Book Review: The Art of EVE

The Art of EVE is one of the more beautifully constructed art books. It's a hardcover with a translucent dust jacket and the letters "EVE" are cut out. It's housed inside a thick gray plastic slipcase that looks like dark brushed aluminum. The pages are all non-glossy matte black. Even the page edges are black.

EVE is a MMORPG video game set in a science fiction space setting. Players pilot customizable ships through a universe comprising over 7500 star systems.

This book contains the concept art for the game. There are plenty of amazingly intricate spaceship designs, be it sketches, highly polished illustrations or 3D renders without texture. The artists mention in the captions they are inspired by Star Wars, but their designs are unique and certainly bear no resemblance to that franchise. Most of the designs are printed large enough to see all the plates and parts of the spaceships.

There are plenty of captions talking about the making of the game and design ideas.

Also included at the character designs for the races, namely Amarr, Caldari, Gallente, Minmatar and Jove. About two pages each with fully coloured illustrations and pencil sketches. The few in-game screenshots are shown just to explain the interface design concepts behind. These includes the game icons. Right at the end are some cool photos of their art studio.

This book is for those who are into space, spaceships, planetary art and solar explosions. It's definitely a book well worth the money.

The contributing artists are Asgeir Jon Asgeirsson, Benjamin Bohn, Björn Börkur Eiríksson, Fridrik Örn Haraldsson, Hans Alan Tómasson, Hjörtur Bjarnason, Jóhann H. Jónsson, Jon Pall Halldorsson, Kari Gunnarsson, Oli Daniel Helgason, Reynir Harðarson, Torfi Frans Olafsson, Willem van Biljon and Þórhallur Þráinsson.

The Art of EVE is available at Eveonline.com, Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | JP)

The Art of EVE