Shiro Amano: The Artwork Of Kingdom Hearts

I have recently gotten into collecting art book and Shiro Amano is fantastic illustrator and i'm a massive fan of Kingsom Hearts, ill be keeping my eyes out for more awesome art books!

I have to recommend this book to anyone that loves Kingdom hearts! book pages are all glossy and brand new, the artwork inside is just as expected from Kingdom Hearts, and to make things all the better the book also comes with its own fit in pouch to keep it from getting damaged edges. I am 100% pleased with this!

Friend absolutely loved it, only downside was the plastic cover that it comes with was extremely scuffed - did do its job in protecting the actual book though! Beautiful illustrations inside.

Beautiful and inspiring artwork. Got me inspiration to continue my animation talents.

The Book cover and feel 1. The book is a glossy cover (paperback with a fold on the sleeve). There's a plastic Slide-in cover for this with two see through symbols - MickMouse head Icon on the front for Sora,Kairi, & Riku to show through. - keyhole symbole on the back for Micky, Naminé and Moogle to see through. It's ok, but not fantastic or eye catching (for example, lets say the cover of the Final Fantasy X official artbook with Tidus and Yuna on the front in a kind of Yin/Yang layout. One of my most favourite bits of Tetsuya Nomura artwork). And considering the extortionate money you'd usually pay for artbooks. The price here is ok. 2. The pages are semi-gloss. Fairly standard. Good stock/ nothing fancy. No semi-transparent or textured paper, nothing like that, although that would make some awesome ideas- example the Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD remix artbook has the original Sora design by Tesuya Nomura and the final artwork used in the game. Shiro Amano could have pushed for this feature for sketches/concept designs... but there's cost to consider. The artowrk itself is nice. Same colour/B+W stuff you'll find in the manga if you read them/bought them. book material and layout: 3/5 artwork: 4/5 cost/value for money: 4/5 Overall I give it 4 stars because I like it although there is a lot more room for improvement. I bet there are loads of unused artwork from Amano's desk. Interesting to see... If you don't like the Kingdom Hearts Manga/games (why are you reading this if you don't like KH?) deduct one star. I bet a KH fan would like it as a birthday present. Happy New Year from Ireland

the book was alot bigger then expected for some reason i thought it would be the same size as a standard manga nevertheless this was a pleasant surprise as well as the detail, colour and amount of pages included in it.

This book was originally a Japanese edition 天野シロ ART WORKS KINGDOM HEARTS that was published in 2007 and has since gone out of print. This English edition is published by Yen Press. It's a 112-page paperback that comes with a thin plastic slipcase. On the front you have a shape of Mickey's head that's transparent so you can look through to the cover. On the back is a transparent keyhole. The book collects Shiro Amano's artworks from the Kingdom Hearts manga series, namely Kingdom Hearts, Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories and Kingdom Hearts II. If you follow the manga series, you'll have a convenient collection of art from the covers and other illustrations collected here. Fans of the manga would already know what to expect from Shiro Amano, and should probably also like this book. To me, the quality of art is a mixed bag. There are two main styles here which I will loosely classify as painted without outlines, and the more anime and manga style with outlines. The ones with the outlines are generally quite good, the ones without can look kind of rough. There's one issue with the printing of text on several pages. As they are stretched across two pages, text in the middle got into the gutter which makes it difficult to read. For this book, I would definitely suggest checking out the interior pages before buying. (There are more pictures of the book on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)

Great addition to Kingdom Hearts collection