Stephan Martiniere

This is the kind of art book that includes brief comments from the artist alongside the images, making it somewhat informative as well as beautiful. However, the attempt to be both is perhaps its Achilles heel. The first chapter, of book cover illustrations tending towards cityscapes and spacecraft, is a sheer feast for the eyes: spires seethe into distant skies, or coldly mechanical vessels loom amidst hazily coloured nebulae. The rest of the book mixes presentation art with design and show more preliminary sketches—especially the final chapter, a step-by-step look at the creation of the cover image. There are some sumptuous images to be found after the first chapter, notably of environments from the computer game Myst 5, but the alien creatures in particular are presented more as conceptual work than as things to be beheld with delight. (No doubt this reflects their origins in film and game design work.) The result is a book that sometimes overwhelms with sublimity, and sometimes tries primarily to engage a technical curiosity; and arguably these two aims are not best served by a single volume. Anyone who cares for both futuristic sublimity and light technical detail, however, is unlikely to feel short-changed. show less