So a few weeks ago I ordered a Hell Girl (Jigoku Shoujo) art book and I got it in the mail yesterday... it's so gorgeous.

I only have one other 'real' art book, and this makes me sad. They're so beautiful and they never fail to warm my heart when I flip through the pages so I was wondering...


Would you please let me know? I'd love to hear how many other people have some of these awesome books. And if you don't mind sharing the quality that would be great, too! (If it was worth the price, if it's a good amount of pages, etc)

It's also cool if you want to share some other special or unique books that might double as a sort of art book. (I.G. The Inuyasha Profile Book) It doesn't have to be anime, but YIM safe at least, please.



I currently have:

~The Hell Girl Official Visual Book
(Thick gloss paper, textured cover, not many pages, OOP import so kind of expensive)

~DearS Art Book
(Average gloss paper, cover has sparkles, fair amount of pages, OOP import so kind of expensive)

~The Inuyasha Profile Book
(No color, lots of print mistakes, lots of pages, okay price)

~Princess Ai Color Me Illustrations
(No color, good quality images, few pages, good price)

~Final Fantasy XIII Collector's Edition Guide
(Thick gloss paper, hardcover, lots of pages, lots of illustrations, average price for game guide)


..and the Okami Official Complete Works in the mail. I'll add it when it gets here!



I'll add in more tiny previews for the other books soon! If you want to see more picture of ones listed here, let me know!

I'm not too sure if this is what you mean, but a few years back I was completely in love with the Fushigi Yugi series by Yuu Watase and a friend of mine bought me a wonderful book called The Art of Fushigi Yugi (Shojo Series).

I'm not sure how much it was, as it was a gift but the details in the book were fantastic. There is a lot of help with certain features (eyes.mouth.hands) and things like that.

It also contained a lot of other not so picture oriented information about the series which as nice for someone like me, who cannot draw to save my life, but loved reading up on things the author had to say about each individual drawing and the likes.

:3

I have so many art books laying around that it is ridiculous. So I will upload my 4 favorite ones for now.

First up...



Luis Royo was one of my FIRST all time favorite artists. (Along with Julie Bell) He used to do X-Men Fleer Ultra cards, and I have his Superheros and Heroins book around here too. (It was far too big for my scanner >_< ) Needless to say he and Bell fed my X-Men addiction for several years.

This particular book is hard covered and includes several hand written notes on what he was thinking while drawing. They are not clean sketches at all, you can see clearly where he moves limbs, and does several finished versions of the same idea until he finds one he likes.

Next...



But of course, right? I love this book. It is mainly manga scans (which I adore far beyond screen shots, although it has a few of those too) and at the back there are height charts and tid-bits of information.

I also have the Profiles book, but that book is more information filled than art filled. So I kinda clump them together.

And then...



Huge HUGE fan of Witchblade the comic. While this book does not show any progress sketches or anything like that, it DOES show a full character development, and offers a wide variety of different art styles for said character. It is always interesting to me to see how a character looks through someone else's point of view. It also includes the original art done by Mike Turner who sadly passed away just this past year from a long battle with cancer.

This book kind of opened me up to doing more... I dunno... organic things? Not everything is a clean line or makes perfect sense (as far as Turner's style goes) and it also is full of dramatic lighting and whatnot that I someday hope I can include in my own art work.

Finally...



This is quite possibly the most prized book I have. I have read this book cover to cover. I have learned that the characters are NOTHING like what they were originally sketched to be. The thought processes and the work processes are all included with this book ALONG with original art, screen shots and progress animation shots.

This book has held THE MOST valued information I have had as an artist/ creator. It has taught me that NOTHING NEEDS to be what it starts out to be, and if you let yourself wander in the land of possibility you will create something amazing.

That is more or less it. Like I said, I have a TON more art books, but I'd fill up an entire thread all on my own of it ^_^

Those all sound awesome guys. TTuTT I've never seen/red Fushigi Yugi, but I've heard good things about it, that book sounds amazing.

And UNFFF Terri D:~ I'm jellyyyy. I need to check out the Inuyasha art book. >3> The other ones you have look beautiful, too. ;; I also want to see about that Avatar book...

I don't have many art books yet, but I love them. I have the Avatar: The Last Airbender Art of the Animated Series and my only other one is the Tangled art book, which I don't have quite yet. I have it ordered, but it won't be in for quite a while as it was out of stock.

You have a lot of awesome art books Terri. The Witchblade one looks especially wonderful. I'll have to look into that one. Luis Royo's looks fantastic too.

I've got a copy of The Art of Inuyasha. It's a pretty nifty book. Great for reference. I love a lot of the concept sketches in there from when the anime was in production, particularly some of the scenery.

FFFFFFFFFDjgfdhjshakd it has concept sketches? I LOVE CONCEPT SKETCHES. TTuTT

Especially when you get to see initial character renderings or ideas.. and the ways they changed to become the character that they were finalized as.

Blue- I WANT that Tangled book. I need to get it so we can fangirl together!

I totally recommend Fushigi Yuugi...it's so romantic and eeeeeeeeeeee >.< <3 <3 <3

Unfortunately I have no art books of my own! But I am looking to buy some on amazon =D

Soon.....muhauha!

I art too but I was never really able to reproduce the quality of the comic-book art I really liked. So I had to improvise. I've managed to collect 'How to Draw' guides over the years fortunately, from a couple dedicated various hints about life-drawing by Barrington Barber I think, and a great drawing guide giving hints on how to realistically draw animals by Doug DuBosque.

I have a couple other image guides from the Lord of the Rings films, replete with colour photographs and info that I used for people-reference. A couple DVD's of a good wildlife documentary on Big Cats I referenced recently for the picture of a two-tailed firecat (points at Avatar image) for a Naruto piece of fanart.

I've managed to find a few good art to books on drawing anime, and manga, but they're not very detailed. I can't recall who wrote them off the top of my head either. The best guide I have is by Steven Beaumont, but it's focused on drawing fantasy characters in action poses (like elves, trolls, wizards etc). Basic but good. I use this one the most for guidance on drawing detail. It's the best one I like.

There's another one that I have which is passably okay, by Kevin Walker,but it's more focused on painting with actual paint and brushes, and using different staining techniques with water colour and ink. Okay, but I don't really hand paint. I hand draw and use Photoshop to colour since it's quicker.

I've got a handful of comics from an old series called 'Forge' but the company that made them went into receivership a couple years ago. The art is good quality though and I use it for some referencing for clothes and stuff. I prefer to draw beasties though at the moment. People are difficult.

I like the manga and anime styles but I find them hard to replicate. I also prefer a more realistic look in my artwork, since I try to use a lot of photo-references, and or video references to be more accurate. But there is one guide I use quite a lot when I try to draw peeps, or anime/manga style, even though I'm fairly crap at it. It's a fairly good one called 'Creating Superheroes and Comic Book Characters' by Jim Hansen and John Burns. It goes through various comic styles, and hits on manga too.

I like it. It has detailed enough guides, but the one by Steve Beaumont drawing fantasy characters I find is much better.

I don't have any actual proper manga books. It's hard to get them unless I order online, but yeah super paranoid about that, so I avoid it. I do have a select few anime DVD's of bits and pieces, and I use those alot for image referencing. Naruto's my favourite though, since Inuyasha hasn't come my way just yet.

~ Pyre

I have the art of inuyasha which i got when i was 13 or 14 i think.

Naomi wrote:
I totally recommend Fushigi Yuugi...it's so romantic and eeeeeeeeeeee >.< <3 <3 <3

Unfortunately I have no art books of my own! But I am looking to buy some on amazon =D

Soon.....muhauha!

Isn't it just?

And I completely recommend it to anyone who wants to learn/read up on a new art style. Its pretty different from the traditional styles and artwork I usually see. (Although I will admit that I am not familiar with too much variety)

Here's a picture of what the actually book looks like:

That art book really looks pretty... D: My only problem is I'd probably want to read/watch the series after I got the book, and I'm reluctant to start the series because of... spoilers people dropped on me. OTL;

Its really a very good read. Its 13 books for the first part, and 4 books for the second. I also own the anime version but it only covers the frst 13 books.