Book Review: 新海誠美術作品集 空の記憶 ~ The sky of the longing for memories ~

Book Review: 新海誠美術作品集 空の記憶 ~ The sky of the longing for memories ~


The art book is presented in the landscape format, not the vertical format as shown on product images on the Internet.

This book contains the background paintings from the three recent anime Makoto Shinkai (wikipedia) has created. They are 5 Centimeters Per Second, The Place Promised in Our Early Days and Voices from a Distant Star.

If you've watched the three anime, you should know that the background art is stunningly beautiful. They are now collected into one book, reproduced brilliantly on the pages. The book's the size of two closed palms. Those illustrations could do better on larger pages.

I've often wonder how Makoto Shinkai creates his art. The answer is he uses reference. He would either paint of his reference photos or 3D renders to achieve that eternal-spring look. Right are the back are step-by-step screenshots of his workflow process. He would create his art using Photoshop and Light Wave, then composite them in After Effects.

The book is in Japanese and unfortunately, there are no translated editions around.

The sky of thet longing for memories is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | ES | JP)

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Visit Amazon to check out more reviews.

Here are direct links to the book:
Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.de | Amazon.fr | Amazon Japan

If you buy from the link, I get a little commission that helps me get more books to feature.

Here's Amazon Japan shipping rates for your reference.

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5 Comments

Thanks for the book reviews,

Thanks for the book reviews, been checking your blog and it's been helpful. How do you purchase these books from Japan? There are several books I'm interested in getting, but I can't understand the Japanese version of Amazon. Any feedback would help and thanks again.

I love the detailed art work

I love the detailed art work in this books it looks absolutely amazing. Its actually cheaper to buy it on eBay than directly on Amazon.co.jp as they charge an arm and leg for delivery. Delivery is actually more expensive than the book itself. Highly recommended

I don't recommend this at

I don't recommend this at all, the binding is terrible, and the impression quality was terrible, the impressions look as if the printer was running out of ink, I do LOVE makoto shinkai, but this artbook was a complete disaster in quality terms : (

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