Book Review - The Art of FOC

[BigTransformerTrev]

My copy arrived yesterday, and just finished getting through it tonight. These are my impressions of a book many of us have been waiting many delayed months for.


PRO’S
*Construction: The cover is a hardback, the dimensions are quite big and the pages are of the high quality one would expect of an art book. Also it’s decently thick for a book of drawings and sketches so you seem to be getting your money’s worth.
*Extra Back Story: Often the pieces go into a lot of detail that is not covered in the game. Of particular interest is how is how it discusses the Insecticons moving up from the subterranean levels of Cybertron due to the encroaching dark energon, and taking over areas of the surface, only to be found by Shockwave and put to use.
*Character Descriptions: Not only do they discuss the way the characters are portrayed in the game, but make numerous references to their original tech specs and also their bio’s from the Dreamwave MTMTE books.
*The art itself: This is an art book (duh!) and everything contained within are drawings and sketches, rather than the CGI that was used. The two main things you will be looking at are:
- Lots of the ‘could have been’ ideas, as well as the conceptual development process that many of the levels went through. Also some great concept art of characters whom were not included such as Drag Strip and Ravage.
- You also see great drawings of the characters in the game along with their descriptions and much of the art is stuff we would have seen on the games website and in magazines. The drawings of Perceptor and Megatron were very well done to my mind, and beautiful renditions of these characters. Also, great drawings of the weapons one uses in the game.


CON’S
*Missing Characters: Where was the art for Sideswipe? Where was the art for Ratchet, Ironhide, Air Raid, Warpath, Laserbeak, Rumble & Frenzy? It may have been felt that as these were NPC and had already appeared in War for Cybertron it was not needed, but I for one felt their absence.
* Wasted pages: At the end there are a couple of pages which just show things like the bright flash of the Space Bridge Wormhole. Certainly could have been better used to showcase other things.
*Quotes: The very first page has a few paragraphs from the artists. Then in the next few pages they quote entire sections of them, so you are essentially reading the same thing twice very early on. However this does not happen in the rest of the book.
* Character design development: As there is no CGI in this book, you don’t get to see any of the preliminary designs for the characters or the development process they went through to get to the finished product we play as.


These are all minor quibbles though. This is a great book to get if you loved the game and well worth the price (by the way www.thebookdepository.com is cheaper than www.amazon.co.uk if you are shopping online for it). Personally, I give it an 8.5 out of 10

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

I just recieved mine today and from my preliminary peruse, I am impressed. Nice and big. Love the hard cover. haven't had much of a look inside yet though (eating donuts and having coffee atm )so a closer look will have to wait, but I am excited!!

I think we need a poll on this thread.

[Paulbot]

I've only quickly flicked through it but so far I really like it. It's unlike any other TF book in my library. I've seen many books of this style showing scifi worlds from fiction or from movies, but Transformers has never had something that shows off Cybertron. Many of the painted pictures of Cybertron are just wonderful. The chapter "covers" in particular are gorgeous.

The character art is good too, but much of it we've seen before. The stuff we haven't though is a treat. There's a certain triple changer that looks awesome. The art work is better also than just using the game models IMO (better than the somewhat boring CGI renders in all the Bay Movie guide books).

For the G1 book nostalgics like me, some pictures do bring to mind Earl Norem's art in story book "Battle for Cybertron" (which of course also had the Autobots leaving a war-torn Cybertron).

It's bigger height/width wise than I expected. I also had the impression it would cover both games, not sure where I picked that up. But it's definitely purely FOC focused.

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

Went through it last night after work as a bit of before bed reading. While I like it a lot and it has lots of cool pictures, I will say that I am disappointed it hasn't gone into much detail on the design influences of the characters.

Teig briefly talks about Blast-off and how they adapted him to pre-earth mode, but that is in an intro to the book. When you get to the picture of Blast off, they spend more time reciting parts of his G1 bio and personality than anything else. this is the same for the others as well. I would like to have seen why they decided to settle on a certain design for each character. Why isn't Onslaught a flat bed truck? etc.

Another odd one is Grimlock. All that pre-release talking up of him and his page only has 2 pictures, both of which were used in promotional artwork.. Very few characters actually have concept sketches in the book. Bumblebee has quite a few. I think he is the only one. Surely they would have had a couple for the dinobots, Grimlock would have for sure.

Oh and no mention of the awesome map room either as far as I could see. Probably the most impressive empty room in the whole game and not a thing...

Nice to see some unused concepts as well. Springer as a triple changer, Broadside and Ravage too. All looking very nice. Now I want a FOC2/WFC3 even worse than before!. Heck I'd even settle for a Chronicles of Cybertron. That way they can even go back to before WFC.

[BigTransformerTrev]

Teig briefly talks about Blast-off and how they adapted him to pre-earth mode, but that is in an intro to the book. When you get to the picture of Blast off, they spend more time reciting parts of his G1 bio and personality than anything else. this is the same for the others as well. I would like to have seen why they decided to settle on a certain design for each character. Why isn't Onslaught a flat bed truck? etc.

Another odd one is Grimlock. All that pre-release talking up of him and his page only has 2 pictures, both of which were used in promotional artwork.. Very few characters actually have concept sketches in the book. Bumblebee has quite a few. I think he is the only one. Surely they would have had a couple for the dinobots, Grimlock would have for sure.

I agree I would have liked to have seen more concept sketches. But I suppose the title of the book is 'The Art of Transformers Fall of Cybertron' where subconsciously we may all have been thinking it might have been more of 'The Making of Transformers Fall of Cybertron'. So I suppose we are meant to look at the pretty pictures, rather than get the answers of the 'why' and the 'how'. Still a cool book though

[Paulbot]

When you get to the picture of Blast off, they spend more time reciting parts of his G1 bio and personality than anything else. this is the same for the others as well.

*Character Descriptions: Not only do they discuss the way the characters are portrayed in the game, but make numerous references to their original tech specs and also their bio’s from the Dreamwave MTMTE books.

I note that the book is written by Mark Bellomo, who did the same (annoying) thing in that G1 Guidebook he was responsible for a few years ago. For some reason he seems to think that the MTMTE guide books are the final word on those characters, when actually those bios really just reflect the Dreamwave G1 canon.

[i_amtrunks]

Had a quick flick when I got home last night and first impressions is that it is a looking book, not a reading book. Will do a more thorough read/reflection sometime after Christmas, but the art and sketches are lovely.

Far more impressed (artwise) with this book than the "Art of IDW" book I ordered at the same time.

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

I note that the book is written by Mark Bellomo, who did the same (annoying) thing in that G1 Guidebook he was responsible for a few years ago. For some reason he seems to think that the MTMTE guide books are the final word on those characters, when actually those bios really just reflect the Dreamwave G1 canon.

Yeah, I agree here. My biggest dislike of this book is Bellomo's work. I realise he probably wants to reference his quotes, but it comes across as a lazy way to fill text space. I tired of it in the G1 guide and don't want to see it again.

Just for the sake of curiosity I dug out my G1 Guidebook that he did to see if it was a straight copy n paste job. Even though it certainly feels that way, it wasn't.

I'd have much rather they had made some effort to interview the people who worked on the characters more than what they have just done.

But then like BigTransformerTrev said, it is an ART book, not a concept book. I got a bit focused on the concept side of things after reading Matt Teiger's intro section, expecting some interesting comments on character design.

As an art book, showcasing the work gone into the game it's very good. I just wish it had more in the thought process that went into coming to the conclusions that they did with the art and design of the game.

Still worth a pick up.