Book Review: Heaven's Hell: The Art of Anthony Jones
Heaven's Hell is a project where Anthony Jones imagines what afterlife could be like. This is essentially a character design book for characters that would populate the afterworld.
The characters do look interesting although I find that there are too many characters with strange helmets or headwear that covers the eyes. Perhaps they don't need to see in the afterworld. The artworks are drawn mostly in monotone while a few are coloured with a limited palette. The style is a mixture of digital painting, fine art, dark fantasy character creation. Anthony Jones is a fine artist and has good techniques as shown in the book. At the back of the book are four mini tutorials that look at the process of creating the characters.
While the idea of the project is an interesting one I felt this book is somewhat a missed opportunity. Only a handful of characters were given descriptions. The rest are just mysterious characters with no background or context. It would have been so much cooler if every character has a backstory.
Probably those who like dark fantasy and character designs will enjoy the book.
This book by the way is the result of a successful Kickstarter campaign that promised that the book would be shipped by July 2013. The book was delayed and came out more than two years late. WHAT?!? Needless to say, many supporters on Kickstarter were angry. It's apparent that there are many who like his art but it's not cool to disappoint supporters by making them wait for years. It will make people think twice about supporting your next project.
You can check out more of Anthony Jones' work at
https://www.artstation.com/artist/robotpencil
https://robotpencil.deviantart.com/
https://www.youtube.com/user/Robotpencildesign/videos
Heaven's Hell is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN)
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Here are direct links to the book:
Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.de | Amazon.fr | Amazon.it | Amazon.es | Amazon.co.jp | Amazon.cn
Comments
Parka, you might want to also
Parka, you might want to also add on the fact that Anthony Jones also released these artbooks onto Amazon, and didn't update his backers of his shady practices. As a result of his untimely behavior and unresponsiveness in honouring refunds for some of his supporters, I would not recommend such an artbook, and a result of his sloppiness, such an artist. I used to look up to him, ironically this issue which I discovered only recently is what made me lose respect for such a prolific artist and not want to support such artbook projects anymore.
A glimpse of the complaints can be viewed here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2131695070/heavens-hell-the-art-bo…
To anyone reading this, I hope that you are now more educated on why we shouldn't blindly support all high-profile concept artists, as we won't know what shady practices they are hiding. They aren't gods, after all.
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