Shadowline: The Art of Iain McCaig
By Iain McCaig

"What is

About the Author
IAN MCCAIG'S commitment to storytelling has taken many forms: concept designer, illustrator, animator, and screenwriter. A veteran of Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), Lucasfilm Ltd., and George Lucas's premier film production company, JAK Films, he was one of the principal designers of the Star Wars saga and garnered an Emmy Award for People, a Disney Channel production.

NICK SAGAN, the son of Carl Sagan, was the "voice of children from planet Earth" on the voyager spacecraft, and is now a screenwriter for television, including several episodes of the later Star Trek series, and the best-selling author of the critically heralded sci-fi series The Idlewild Trilogy.

Nice addition to any Sci-Fi concept art library
Nice large coffee-table size book filled with fantasy art by the author in a variety of media ranging from pencil sketches and mixed media to digital painting. It includes six small booklets on art fundamentals and story-boarding basics that echo McCaig entertaining conceptual art workshops at the Game Developers conference and provide useful exercises and a good starting point for beginning artists. The downside of the booklets is in that they are held in six separate tight paper sleeves mounted on 3 regular pages roughly in the middle of the book. Perhaps a sturdier and more elegant solution would have been to include them on an envelope/folio attached to the back of the book or to use thicker paper for those pages. While its nice to see much of his Star Wars work in a larger format, this material has already been published in the "Art of Star Wars" series. Personally I would have preferred to see more of McCaig unused Star Wars concepts, though probably Lucas owns the rights to those while saving them for future projects.

Great art book just lacking a biography
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R161FWB0SODSQ4 Iain McCaig has been in the art industry doing work for movie studios for a long time. In this book contains the work done for Star Wars prequel, Harry Potter and his concept art for other projects. Most of his work are belong to the fantasy genre.

In this book, a fictional interviewer called Bryon is created to introduce readers to the artwork and bring them into Iain McCaig's imaginative world. It's pretty amusing and reads like some fantasy adventure. My minor quibble would be that there isn't a biography of his illustrious career.

Insight Editions is the publisher of this thick and big book at 240 pages. It's hardcover with a beautiful matte dust jacket.

Inside are lots of glorious concept art, mainly to character designs. They are made up of paintings and sketches. Each is reproduced brilliantly on the glossy paper, showing intricate details of ink, pencil or colour strokes as well as the texture of the medium. The large pages enhance the viewing pleasure.

While there are some digital paintings, most of the illustrations featured are done using traditional medium, showing texture and grain.

This book is highly recommended to fans of Iain McCaig, fantasy artists, concept artists and character designers. It's very inspiring and overflows with creativity.

There are more pictures of the book on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.

Shadowline: A Journey into creativity

Art Books can be so predictable: A little art, a short biography, some more art, some sketches, and perhaps a listing of published art/projects. Shadowline is different. Yes, some of the art has been already been published in the Star Wars book, but some of the art has never been seen outside of Lucasfilm offices and sketchbooks. That is the cool part of the book, visually speaking. The concept/storyboards from unfinished projects like Peter pan, and John Carter of Mars is very welcome.

I have always wanted to see an animated version of John Carter, and perhaps the 3rd version from Disney will finally come through, although Dejah Thoris is always beautiful!

The imaginative part of this book is the interviewers journey to meeting Mr McCaig. The truth of the matter is that, the 10 year old concept of art is very true. When we draw withouth thinking what others think, we truly create. Nick Sagan and Mccaig give us a journey into art via the creative process, sorted by themes and storage locations.

Shadowlines is truly a unique book that lovers of fine art will appreciate.

Tim Lasiuta