Rating: 
Summary: A great book on design
Review: That's a good book that covers some aspects of the game world that are outside the programming stuff.
You can't reach far if you only knows how to program a game, and this book is one of your allies.
Rating: 
Summary: Graphics Design for the Hopelessly Lost
Review: This book is for anyone who wants to design game graphics, but has trouble learning how to properly use the graphics tools that are available to them in the most popular packages. It is the only one that I have found that effectively tackles the subject of sprite creation from the artists standpoint.The table of contents are: 1. Arcade Games and Computer Game Platforms 2. Designing for Different Display Modes 3. Image Compression and Graphic File Formats 4. Files and File Management 5. Evaluating Graphics Creation Tools (Brush, Shape, Block, etc.) 6. Essential Graphics Tools (Dos and Windows packages and utilities) 7. Color and Arcade Game Graphics 8. All About Color Palettes 9. Arcade Game Animation 10. Fonts and Arcade Games 11. Planning Arcade Game Graphics 12. Hands-on Arcade Game Project - Fish Dish 13. Miscellaneous Topics and Final Thoughts
Rating:
Summary: An excellent resource
Review: This book is ideal for the garage developer or the hobbyist. If you are a professional artist or 3D modeller, I doubt you'd find anything of interest here. I am writing this from a solo game developer who wants to be able to create the graphics for my games, and this is exactly the book I wanted. The book focuses on 2D sprite graphics, and does an incredible job of covering this subject. It begins by discussing image file formats, and the various pluses and minuses of each. From there, it lists the features you need in a graphics tool, and then evaluates dozens of programs using this feature set. From here, he moves directly into production, color theory, palettes, sprite animation, and fonts. Throughout the focus is very much hands-on: how you get the work done, not abstract academic issues. Finally, the book concludes by walking through the design of an entire game. This is not a brief overview; it's 80 pages long, with lots of examples. Pluses: The author doesn't presume you are on a million-dollar project. The tools reviewed are generally priced in the under $100 range, and there are a number of shareware and freeware tools. The CD comes with a ton of demo versions of the software reviewed, plus a lot of sprite art. It's not a Windows-only book; he also covers DOS, Mac, and Linux, and makes obvious attempts throughout to show you how to be cross-platform with your graphic resources. The chapter on design techniques. Too many people just dive in without any planning, and get frustrated. Minuses: He doesn't spend much time talking about high resolutions; in fact, almost everything focuses on 640x480 or 800x600. In these days of 19" monitors and 1600x1200 desktops, it would have been nice to get some info. There's info on DOS and Windows 3.1. While I guess you can make an argument for a DOS game these days, Windows 3.1 is a completely dead platform and a waste of time to develop for.
Rating: 
Summary: Think twice before you buy
Review: This book will not teach you how to create gfx for games. It does not teach you how to use any specific graphic program. It will discuss gfx programs, and which tools they provide- without telling you why you need them, and what they are good for. I was looking forward to this book, because I liked the authors spritelib. So, I hoped that the cd would contain some new graphics. In fact it contains some new gfx - but those are not really useful. Don't buy the book. If you really want to have it - make sure you have a look at it in a bookstore first.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent reading ! Great tutorials !
Review: With this book you can learn the ins and outs of designing game graphics. It explains in detail how to use certain kinds of colour and their meaning. Also, how to write design documents is explained. So, if you're stuck at programming levels for a great platform or you're not sure about applying a certain colour for a shoot'em up, then this is the book for you. It comes with a CD crammed with utilities, outstanding artwork by Ari Feldman, and more than I can write in this review. So, buy this book: you won't regret it.
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