The Cinematic Art of World of Warcraft: The Wrath of the Lich King

Gaming fans have been waiting more than two years for WRATH OF THE LICH KING the latest addition to World of Warcraft. Now, they can experience Northrend’s icy steppes and uncharted mountains through the art and imagination of the creative team behind this epic game. Containing more than 150 drawings, concept art pieces, and final renders, as well as secrets of game mythology and development stories, this mesmerizing book reveals how Blizzard Entertainment’s acclaimed series gets made. In addition to a behind-the-scenes technical look at the game cinematics and developmental art, Fans learn how Blizzard updated Arthas the Death Knight to be even more evil than in Warcraft III and how a new central character, Sindragosa the Frost Wyrm, was developed. Other features explore technical dimensions and Blizzard’s influence on the game world and beyond. EACH BOOK COMES WITH: Two 8” x 10” original art cards in vellum sleeve and a 12-page illustrated storybook on the creation of the frostwyrm Sindragosa, that make this a must-have for any WoW fan.

 (7 customer reviews)

Customer Video Review Length:: 0:18 Mins

The publisher of this book is Insights Editions, one of my favourite publishers. Their art books always have extra goodies, at least for the ones I bought. In this case, there are two 8" x 10" original art cards in a tipped-in-vellum sleeve and a 12-page booklet on the creation of Sindragosa.

This is a paperback book and the binding doesn't look strong. Strangely, no hardcover version alternative is available. The pages are rather glossy and oily fingers will definitely leave smudges. They are given the silver-color treatment and the text printed on these silver "plates" is extremely classy.

The book details the production process of the animation in great detail. There is conceptualization, story development, character development, production design and even the 3D execution. To make the book complete, they also included how they did the soundtrack and audio.

On the art side, it starts off with storyboards on the introduction of...Read more

I picked this up on a whim because I'm a fan of concept art and I thought the cover was cool. I actually started playing World of Warcraft AFTER I got the book. You'd think a cinematic that runs about 3 minutes and 30 seconds wouldn't been enough to make a whole book about. But man it is! There are a lot of pictures here, but that's not a bad thing. It's utterly flabbergasting the amount of work, love (and surely some blood, sweat and tears) went into the creation of the Lich King, the dragon Sindragrosa and their environment.

The concept art was probably my favorite part. You get to see tons of beautifully rendered art. The section on the actual construction of the CGI images is also fascinating for someone who knows only the basics of how this work is done. An elaboration on some of the more technical passages might have been nice but it doesn't detract from the book.

My copy, at least, seems to have a printing error. A couple pages are printed twice. There...Read more

OMG I absolutely love this book. It's inspirational for any artist out there, even if you're not an artist the art is just really awesome to look at. This book is a must for your library.