Book Review: Legendary Visions: The Art of Genzoman

It's a cool idea to do character designs from mythology and folklore, to be able to see a manga-style interpretation on these mythical characters.

Some of the mythology included are the Greek, Arabian, Japanese, Norse and many miscellaneous ones. The illustrations aren't grouped in any way, unfortunately, and they don't even appear alphabetically.

Genzoman's illustrations are beautiful, mostly printed full page except for the few he did for the Castle Age MMORPG. The costume designs are wonderful to look at. There are plenty of characters like sexy pirates, gods, and creatures like dragons, mermaids, etc. All comes with a short description on who they are. The book has numerous scantily clad female characters.

The quality of art is great but there's something off about the illustrations which I'll attribute it to the pin-up style format, more specifically the choice of perspective which is mostly straight on. There would be more dynamism if higher view points were chosen - anything above eye level, even if it's just a bit. Basically, the use of comic book perspective and poses once in a while will bring the art to a higher level.

The binding of this book is fragile, the type that will have your pages detach from the spine if you open the book too wide. Good binding continues to be a hit and miss for Udon. I wish they would just change to a new printing company and stop putting good art in poorly constructed books.

It's a good book for fans of manga style and mythology. The binding is yet another disappointment.

You can check out even more work from Genzoman on deviantART.

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This book was borrowed from Basheer Graphic Books for review purposes. You can order the book from them. Check with Basheer on Facebook or visit their website.

Legendary Visions: The Art of Genzoman is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN)

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This book was borrowed from Basheer Graphic Books for review purposes. You can order the book from them. Check with Basheer on Facebook or visit their website.