The Art of Tomb Raider

The Art of Tomb Raider

Thanks to reader Brandon who alerted me of this book, The Art of Tomb Raider.

It's an impressive collection of art going over two volumes, 568 pages in total. The two volume set is house in a slipcase.

The publisher Dreams and Visions Press has ordered only a print run of only 2000 copies. The current pre-order price is $110 which will go back to $125 on 31 March 2010. If you're interested, you can get the book at, and only at, dreamsandvisionspress.com.

The shipping is a bit too dear for me though, at US$80.

Here's a look at what's inside the book, which you can view in HD on YouTube's page.

Comments

I LOVED Tomb Raider Underworld except for the giant spiders (I'm an arachniphobe). Great art direction.....

Never cared for Tomb raider, but that page count makes me dizzy! Now that's how an artbook should be :)

Unfortunately, the price makes me even dizzier. I see this is the same publisher that put out the expensive art of Ralph Mcquarrie book, which is something I've been wanting for ages but the price is a killer, especially with the shipping costs.

In any case, lovely looking book(s), no doubt the 2000 purchasers will be pleased.

The US$80 to ship to SG is pretty painful. A waste, since the book itself looks pretty awesome.

And I thought the Valkyrie Profile artbook was expensive.

I live in the city, Tomb Raider was originally from. :P Have a road dedicated to Lara Croft now. Artbook looks promising, wouldn't buy it if shipping was $80 though.

the shipping is a ripoff. check your local post office-> it´s a fantasy price. they just want to make more money.

Oh I love this but the shipping is as same as insane as the price of it itself. I could live with the 110 Dollars but 60 Dollar shipping? Jeah, that is really a rip off, asthe shipping from Uncharted 2 was too. What came to their mind? Don`t they want to make money?

This is crazy. Print 10.000 of it, sell it for 50 Bucks and make shipping 20. As much as I love Lara and the Art but I won`t throw my money in their mouthes.

D&VP is a small press which means they're not going to make 10,000 copies. They're creating projects that would never happen by a major publisher. If a major publisher had ever tried to do this book, they wouldn't have done it right.

D&VP can't ship for the low price that Amazon can because Amazon ships millions of items and so obviously they get great rates... but given how horribly damaged some books I receive from Amazon are, due to Amazon being completely clueless on how to protect books (especially heavier art books) for shipping, I would rather pay more for shipping than receive a damaged book and have to go through the hassle of sending it back.

You can imagine how heavy these books are, plus they are being shipped trackable by courier, so the shipping cost makes sense to me, so that the books will arrive safely. Unfortunately, the price is high for customers who do not live in North America. Again, it's a small print run, so they're not trying to run a global logistics operation in having easy distribution for every country.

The books are a collector's set for sure, but the benefit of D&VP being a small press (as opposed to the disadvantages, which I'm hearing seem to be mainly price of the set and price of shipping), is that they put an amazing amount of time and dedication into making these art books the best they can be. As one poster commented above, this is how art books should be - page count, deluxe hardcover, slipcase, etc.

If you watch the video, I think the books look fantastic, and that they'll be well worth the price. I own the Art of Ralph McQuarrie book, also by D&VP, and it's truly extraordinary, and well worth the price. These guys definitely know what they're doing when it comes to making art books. Art of Tomb Raider is going to be a beautiful set and an amazing addition to my art book library. I can't wait for them to start shipping!

I want a copy of The Art of Ralph McQuarrie. Dearly. And have for a year and a half now. But at $200 plus shipping, even here in the US, it's just too expensive. It used to be $125, then $165; but they're raising the price according to the remaining stock apparently... I only found out about it after their latest price hike...

The argument made above about D&VP being small may be valid to some extent. But why they couldn't have just gone with a larger publisher in the first place, I don't understand. I mean, Top Cow has a huge, beautiful hardcover of their works for $35 or so, plus free shipping (in the US at least). You can't tell me that Star Wars, one of the most popular and lucrative properties of all time, wouldn't have garnered more attention than Top Cow. A small and much less known property.

Sure, you might have sacrificed some of the finer packaging etc. with a larger publisher, but let's be real. It's about the art. With the right publisher and price point, they would have sold tens of thousands of these. At least IMO...