Book Review: Out of Picture Volume 1

From the back cover:

OUT OF PICTURE is a collection of short illustrated stories by a group of artists from professional backgrounds ranging from editorial illustration and children's books to storyboards and animation, who all worked together at Blue Sky Studios. This book showcases their eclectic interpretations of the comic book form.

OUT OF PICTURE is a graphic novel anthology series just like the Flight series, except the format here is much larger.

The featured artists are Greg Couch, Daisuke Tsutsumi, Andrea Blasich, Vincent Nguyen, Daniel López Muñoz, Nash Nunnigan, Michael Knapp, Benoit le Pennec, Robert Mackenzie, David Gordon and Peter de Sève.

Each piece is rendered with unique artistic style. Daisuke Tsutsumi's piece "Noche y Dia" weird world is created using earthly colour tones, the dark eerie and psychological "Newsbreak" by Michael Knapp or the elaborate caricatured characters by Daniel López Muñoz. Included at the back of the book are some development sketches for each story.

Since this is a graphic novel, ultimately, it's the story that matters (to me anyway). In that aspect, I felt most of them lack story punch. Some I could read but couldn't absorb, hence easily forgettable. The ones with less text or no text are not surprising easier to understand. I guess a picture is still worth a thousand words. Ultimately, OOP is a nice to look at but lacking in depth.

You can find its accompanying blog at outofpicture.com.

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Here are direct links to the book:
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