Art of Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag – Book Review
Launching an “Art of” book to coincide with the release of the latest big-budget Animation feature-film has become a staple tradition over the last decade or so. Aimed less at the average cinema-goer and more at the animation “connoisseurs” who love to spend their hard-earned doubloons poring over page after page of beautiful doodles, paintings, sculptures and digital models, Gamers have been a little starved of similar visual treats.
“An Art of book for a video-game?” I hear you cry, “Surely that would just be page after page of zeros and ones…ha…ha…ha” (an actual comment I’ve been privy too in a similar discussion.) Granted, an “Art of Pong” might not fill much more than a side of A4, but I’d argue Games as an art-form has moved on ever so slightly since the seventies.
A perfect example of how far video games have progressed artistically since those heady, “bleep, bleep, bloop” days is the new “The Art of Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag” written and edited by Paul Davies and published by Titan Books.
Adhering to the narrative-path of previous releases of the world-renowned franchise (over 57 million units sold worldwide) the period setting has again shifted to now be set amongst the Golden Age of pirates, thus changing the course of the franchise yet again towards a limitless sea of nautical-orientated adventures and swash-buckling acts of derring-do, taking the role of Pirate and soon to be Assassin, Edward Kenway, (The fact that I get to play as a Welsh, Pirate/Assassin means I bought into this game almost immediately.)
“We wanted to depict this young, brash character, born in Cardiff and raised in the UK. He is a young Privateer who turns to Piracy in the early 18th century. He learns how to become an Assassin after a couple of encounters.” The artists were inspired by characters like, “Bodhi, the charismatic surfer and bandit from Point Break and a couple of other historical references.”
Showcasing exclusive concept and development art from Ubisoft’s brand new title, (now on general release at all good supermarkets and online emporiums near you), the book is a veritable treasure-chest (pun intended) of character and environment concept art. The work on the characters is absolutely stunning to the point that you can almost smell the scent of rum the closer you get. The impressive thing that struck me about the character work was how dynamically posed each design was and how each pose perfectly expressed the character in a single image. With a huge cast including real historical figures like Blackbeard and Calico Jack, the artists really knocked this out of the park.
Similarly the environment work is of an equally high standard and some of the later, “Underwater” artwork has to be seen to be really appreciated. Having spent a few hours with the game on PS3 I can attest that the artwork has translated perfectly to the digital realm and from what I’ve seen on various internet sites, it looks stunning on the soon-to-be-released next-gen consoles.
My only gripe would be that, personally, I would have liked to have seen a little more of how the design work developed, there’s a lot of “finished” work in here and not enough lip-service paid to the evolution of the work, (draft sketches, doodles, reference work etc.) However that is a very small gripe, the book itself is absolutely stunning and I for one would be perfectly content to frame and mount the majority of it above my fireplace.
You can order your copy of “The Art of Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag” below.
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