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The Art of Assassin's Creed
Assassin's Creed: Limited Edition Art Book
Soon after Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was complete, elements of the team responsible began initial design concepts for another, more ambitious adventure. To gather interedt and understanding of the project, a wealth of materials were created, fleshing out a new heroic adventurer who turned from a prince to an assassin. A ballet of new moves were imagined for this stealth-slayer, and the traversing of giant cityscapes, populated by crowds of individually intelligent citizens, was proposed. The four years of building Assassin's Creed from the ground up had begun.
- GenresArtVideo Games
160 pages, Hardcover
First published November 13, 2007
3 people are currently reading
374 people want to read
About the author
Ubisoft
94 books12 followersUbisoft Entertainment SA (/ˈjuːbisɒft, -sɔːft/; French: [ybisɔft]; formerly Ubi Soft Entertainment SA) is a French video game company headquartered in Montreuil with several development studios across the world. It is known for publishing games for several acclaimed video game franchises, including Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Just Dance, Prince of Persia, Rayman, Raving Rabbids, and Tom Clancy's. As of March 2018, Ubisoft is the fourth largest publicly-traded game company in the Americas and Europe after Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, and Take-Two Interactive in terms of revenue and market capitalisation.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 23, 2017
The Assassin's Creed: Limited Edition Art Book takes a look at the first Assassin's Creed game (a third-person action-adventure game where gamers play as an assassin on a grand quest against the Templars during the Third Crusade) from preproduction to the final product.
Brief testimonials are peppered throughout the book, written by Creative Directors, Art Directors, Producers, and Level Design Directors. These testimonials are conversational, rather than formal. They add unique insight to the conception of the game, though they also give the book a slightly unorganized feel.
Enter Altair, the assassin. Thin, fit and stylized to represent a bird of prey - as is evident in his silhouette and his Arabic name, which means "bird of prey."
The reference to the eagle and the main character is one of the coolest aspects. You have the beak of the eagle, you see it in the hood. In the cape, you can also find, in some animations, the stylization of the wings, and these subtle elements. - Raphael Lacoste, Art Director
Myriad concepts for NPCs (Non Playable Characters) are given, both civilians and threatening foes. Special attention is paid to the clothing, noting the challenge of finding a balance between historical accuracy and visual interest.
The thing that's interesting is, we made all this stuff historically accurate, and then what we found is that people's clothes didn't vary much. [. . .] there wasn't like a Gap, the punk store, and then the goth store, and the hip hop store. It was medieval days. People didn't have that much money, unless you're a king, and the people pretty much walked around wearing variations of a brown sack of potatoes with tights. - Jade Raymond, Producer
A chapter on topography and landscapes opens with the fortress village of Masyaf, home to assassins seeking shelter and safety. It strikes an imposing figure above the rocky landscape. Several pages are then dedicated to crumbling ruins, sun-kissed canyons, small villages, and the three bustling main cities of the Holy Land: Damascus, Acre, and Jerusalem.
We hired a historian who was an expert on the Third Crusade. The first thing I asked him to do was to get the biggest database of images possible for us. So he put together a presentation for the team, but also this bank of maps from the era, all of the city maps - masses of material that you couldn't find on the internet. Because he was a historian, he had access to certain libraries and he scanned them in. - Jade Raymond, Producer
With beautiful illustrations - most of them generated by the extraordinarily talented artist Raphael Lacoste, a few screen shots of the game, and painfully small font, the Assassin's Creed: Limited Edition Art Book is a nice commemoration of the game that launched a long-standing franchise.
Brief testimonials are peppered throughout the book, written by Creative Directors, Art Directors, Producers, and Level Design Directors. These testimonials are conversational, rather than formal. They add unique insight to the conception of the game, though they also give the book a slightly unorganized feel.
Enter Altair, the assassin. Thin, fit and stylized to represent a bird of prey - as is evident in his silhouette and his Arabic name, which means "bird of prey."
The reference to the eagle and the main character is one of the coolest aspects. You have the beak of the eagle, you see it in the hood. In the cape, you can also find, in some animations, the stylization of the wings, and these subtle elements. - Raphael Lacoste, Art Director
Myriad concepts for NPCs (Non Playable Characters) are given, both civilians and threatening foes. Special attention is paid to the clothing, noting the challenge of finding a balance between historical accuracy and visual interest.
The thing that's interesting is, we made all this stuff historically accurate, and then what we found is that people's clothes didn't vary much. [. . .] there wasn't like a Gap, the punk store, and then the goth store, and the hip hop store. It was medieval days. People didn't have that much money, unless you're a king, and the people pretty much walked around wearing variations of a brown sack of potatoes with tights. - Jade Raymond, Producer
A chapter on topography and landscapes opens with the fortress village of Masyaf, home to assassins seeking shelter and safety. It strikes an imposing figure above the rocky landscape. Several pages are then dedicated to crumbling ruins, sun-kissed canyons, small villages, and the three bustling main cities of the Holy Land: Damascus, Acre, and Jerusalem.
We hired a historian who was an expert on the Third Crusade. The first thing I asked him to do was to get the biggest database of images possible for us. So he put together a presentation for the team, but also this bank of maps from the era, all of the city maps - masses of material that you couldn't find on the internet. Because he was a historian, he had access to certain libraries and he scanned them in. - Jade Raymond, Producer
With beautiful illustrations - most of them generated by the extraordinarily talented artist Raphael Lacoste, a few screen shots of the game, and painfully small font, the Assassin's Creed: Limited Edition Art Book is a nice commemoration of the game that launched a long-standing franchise.
November 22, 2014
This is one of the many art work books published off the back of the success of a computer game, in this case the first Assassins Creed. I have softened wondered about this book - I have been following a number of artists blogs who have referenced work from this project so you can imagine my joy at finding the book in a charity book store (yes I was there again)
Anyway the book is impressive if a little dis-jointed. The text which is often laid out alongside the artwork - has no connection to the images. The text is broken in to "sound bites" from various members of the project talking about the creative process and the evolution of various aspects of the game.
That said the book has some amazing images from character generation to concept art to landscape and game views - this is obvious a must for a fan of the game - but is also incredibly appealing to those who just appreciate the art.
Anyway the book is impressive if a little dis-jointed. The text which is often laid out alongside the artwork - has no connection to the images. The text is broken in to "sound bites" from various members of the project talking about the creative process and the evolution of various aspects of the game.
That said the book has some amazing images from character generation to concept art to landscape and game views - this is obvious a must for a fan of the game - but is also incredibly appealing to those who just appreciate the art.
November 19, 2008
Another good art reference book for those who find themselves drawing in their margins more than to listening to the lecture.
October 10, 2024
[book 36/50 of 2024 reading challenge]
We fly with this incredible team of artists into their ideas, their concepts, their research, and their creation of this amazing franchise, and ride with them through the changes they implemented and their exploration of different palettes for the world and atmosphere building, we also see the NPC behaviours creation, all aiming to give the player a more vivid experience. We can see the ambition that the team had when creating the game.
What strikes me, is their strict measure of historical accuracy, to the extent of scrapping whole ideas just to be historically accurate, like dropping characters and removing weapons, this gave the players a true dive into the real History, an important and aspiring measure that was neglected in the newest Assassin's Creed games.
Seeing back behind the scenes of the making of this first game that gave life to this franchise, the inspiration from its ancestor, Prince of Persia, and, the release from its box gave me goosebumps.
We fly with this incredible team of artists into their ideas, their concepts, their research, and their creation of this amazing franchise, and ride with them through the changes they implemented and their exploration of different palettes for the world and atmosphere building, we also see the NPC behaviours creation, all aiming to give the player a more vivid experience. We can see the ambition that the team had when creating the game.
What strikes me, is their strict measure of historical accuracy, to the extent of scrapping whole ideas just to be historically accurate, like dropping characters and removing weapons, this gave the players a true dive into the real History, an important and aspiring measure that was neglected in the newest Assassin's Creed games.
Seeing back behind the scenes of the making of this first game that gave life to this franchise, the inspiration from its ancestor, Prince of Persia, and, the release from its box gave me goosebumps.
February 1, 2022
I'm a person who adores concept art. This has lots of concept art. And input from the developers. Cool stuff.
December 5, 2012
(More pictures at parkablogs.com)
Assassin's Creed Limited Edition Art Book is a making-of art book, the not-too-technical kind.
There are over hundreds over beautiful pieces of art included, complete with great insights on how the game was designed artistically. We have the producer, art directors and artists, AI programmers describing how the game was made. They talk about game rules, for example the real world climbing, design concepts for characters and environment, their research process, and other stuff. There's a bit of everything but none too technical.
There are plenty of character design in the book. For Altair, many iterations of costumes are included, with the different belts, embroidery. This also means you get to see a lot of discarded ideas. Other characters include the assassins, citizens, military, Saracens, scientists and of course the different assassination targets. They actually had to put in more colours and accessories because 100% historical accuracy would mean citizens wearing rather similar (boring) clothes.
Concept paintings for the cities, towns and sets are included. These are really gorgeously painted with lots of details. The different sets include Masyaf, Arsuf, the lab, Damascus, Assassin's Bureau, Acre, Jerusalem and a few discarded concepts. The middle eastern mood is so perfectly created that a professor at Oxford couldn't tell that the development team didn't travel for their research. They hired a historian to help with research. Research images provided (not in this book) are not even available on the Internet.
Unfortunately individual paintings are not credited although there's a list of artist included at the back.
For a supposedly limited edition art book that's this good, I'm surprised it's not in limited availability yet. So grab yours while it's still in stock.
September 4, 2016
Great for drawing ideas, if you're into this :)
May 21, 2015
muyy copado!! la verdasd esta muy lindo y esta sarpado
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews