Another fantastic video game art book is coming this fall from Dark Horse.
Yoshitaka Amano: The Illustrated Biography — Beyond the Fantasy explores a 50-year career that has included iconic imagery you will recognize from the Final Fantasy video game series. The landscape-style hardback clocks in at 328 pages and retails for $49.99 in a regular edition and $149.99 in a deluxe edition. Both include nearly 400 illustrations and photos from Amano’s career, which goes back to his first job in 197 working on Speed Racer at age 15 — long before he was a Final Fantasy designer.
(This would make an excellent companion for collectors of the Final Fantasy Ultimania Archive, releasing this summer.)
In addition to different colors based on the artist’s favorite hues and the traditional laquerware craft of his father (black, red and gold), the deluxe Limited Edition also contains a 96-page Paris Sketchbook following Amano through the French capital in a photo essay collecting sketches of people he encountered, a portfolio with a region-free Blu-ray disc, subtitled in English, featuring almost three hours of talk and interview with the creator and the documentary makers containing bonus information and archival images not in the biography.
“You’ll walk with Amano through the streets of Paris, shop with him for drawing supplies and art books, and experience a ‘live draw’ in his studio, showing Amano’s exact technique from blank sheet to finished Vampire Hunter D painting!” according to Dark Horse.
A mini-lithograph of the Vampire Hunter D painting and a Final Fantasy illustration is also included in the portfolio — and, finally, the Yoshitaka Amano: The Illustrated Biography — Beyond the Fantasy Limited Edition features an individually signed card from the artist himself.
