Book Review: UDON's Art of Capcom: Complete Edition

UDON's Art of Capcom: Complete Edition is quite an artbook to behold. This is the largest artbook ever from Udon at 600 pages. Very impressive indeed.

The first thing to note is this is actually the compilation of two earlier artbooks from Udon, namely Udon's Art of Capcom (304 pages) released in 2007 and UDON's Art of Capcom 2 (284 pages) released in 2010. So if you have those two artbooks, you're going to see mostly duplicated artworks, and hence it's not going to be worth buying it again. If you don't have those two artbooks, then this is a great collection to get into Capcom art.

Unlike most of Udon's artbooks, this is a hardcover edition. The cover art is beautiful. Binding is great for a book this thick. The book looks and feels great overall. However, I feel that the paper is slightly thinner but not really a major issue. The reproduction quality is still top notch with good colours and sharpness.

The content in the book are arranged by the games, namely Street Fighter (342 pages), Darkstalkers (64 pages), Rival Schools (22 pages), World of Capcom (48 pages) and other game projects (119 pages). The edge of the pages are colour coded to these five sections.

The last section on other game projects is actually also based on the main games such as Street Fighter, Darkstalkers etc. The main difference is here the artworks aren't splash art pages but miscellaneous art like game sprites, ending cut scenes, environment art for the stages, comic panels based off the games, and other stuff.

So what's new?

Well, the new artworks are the ones created after 2010 when UDON's Art of Capcom 2 came out. It can be difficult to spot the new ones because artworks in the books are credited with the artist names and purpose but the year is usually left out. But from the few I know are new, they are the box art for Marvel vs Capcom 3 Collector's Edition, cover art for the hardcover limited editions artbooks, Marvel vs Capcom 2 promo art and storyboards, and a handful of others.

All in all, this is an amazing artbook. The art is fantastic and it's definitely value for money. Highly recommended.

If you're shipping this book out of USA, watch out for the additional weight surcharge just before you confirm your purchase. For overseas buyers, you might want to compare prices with your local bookstore and consider getting it locally, or get it from Book Depository where the shipping cost is included in the price.

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