Massive Black: Volume 2

by Kemp Remillard, Jason Manley (Editor), Justin Coro Kaufman (Editor)

Massive Black is a powerhouse of the entertainment industry—particularly in the areas of concept art, illustration, 3-D, animation, and intellectual property development. Massive Volume 2 shows a selection of art from the more than two hundred projects and a staggering thirty thousand pieces of concept art for games, film, television, graphic novels, toys, and advertising.

208 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2011

Reviews

[Parka · Rating 5 out of 5]

(More pictures on my blog)

Massive Black Volume 2 is finally here. That's a four year gap from the first artbook Massive Black Volume 1 that was released in 2008.

As with most artbooks from Ballistic Publishing, this title comes in various editions. There are three, namely the Slipcase, Special Leather and Folio editions. The Special Leather and Folio editions are only available at Ballistic Publishing's website. For early buyers, they are giving some posters.

For the past four years, they have been busy creating concept art for movies and video games. This book collects those and also a small portion of advertising art.

There's a section dedicated to content they created themselves. There are video game concepts for titles like Zombie Playground, Mothhead and Proxy, and a comic called Transient Man created by Justin 'Coro' Kaufman.

The book is heavy on character designs. a bit on weapons and vehicles and not much on environments. The character designs are mainly from games, such as from Infamous, Silent Hill, Red Faction: Armageddon and many more. The most eye-catching ones are the creature designs, especially from the untitled SEGA project which required them to draw 'Baroque-style' monsters with crazy amount of detail. There are also many artworks from concepts that never materialize.

There isn't much 3D work in the book. Even those from Transformers are 2D concept art.

I also enjoyed reading all the inspiring design commentary.

I felt the book could be much thicker though. Figuratively speaking, 196 pages is considered thin for four years of work from Massive Black. But for what it's worth, everything included are awesome.

This is a fantastic concept art book.

Highly recommended.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love looking at sketches and concept art, especially from artists I know.