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Book Review: The Art of Kung Fu Panda 2

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I love the first film and its art book. This second art book is almost awesome-ness volume 2. If you're unable to get the first art book for whatever reasons, you should definitely get the second art book while it's still in stock.

It's a hardcover 156-page art book. The concept art is fantastic. It consists of character designs, background paintings and storyboards. Everything's printed big. The commentary are on the story and characters so that's always interesting.

Nicolas Marlet is still the character designer. There are additional character designs here, those that didn't make it the first film, and those created for the second film. The new gang of characters are mainly the bad guys. There are lots of sketches of expressions and characters in their kung fu stance. Mr Ping, Po's dad, is also given coverage as the history of Po is uncovered.

The background art is inspired by Chinese towns, architecture and paintings. The set design is wonderful. It's really cool to see old Chinese buildings designed and used in animated films, to great effect I must add.

Now for the disappointing thing about the book, the binding is bad. After reading for a while, the pages came off the spine and now hanging by the threads that hold them together. I was hoping this would not happen because the Rango art book I bought also came with a bad binding, also published by Insights edition. Again, maybe I received a copy from a bad printing batch - I said that in the other review too.

Anyway, if you're getting this book in UK or Europe, it's distributed by Titan Books. The prices are slightly different. Not sure about the binding quality for that.

Overall, it's awesome-ness with a bit of letdown. Sounds strange? Yes, unfortunately.

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Titan Books publisher:
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