Bruce Von Stiers

Along with the new WarCraft game from Blizzard comes a couple of novels, a strategy guide and a coffee table book art book. An art book you say. Yes, guys, there is a book that BradyGames has published that features page after page of full color drawings based on the characters in the game. The title of the book is The Art of WarCraft.

The book’s text was written by David B. Bartley and Bart G. Farkas. It also has a Foreword by Jeff Green, who is the Editor-In-Chief of Computer Gaming World.

The book is broken down into eight sections. You have drawings on the Humans, Orcs, Night Elves and the Undead. Other sections are for the Demons, the Visions of Azeroth, the World of WarCraft and Miscellaneous artwork.

There is a really cool drawing of a High Elf Ranger in the Humans section along with a tough looking 3D Paladin drawing. We get to see how well defined the faces were for the cut scenes in new game. The text lets us know about how Blizzard had to develop their own source code as there wasn’t any available to create this type of effect.

There are simple line art drawings all the way up to 3D illustrations in the book. Still shots from the cutscenes in the game are included as well. The illustrations cover characters from the earlier WarCraft games too.

This book is a must for any WarCraft fan or budding fantasy drawing artist. My son is one of those budding artists. As soon as I got this book in, Josh grabbed it up and pored over every page in it. Some of his drawings that he did based on things from the book weren’t too bad .I had to grab the book back off of Josh’s desk in order to write this review.

The Art of WarCraft can be found at bookstores like Barnes and Noble. You can also order it from BradyGames at www.bradygames.com. The book has a list price of $ 24.99.