age of Piracy’ spills out over 192 pages of detailed character and costume designs, epic sea battles, majestic shipwrecks and painterly sea vistas beautifully representing the more than 50 unique locations" - VG Blogger "If you’re a fan of the Assassin’s Creed series or are a fan of art and concept art, be sure to check out this book" - Nerd Reactor Read more About the Author Paul Davies has worked in gaming journalism for twenty years, writing and editing magazines and websites including Official Nintendo and Computer & Video Games. He is the co-founder and director of media agency Unlikely Hero Ltd. whose clients include Yahoo! UK and Microsoft. Read more
Reviews
The Art of Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag mostly has finalized concept art, which is mostly of environments, with some rough concept art sketches. A lot, but not all, of the art has captions, and many of them are from the artists themselves. Overall, it’s an average video game art book.Quality of Physical Book - Average-9x12 inches.-192 pages-It’s hardcover and comes with a dust jacket that is, as usual, worse than the original cover.-Average image/printing qualityContent/Innards - AverageVariety of images and image types-There’s art from many different stages of development, including:--Rough sketches--Concept sketches--Final art designs--Mood pieces-There’s a few other cool things like a diagram of a ship.-Though there is some variety, most of the art is the final version of the concept art - they specifically mention that they went through many iterations of some of the sketches but we rarely see them.Organization, does it make sense-Apart from the chapter on people, virtually the whole book is on locations and they are divided into chapters.-The chapters are Abstergo, People, Cities, Exploration, Pirate Life, Sea Battles, and Underwater World.-I suppose the organization makes some sense but looking through the book, it’s basically just a huge series of environment art for an open world game.Is there writing or insight from the artists and developers themselves?-Yes. A lot of the captions are from the artists and they describe why they made the design decisions that they did. Great!-It seems like most of the artist’s instructions were to set the mood, give general ideas, and that’s a lot of what the art is.-To illustrate what I mean, some art book commentary will be like “Troy has a rough past and has learned not to trust authority, but now he’s working with the government and wears a uniform. But we have his shirt a bit untucked to reflect that he’s not entirely on board with what he’s doing.” Whereas this book is more like “We wanted this scene to be epic.” or “high cliffs are a key element in the art direction of the game.” So the commentary is fine but you don’t get as much mileage out of it as some other art book commentary.Quality of writing.-As for the quality of the writing, a lot of it is quotes from the artists, with some stuff from the author. Some writing by the author is a bit over the top but nothing else is particularly noteworthy.Does it have what you want it to have?-When you think about an Assassin’s Creed 4 art book, what would you want to see? I would mostly want to see pirate ship stuff and tropical environments. This is mostly what is in the book. I do wish there was a bit more stuff on ships and naval battles and less on towns, though. None of the towns in the game really stand out in my mind.-I liked that there was so much commentary from the artists about their work, and that they explained what they were thinking.-Most of the art is finalized sketches, which isn’t my ideal. They are also mostly the type of art that gives an overall feel, rather than showing things specifically in the game - however, I would guess this is due to the production process of the developer.Aesthetics - Below average, with some highs and lows. The caption placement is really annoying.Artistic/pleasant layout-In general, yes. But the captions are often distractingly misplaced or cause mental work.Full pages of art?-Yes, and some are quite nice to look at.Quality of the art itself? Very subjective but notable if extremely good or bad-If you really like looking at beaches and ocean-side towns then I suspect you’ll enjoy the overall visual aesthetic of this book.Anything else about the book like the cover, binding, feel, etc.-Average.Any weird issues like tiny print or annoying layout, like having descriptions in weird places-Some captions are labeled weirdly. Like there will be a caption labeled “above” but there are two images above. And only one caption total.-Since some of the art doesn’t have captions it just adds to the confusion. And unfortunately this type of thing is very frequent in this book.-Some captions are just in dumb places, like page 61 has the caption for page 59, even though there’s plenty of space on 59 for the caption. Issues like this made reading through the book annoying.-This is relatively minor, but on one page an artist writes “this became my most satisfying concept for the project,” so I’d think it would be highlighted, but it’s a tiny picture placed in the crevice of the book. That’s too bad! This book should be highlighting and celebrating the art.Nostalgia/Affinity Evoked For The Game - Below Average-This is one of the weaker areas of the book in part because it’s one of the weaker areas of the game. Perhaps this is just my bias showing, but I think it’s a valid critique. Since they crank out, especially back then, Assassin’s Creed games at such a fast pace with several hundred people on the development teams, the game is less “let’s design the perfect stealth section” and more “we need a stealth section, here here and here.” As a result the game does have a consistent overall feel, but there aren’t many standout moments. So I felt some nostalgia for the game setting but that’s about it.BackstageAdditional insights into art assets and art design-I thought there was an interesting entry where they discuss how realism isn’t always as important as pleasant visuals. For example, they write that in real life a sugarcane field would be low to soak up water, but that kind of cut into the look of the organized town that the artists wanted, so they moved the sugarcane fields high above everything.Increased appreciation for the game development process-I noticed that a lot of the environment art is less specific than other games. I think they wanted the general mood and then the programmers have a system of basically populating areas. One caption says that artists give the overall look, and “the 3D team then adjusts the scene.” It’s interesting to see how this contrasts with other games where things are more clearly defined by artists. It just makes me think of how the Assassin’s Creed games have several hundred people working on them, and that in factory fashion they may not have time to get everything exactly how they want it - just the general feel. For example, I don’t recall the fishing village looking exactly how it is in the book, but the overall feel is “shacks on stilts with platforms in between.”-More on this same point: in one caption the art director says that he wanted to use stylized landmarks like trees to help navigate more open jungles, but it seems like this got lost in the development process and didn’t really come to fruition. So to me it seems like the artists have good design sense but in the juggernaut of the Assassin’s Creed series it doesn’t always get translated into the game.-As a side note, an entry in the start of the book seems to equate Abstergo with Ubisoft. I think that’s about right.Closing remarks-Different people want different things in video game art books, but I hope this review has been helpful in showing you what you can expect from THIS book. For more video game art book reviews, click on my profile picture.
