The Art Of Usagi Yojimbo

This was a gift. Excellent experience.

Collecting the novels but also love the single issue comic book titles? This is the book! You can have the cover art while collecting the novels. Love looking through this.

Item arrived promptly in the condition stated Thanks! recommended!!

I have waited a long time to own this book and I'm so thrilled to finally own it. The format is beautiful, the content is incredible and fascinating, especially if you're a fan. This should appeal to long time fans and provides a great introduction to Usagi's world too!

A great book to get inspiration for your own artwork, also just a great book for anyone who loves Stan's artwork. It has a small intro discussing Stan's process for creating his comics, and the rest is just beautifully printed artwork. Worth the money!

Great art and well presented!

As a long time fan of Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo, I was thrilled to receive The Art of Usagi Yojimbo as a gift recently. Unlike most of the more recent art anthologies put together from comic artists, this book is focuses more on the art, and less on giving information regarding the design, art, and story process. The first 26 pages of the book were by far the most interesting. Sakai illustrated a comic on how he write the story, designs storyboards, and creates the comic illustrating process from start to finish. He shows the difference between the different inking styles, the editing process, and describes the sheer amount of research he has to do to get the Feudal Japan details noted in the comic to be historically accurate. These first 26 pages are informative and exciting to see.The remainder of the book focuses purely on the art of Usagi Yojimbo. Pages 27-42 has full pages of the evolution of Miyamoto Usagi from a black earred angry looking rabbit, to the rabbit we know today. The first Usagi Yojimbo story is also included in these pages. The remainder of the book is pure Usagi art in the form of color prints, full page comic reprints, painted prints, and unseen art that were either not shown due to editing, or because it wasn't chosen to be printed at the time. The sections are divided by large opaque vellum sheets, which don't add much, but make the prints underneath look pretty cool. The book is divided up as so:1. Creative Process2. Beginnings3. Early Years4. Painted Stories5. Middle Years6. Paintings and Color Art7. Recent Years8. GalleryFor those who like guest artists, the gallery features art from various arts who drew black and white imagines of Usagi in their own unique style. Artists include Segio Aragones, Paul Chadwick, Geoff Darrow, Peter Laird, Frank Miller, Tim Sale, Jeff Smith, William Stout, Matt Wagner, and Andi Watson. I would've liked to see more renditions, or even color renditions of these artists, as their styles are so unique - it's always fun to see Usagi in different forms.Overall, if you're a Usagi Yojimbo fan, you really can't go wrong with this art collection. Again, I would've liked to see more of the artist process as well as more of the thoughts that Sakai had regarding the various storylines of the comics he drew over the years. That said, I did enjoy seeing the comics and artwork in larger scale, as it was much easier to see all the details put into each image. This is definitely worth considering for adding to your Miyamoto Usagi collection.

Most of this type of overview book contain all the obscure and often minor not very interesting work by the artist. That material is here- though the difference is much of Stan's obscure work is as interesting as his best work along with very clear images of many key drawings from his decades on Usagi. You can watch him and his characters develop over time. And yes it is a lot of pretty pictures but as a fan of Usagi, it was wonderful to see a lot of his best work closer in size the original art and withotu over printing or color. If you have never read Usagi I would strongly suggest you pick up one of the collections as it is one of the best written and drawn comics of the last two decades- you wil lbe surprised at what he does with his furry version of Japanese history.

The ultimate combo. This book combines Stan Sakai's amazing artwork with interesting meta and background on character designs. It's just perfect for all UY fans out there. I can't stop leafing through the pages! It is well balanced between meta, art, drafts and interviews. Plus, it is a very interesting read about feudal Japan and all things comic book author related.A true masterpiece!

The artwork is great