The Crafting of Narnia: The Art, Creatures, and Weapons from Weta Workshop by Daniel Falconer

The Crafting of Narnia: The Art, Creatures, and Weapons from Weta Workshop Reviews

• 
  Meer

  Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful (I can't stop saying beautiful) pictures and the art. I've always loved the movies about Narnia for the fantasy of what's depicted, but I've never thought about all the art behind it. And how it is written… Funny. Can't wait to rewatch al the Narnia-movies again with this new info.
• 
  Michael Reilly

  This visual record of the creative processes behind the first two films of The Chronicles of Narnia displays the work of many talented artists and designers, each utilising their personal skills and vision to collaboratively shape the world of Narnia. The book features an uncluttered layout allowing most art to be showcased at a large size, with informative text offering suitable insight regarding production needs and the desired development of a coherent world.
  
  This broad range of loose sketches, illustrative studies, finished art, maquettes and prop photography is of an excellent standard – and there’s plenty of it – showing the effort involved to realise what was finally seen on screen. 300+ pages of inspiring ideas and some fascinating execution that should easily please anyone with an interest in Weta Workshop’s impressive output.
• 
  Parka

  
  
  (More pictures at
  parkablogs.com)
  
  The full title of the book is "The Crafting of Narnia: The Art, Creatures, and Weapons From Weta Workshop".
  
  Weta Workshop is the Academy-Award winning special effects house that has also created the world for Lord of the Rings and King Kong. That's Middle-Earth and Skull Island.
  
  Many books have been released in companion to the Narnia movies. If you're looking for the art book, this is the one.
  
  This book contains the concept art done in preparation for the two movies, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.
  
  There are detailed photography, never before seen drawings, sculptures, props, minatures and paintings. All these are created for the characters, weapons, armour and the set. Movie stills are few.
  
  Particularly interesting are the character designs because they show the evolution. Several designs are shown for each character, including sculptures. Weapons and armour designs are also heavily featured. The designs are intricate and many high resolution photos are provided of the actual weapons used on set — the swords, shields, axes and the like. There are few drawings for the landscapes.
  
  The commentary that follows along explains the ideas and background story relating back to the book. It works essentially like a tour guide explaining to the tourist in a new place.
  
  Fantasy concept artists should like this book, and also fans of Narnia. It's an enjoyable read.
  
  This review was first published on
  parkablogs.com. There are more pictures and videos on my blog.
• 
  Joel Griswell

  Beautiful book! I absolutely love these "art of the film" books, for a fanatic of both painting and films, this is a dream come true. Specifically, it's great to find books that truly honor the Art teams in films and their incredible work, that despite filling every frame of the films, often get overlooked. Anyways, Narnia is certainly a rich universe to explore, and the artwork contained within is simply gorgeous. I always find it fascinating to see all the different design explorations, seeing how ideas explored, different artist's take, director's input, etc, until finally arriving at the final product. Thus, these books are not only a collection of beautiful artwork, but a true look behind-the-scenes into the designing of a film. In this case, the description accompanying the images isn't quite as useful, I thought, as some others I've read (like Star Wars or LOTR), but the art speaks for itself. Breath-taking!
• 
  Jeni Enjaian

  It is easy to say that I am mildly obsessed with books about art and design, the behind the scenes of some of my favorite movies. This might be my least favorite out of the ever growing collection of this type of book but I have to clarify that statement. I love the others so absolutely much, this book (which I rated with four stars) just doesn't come quite to a five star rating.
  It is still absolutely amazing. The artists' craft is amazing. It also significantly helps that I am more than mildly obsessed with the Chronicles of Narnia anyway. After not having watched the movies for a little while (or read the books) I now have bumped both of those to the top of my list to get back into.
  For anyone who loves this genre as I do, this is a fantastic book and definitely something worth adding to a personal collection.
• 
  Violetta

  Not the greatest art book to come from Weta, but the things it had going for it were - simplicity, coverage, and concept art. The downside (just in my opinion) was the limited scope of the drawings presented. Both films (Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe as well as Prince Caspian) are covered in 300 pages, so understandably they had to be selective as to what went in the book. It just seemed like they had a lot of repetition in what was shown with very little development art - though if you're into maquettes, this book is a great resource.
• 
  Jess

  Lots of concept art for any fan of the Narnia movies. However, since Weta was only part of the design team this time (as opposed to, say, Lord of the Rings, where they handled pretty much everything) there was less content on character design - the main focus was on weaponry.
• 
  Courtney

  Very detailed and thorough - after reading, I really felt like I understood the thoughts and experimentations with which each artist toyed.
• 
  Abigail

  Brilliant and very in depth look at the creation of these wonderful worlds on film