#this took a while bcs i wanted to hunt down the artbooks + write my thoughts on the art instead of just listing them

[ssalballoon]

What are your favourite art books? 💕💕love your work

thank you! 🌟 oh artbooks?! that's actually a really interesting question hmm... I don't physically own any (expensive ⚰️) but I've seen them online for some games and artists I like! idk how interesting they'll be if you're not into those specific games but nonetheless i think the art is a treat to see even without context! i'll answer under the cut, this ended up being rly long

Dai Gyakuten Saiban 1 & 2 / The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles (Kazuya Nuri)

- Nuri's soft lilac shading is so beautiful + unique to his art! I also appreciate that this artbook is mainly full of sketches and renders you don't see in game. They're so expressive, I wish other artbooks had more doodles of the characters goofing off, you can tell Nuri loves these characters a lot hehe (how often can you say the lead artist drew april fool's furry designs + canon animal plushie designs for the mcs)

the doodles that really stuck out to me are spoilers so i won't share those, but they really feel like snippets from a slice of life anime which humanizes the characters so well

Fire Emblem Echoes (Hidari)

- Hidari's designs are so classy and elegant, the way his fabrics all have a palpable weight and texture to them, and his coloring is so warm... there's a good reason why his designs keep getting circulated with praise every once in a while hehe. I really hope they bring him back for another game!

a personal favourite... she's very pretty!!

(on a side note i rly love Nuri and Hidari's female character designs, it's refreshing to see! not to say that modest designs are inherently better than more fanservicey ones, but i find that the female character designs are even more memorable because of it! it's mainly a personal preference)

Fire Emblem Awakening + Fates (Kozaki Yusuke)

- god of drawing armor and anatomy in perspective... his poses are so dynamic because of his mastery of foreshortening. I love seeing his work in Heroes, it only continues to get better over the years! plus he designed Lucina and Inigo so :D

as much as i love his artbooks my favorite art from him comes from fe heroes! his units have the most unique posing in the game, it always makes me excited to see more of his art (i especially love how conscious/deliberate he is with body types in his designs)

Persona 5/ 4/ P4 Arena Ultimax (Shigenori Soejima)

- Soejima's art influenced my artstyle a lot back in 2017(?) and 2021! (I mainly enjoy his b&w rougher style since it's so bold and also a fun style to draw in, although his painted stuff is fantastic as well) I enjoy seeing the Persona designs since they're so different to what I usually draw and it's really hard to capture the grace he draws them with (especially P4's)

this video of Shigenori Soejima drawing live changed me in 2017

persona 4/arena ultimax have my favorite persona designs out of the modern games!

Death Stranding (Yoji Shinkawa)

- It's a shame you don't see Yoji Shinkawa's artwork in the game much (to my knowledge) because it's stunning how vivid, gritty, and yet effortlessly elegant it is. The monster designs are so haunting gahhh it's so cool! The mastery he has with ink and brush is insane he can be so loose with the lines and yet it conveys everything you need to know

the full body ink sketch of die hardman... it's so loose and yet it's very controlled aghh it's so impressive (i saw hunter schafer got her portrait drawn by him and like. imagine yoji shinkawa drawing you. ohmygod)

Okami (Takeyasu Sawaki, Kenichiro Yoshimura, Mari Shimazaki)

- when I was in middle school I didn't even know games could look like this?! The obvious traditional Japanese art influence makes the designs really unique even compared to modern games. The calligraphic brush strokes are so striking and I especially love the subtle ink bleed outside of the outlines, it honors traditional media so well. honestly this game's style in general is one of a kind

love how playful these are! i forgot how much i loved this game

Journey (Matthew Nava)

- (although it is an artbook I've only been able to see a few of the pages! Nava does have an archived GDC talk where he presents the book that I still have to take a look at) I found the color script for the complete story interesting since it shows both the color corresponding with the literal height of the mountain for the hero's journey that the game was so inspired by. Plus the alternate designs for the iconic main character are so cute!

masterfully crafted experience... i think this is the first time i've seen a color script for a game? (although i guess i'm not that familiar with games)

These aren't actual art books but I really like the concept art for them:

Transistor (Jen Zee)

- my favorite Supergiant game! It's a shame there's so little of the concept art out there (I'm pretty sure I saw more years ago but I couldn't find them more recently... link rot grr...) Jen Zee's painterly style is gorgeous and the colors are so warm, so uncharacteristic of the cyberpunk genre we're typically familiar with! her art was also a big inspiration for me when I was younger

Apex Legends

- apex does have an artbook but l mainly enjoy looking at the character designs and the transition screens for compositions (especially the season 4 Revenant's trailer ones, one day I hope my background/environment art can reach a level anywhere close to that). The character designs and overall setting are different from my usual style so it's cool to see the attention to detail in fabric texture, prop design, worldbuilding, etc. and try to apply it to my designs

this transition has such a strong sense of narrative in the illustration, it impressed me so much i drew something inspired by it (i'm not sure who the original artist is, i thiiink it's liam mcdonald...?? i really hope i'm not misattributing it;; out of the concept artists his illustrations look the most similar...?)

I'm interested in Outer Wilds' artbook and Disco Elysium's but I don't think I can look at those without spoilers! both phenomenal games that i really need to finish (i know outer wilds' main story but not echoes of the eye)

hit the limit on pictures 😔 and i've been sitting on this ask for a while... I feel like there are more artbooks that aren't coming to mind ahh I should really keep track of them better! thank you for the ask, it was nice to revisit these again 💞