The Art of How to Train Your Dragon 2: Official Art Book with Visual Development, Animation Design, and Film Production Artwork

This book is as good as the artbook for the first film, The Art of How to Train Your Dragon . In other words, it's a beautiful artbook. The concept art is split between designs for the characters, dragons, environment and props. Hiccup and company from Berk are five years older now, and they are redesigned slightly to reflect their age. Nicolas Marlet is still the main character designer and a lot of his drawings are included. He still uses traditional media to draw in similar style the expressive and almost cartoon-like characters. Artist Zhaoping Wei provides the more finished look to the characters. Both the viking and dragon designs are a joy to look at, and of course there new characters and dragons. There's Stoick's Skullcrusher, blacksmith Gobber's Grump, Valka's Cloudjumper, the two gigantic Bewilderbeast and of course other miscellaneous dragons. Designs for the props and sets are also wonderful. I love the whimsical look and feel. There are many interesting creations, to name a few, such as the dragon wind vane, dragon feeding stations, houses and buildings, traps and war machines. Environment paintings are really beautiful and scenic. There aren't many of those but when they appear, they are breathtaking. Alright, some downsides. There's a good amount of text talking about the story and art, but the lengthy passages are not easy to read because of the small font size. My other complaint is the paper feels thinner and softer than the first book. If they make the paper any thinner, it would be magazine paper. Note that there are two publishers for this book, Newmarket Press and Titan Books. My edition is Newmarket Press. I read another reviewer comment about the paper stock from Titan Books being thin as well. So these are my two quibbles. Overall, it feels like they've packed more artworks than the earlier book. Despite the minor downsides, I would still highly recommend this book, as well as the first artbook. 4.5 out of 5 stars. (See more pictures of the book on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)

Is the second book of the series i bought for my sister and she loved it as much as the first one, beautiful artwork, lots of references and very helpful!

Way better than i expected! Out of the 3 how to train your dragon books probably the best!

gorgeous designs! just wish there was more concept work i.e. more background breakdowns/details, prop work and more character designs too. while the first film is still dear to me, the second film is superb, the color palettes were stunning!! I'll get to buying the art book for the first film another time since I absolutely had to get this one first

A beautiful book with gorgeous scenery pictures and character models. The whole book is really nice but the only complaint I have is that the book doesn't contain enough concept art of some of the characters and it doesn't give us much explanation on some of these characters. Overall though I loved the book. The paper is glossy and the book doesn't weigh as much as some other "Art of" books.

If you love the HTTYD franchise (like me), get it! it is a spectacular art book, just beautiful to look at! my only complain is the pages are really, really thin. i am a person that keeps things looking untouched for years, and after a couple of months, this book already starts to look a little bumpy around the edges. the pages are just too thin, no matter how careful you are. the cover is too. other then that, it's amazing!

By giving 4 stars I am not saying this is not best product, it's just I expected that content would be... a bit different. More like drawings and sketches I saw at the end of the movie HTTYD 1. Maybe I misconceived or forgot already how those sketches looked like but... It doesn't matter. I like the book and since it will be the present to a girl who is a big fan of these series and is professional drawer, I am sure she will like it even more. If were a bit bigger fan of this art I would definitely gave 5 stars but no, so here it is - fair 4 stars. Btw, despite all I wrote above, I do like this book and suggest to fans of series to, if not buy, but at least borrow from friends or find electronical version of book (I bet Amazon has it somewhere here: "seek, and ye shall find"). P.S.: It could be I will change my mind and will give 5 somewhen later (if system will allow me to do this). Another note: I would definitely share some photos but my camera is so bad.

As soon as the first trailers appeared online me and my friends who are all animation majors watched them constantly. Once the book came out I had to buy it, ironically enough it came out on my birthday so it was a wonderful gift to myself. I constantly keep going back to look at the character designs of my favorite characters. I love Valka's design and love the fact that they went back to her first designs from the first artbook. Just seeing that process of the designs makes me value my character designs more as that is what I wish to work with. Even though there were only two AR codes I didn't mind since at first I didn't even know they were there till last week, then I looked it up and just watched the storyboards and the finished piece. So that was also a treat, I wish they added more though but I can see why they didn't since the movie isn't out yet. Now all I can do is wait for the movie. Getting this book is making the wait worth it.

Awesome

Me llegó a tiempo y en buenas condiciones aunque el libro no trae ningún protector o plástico que lo conserve mientras lo traen en el transporte, por ello, se arrugó un poco la covertura de papel con el diseño de Hipo levantabdo su espada, ese lo trae trae para proteger la portada real, ppr así decirlo. El libro es una maravilla, explica cada personaje y su evolución de la película uno a la dos y viene también información sobre los paisajes, el crew de animación, el director, etc. Visualmente es una maravilla, incluso para las personas que sólo sienten curiosidad de verlo, y para alguien que se dedica al arte o la animación es una herramienta perfecta y fuente de inspiración. Lo recomiendo muchísimo!

Molto, molto bello. Ho sia questo, sia il primo della serie e nonostante in HTTD dessero un discreto spazio a tutti i personaggi e agli ambienti più importanti sono riusciti a superarsi. Per ognuno ci sono un sacco di schizzi e disegni finiti, con tanto di paragoni con il risultato finale, idem per gli ambienti. Nico Marlet non manca, ma ho avuto modo di scoprire anche un Iuri Lioi e un Peter Chan - loro sono quelli che mi sono rimasti più impressi, ma è pieno di lavori di artisti magnifici. Per chi, come me, non ha ancora avuto modo di vedere il film, avviso che sono presenti dei leggeri spoiler, ma niente che possa rovinarvelo. In generale, non delude le aspettative, anzi, e lo consiglio con tutto il cuore.

たくさんあるので 買って損はない

It’s beautiful with ALL concept art of the characters and designs, a must get if you’re a httyd fan