Book Review: KOLONIE: the forgotten frontier
Here's the followup to the preview of KOLONIE earlier. I've reused some portions of the text here.
There are two editions, the hardcover and paperback. I've the paperback. It's a large book, slightly larger than A4 in size. 160 pages total.
I like the concept Design Studo Press is using to publish some their books. Choosing a theme and then creating a concept art book based on that theme. Some of them are Alien Race, Exodyssey or even Worlds: A Mission of Discovery.
The concept here is about a new found planet called Kolonie. It was industrialised for its oil, and then abandoned when oil was replaced by other energy sources.
The premise is simple but the exciting part comes from how the two artists, Patrick Hanenberger and Christian Schellewald, visualise that new world. It's must be pretty fun coming up with the various concepts.
The concept art is on the deserted areas, the cities, oil pumping plants, spaceports, and environments. It reminds me of photos I see online on deserted places. It's a dystopia where there are still people living, so there are some character designs as well. There are also designs for taxis, race cars (hobbies of people there), the non-drilling areas and other interesting stuff.
Most of the illustrations are printed huge. Some sketchy, some detailed. But all give a nice idea of what it's like on Kolonie. They are sort of like plein air sketches on an imaginary planet. The short descriptions for the various places provides additional interesting background stories. One or two pieces are pixelated because they are blown up too big - not really a big deal.
This book should appeal to concept artists.
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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.
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If you buy from the links, I get a little commission that helps me get more books to feature.
The hardcover is available at:
Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.de | Amazon.fr | Amazon.it | Amazon.es | Amazon.co.jp
This paperback is available at:
Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.de | Amazon.fr | Amazon.it | Amazon.es | Amazon.co.jp | Amazon.cn
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.
Comments
Awesome. I love these type of
Awesome. I love these type of books you post. I'm getting into concept art books more and more and I think I'll start collecting with this one.
it arrived today, and the
it arrived today, and the content is indeed really good, very allround, and its a refreshing breeze with some more unfinished pieces that still sell the concept. (all too often, we get pieces that are essentially polished to a rough look, which is something rather different - not worse, but a step beyond whats needed to sell an idea)
unfortunately, ive had slight problems with designstudio press titles before, and they prevail in this one as well: slightly messy printing, tiny smears of ink, slight printing misaligns resulting in blurry text - they never are enough to make them a complete dealbreaker, but that dsp provides this level of output rather consistently is a bit disappointing :(
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