Book Review: The Art of Mass Effect

January 26, 2010 by Parka

Update: Since Mass Effect 2 is coming out. I'm pushing this to the front page again in case you missed it. It's a great sci-fi concept art book.

This book was published in 2007 and so I have the chance to read through a few reviews on Amazon before I bought mine. After reading the book, I'm surprised that their reaction were pretty mixed.

There are five chapters in the book. The first two chapters are on the design of characters and creatures in the game. Chapter Three: Transport is on the different vehicle and airship designs. Chapter Four looks at concept art of objects like furniture, equipments and weapons. The last chapter contains matte paintings for the environment.

This book packs a lot of full colour illustrations with a few pencil sketches. All the art shown are very polished, as in they can be shown to any director who would then give the go ahead order. There are short captions on each page.

The very few game screenshots included are used mainly to compared the final rendering with the concept art. For example, there will be 3D model renderings compared to an actual set which is rendered with texture. There are plenty of matte paintings to look through, with several 3D models to go with some.

What's missing are the individual credits for each illustration. So we'll not know who did what. However, there's a list of artists who worked on the project are at the back of the book on a page. They are:

Derek Watts
Matthew Rhodes
Sung Kim
Adrien Cho
Fran Gaulin
Mike Spalding
Mike Trottier
Michael Jeffrey
Sasha Beliaev
Mike Higgins

This is a nice book for concept designers, sci-fi and game artists.

Visit Amazon to check out more reviews.

If you buy from any links on the blog, I get a little commission that helps me get more art books to feature.

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Comments

Got this when ME1 came out

Fuelreaver (not verified)
February 8, 2010,
29 weeks 3 days ago
Comment id: 1347

Got this when ME1 came out amazing art book.

Now i WISH Prima would have done a similiar thing for ME2.... instead they went for a Collectors edition guide, with a behind the scenes section at the back, that was full of very nice digital renders but NO concept art really at all..... Even the art book that came with the collectors edition version ofthegame, only really had more finished designs in it....

oh well.... lets hope for a release later, or maybe a HUGE Mass Effect Trilogy art book when all 3 are out. : )

I mean we knw just as much awesome art went into this game as the first, just look at those behind the scenes vids on their website.

Thank you for this review

Anonymous (not verified)
May 30, 2010,
13 weeks 5 days ago
Comment id: 2242

Thank you for this review Parka. I would love to buy this artbook, but I'm not sure if I should yet. You said the first chapters were about the characters and creatures. I already have seen a lot of concept art of the characters, but none of the "main cast" of the game. So I wanted to ask if there are concepts of them in this artbook?? Because that's what I'm actually looking for. I'd totally build you a church or something if you could reply to this, because that's the only thing I need to know before buying this : )