I recently purchased some art books related to video games and decided to review them and pit them against one another. One is a Capcom art book and the other is an SNK art book.
2009 is the year we make contact!
The competitors:
Title: Capcom Design Works
Year Published: 2001
Pages: 240
Region: Japan
Title: SNK Illustrations
Year Published: 1996
Pages: 192 pages
Region: Japan
Capcom has many years in the gaming industry and has various franchises that have become poplar throughout the past few decades. The company also strives itself in creating new installments for these franchises all the time. This art book showcases many of those franchises and will show off many different aspects from them. From character models, to beautiful multi-paged image spreads, to CG designs. This book has it all! Each image or illustration spread even includes designer comments and info on what design tool was used to create it (e.g. Photoshop). Unfortunately, the designer comments are in Japanese, and since I don’t understand Japanese symbols, I was unable to read the comments. Each artist also has an avatar next to their comments that illustrates themselves. A neat thing to side note is that artist Toshiaki Mori, pen name Shinkiro, has illustrations that are included in both art books! Yes, Shinkiro originally worked for SNK, but lost his job there when the company went bankrupt in 2001. Capcom immediately hired Shinkiro and had him work on many different projects. Some of his current work includes Dead Rising and Bionic Command Rearmed. You can see his work in the art book for the Capcom VS SNK game. Below are some pages from the Capcom art book.
Gallery
SNK, like Capcom, is also a seasoned company that’s been in the industry for a good length of time. It too, has a few franchises that have been popular throughout the last three decades. Right off the bat, the first section of the book shows all of the characters from The King of Fighters franchise. Well actually, this book focuses heavily on characters. Usually, it’ll show illustrations of characters doing some odd ball stuff. For example, you will see Terry Bogard playing a fighting game on a Japanese arcade cabinet or you’ll see a cast of characters around a Christmas tree. Some general information related to some franchises will be noted towards the end of the book. The last few pages will show off some rough sketches of characters. And yes, as mentioned above, a lot of Shinkiro’s work is included in this book.
Gallery
I enjoyed both of the books very much, but in the end, I preferred the Capcom art book.
I felt that it contained more variety as compared to what was shown in the SNK book. With Capcom, the art styles between each franchise were very dissimilar and seemed to show a unique feeling to what the franchise represented. Also, Capcom appears to have more artists, so many different art styles were shown. SNK, on the other hand, seemed to have a similar style throughout the book. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but it appeared more bland compared from what Capcom had.
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To be continued?
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