Rating: 
Summary: A picture is worth a thousand words!!!
Review: ...so no words can give justice to this incredible book, filled with fascinating pre-production art, drawings, and paintings. When George Lucas started working on the script for THE PHANTOM MENACE in 1994, he hired a group of talented artists who turned Lucas' rough ideas into concrete concepts, helping the Jedi Master himself craft EPISODE I, the beginning of the STAR WARS SAGA... How many concepts that did not make it into MENACE will be used for EPISODES 2 or 3 is anyone's guess, but be on the lookout for those SITH WITCHES!!!
Rating: 
Summary: A great source book
Review: A sumptuous record of both line-art and colour sketches of designs, images, technology and creatures; as well as technical production drawings and conceptual work, both used in the film and unused. A nice mix of what was discarded and what-might-have-been, showing how the designs came to be the final design in almost all categories you can name. Drawings are well labelled, with numerous information on the artist, influences and whether it was a final design or not. For me the huge volume of images, both large and small, was enough for a desire to seek more, the balance between text and the images themselves just right. Conceptual designs are accompanied by design notes; the drawings themselves still bearing sketch lines, axis points and hand written notation all guaranteeing that you feel involved in the process. Paper quality is high, and the text appropriate to a wide range of readers. In places the text can be a little sparse, though I suppose that the images are more important in a book of this type. My favourite sections are the colour graphic schemes of the podracers and the Trade Federation stuff. Occasional mistakes in labelling, but on the whole a very enjoyable book, a pleasure to read. Would make a good present.
Rating:
Summary: A great source book
Review: A sumptuous record of both line-art and colour sketches of designs, images, technology and creatures; as well as technical production drawings and conceptual work, both used in the film and unused. A nice mix of what was discarded and what-might-have-been, showing how the designs came to be the final design in almost all categories you can name. Drawings are well labelled, with numerous information on the artist, influences and whether it was a final design or not. For me the huge volume of images, both large and small, was enough for a desire to seek more, the balance between text and the images themselves just right. Conceptual designs are accompanied by design notes; the drawings themselves still bearing sketch lines, axis points and hand written notation all guaranteeing that you feel involved in the process. Paper quality is high, and the text appropriate to a wide range of readers. In places the text can be a little sparse, though I suppose that the images are more important in a book of this type. My favourite sections are the colour graphic schemes of the podracers and the Trade Federation stuff. Occasional mistakes in labelling, but on the whole a very enjoyable book, a pleasure to read. Would make a good present.
Rating:
Summary: Best of the series.They all should have been like this.
Review: Hmmm. The reader from Coral Springs states that this book didn't have the range of artwork that the other "Art of Star Wars" books did. That's strange, because if you actually OPEN these books, you will see that (s)he is absolutely WRONG. This book is MUCH richer than the previous ones. The only explanation I can think of is that (s)he must have accidentally placed a review of the "Making of Episode I" here, instead of a review of the "Art of Episode I." (S)he also complains that the Star Wars Insider CD-ROM has more artwork on it. Well, of course it does! It's a CD-ROM! It has a lot of memory and you can put a lot of art on there! More art than can be put in a book! What a silly criticism! This is a FANTASTIC book! It actually tells you something about the artwork and the process that went into creating it. The previous books in the series should have been done this way! Hopefully Lucasfilm will do the remaining books in the series in a similar fashion. (Please, George?)
Rating:
Summary: Impacting wondeful and full of inspiration!
Review: I am a product of the orginal trilogies and i am still impressed with what they were able to do even back then. technology has definetely worked on the side of movie creators, and Star Wars' creators are no exception. the art by which all of this amazing visual achievement is based is nothing short of spectacular. the work of all the artists who design costumes and sets to those who decide on the look for probably the best movie villian in recent history (Darth maul) is absolutely amazing. i recoomend this book to anyone who loves Star Wars, it's art, and the process that goes into building an element which has become a part of our modern culture.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely breathtaking
Review: I got this book when it first came out, and read every page before dawn. Doug Chiang's illustrations are outstanding, possibly better than McCreary's (is that possible) for the original trilogy. The rest of the illustrators are great in their own respects. Each page is full of original sketches (the first Darth Maul, beautiful), city layouts, and production paintings. A true gem.
Rating:
Summary: No McQuarrie, and yet an awesome art of Star Wars Book
Review: I loved the art Ralph McQuarrie did for the first three Star Wars movies, and in the Art of Episode I, Doug Chiang takes the torch and does an awesome job. His grand scale works are so appealing and detailed, I loved it.The character concept work in intriguing, there is a lot of evolutionary type paintings which I like a lot. The Sith work is fascinating. The one draw back to the book was the lack of explaination each work had. I would have liked more insight as to what the artist was thinking, what Lucas liked and what he disliked. That wasn't in this version as much as I would have liked. But overall, one to own.
Rating:
Summary: No McQuarrie, and yet an awesome art of Star Wars Book
Review: I loved the art Ralph McQuarrie did for the first three Star Wars movies, and in the Art of Episode I, Doug Chiang takes the torch and does an awesome job. His grand scale works are so appealing and detailed, I loved it. The character concept work in intriguing, there is a lot of evolutionary type paintings which I like a lot. The Sith work is fascinating. The one draw back to the book was the lack of explaination each work had. I would have liked more insight as to what the artist was thinking, what Lucas liked and what he disliked. That wasn't in this version as much as I would have liked. But overall, one to own.
Rating: 
Summary: Good but not as good as other Star Wars Art of books
Review: I must say that the paintings were fantastic and the conceptual drawings were excellent. The only problem was that I didn't see nearly the range of work from the film that I saw in the other Art of Star Wars books! Also the artwork in the book had been seen many times before on the official website and in the Episode 1 Insiders Guide CD-rom. In fact the CD-rom had more artwork on it!
Rating:
Summary: A veritable art-gallery by master conceptual artists
Review: I would never have thought that I would stoop so low in nerd-dom and buy a book like this, but there is more to being a nerd than simply obsessing over your favorite fantasies. I love Star Wars, hate the Phantom Menace. And yet way back when the VHS release was going on, I too crowded into a Media Play at 12 in the morning with my buddy and his wife to get my advanced Widescreen Collector's copy. DVD has since come and taken away any significance to that item, but what did come along with it was a little booklet featuring excerpts from "The Art of Star Wars; Episode I." For a long time this little booklet and I rarely parted, and I thought I was so priviledged to have this particular booklet and that it would one day be a rarity. Imagine my surprise when I discovered THIS book, the actual Art of Star Wars. Not only does it have everything in my booklet, but it presents conceptual art from all corners of the movie. There's so much to look at, and so much that is fascinating to look at, you can't help spend hours just looking. The book is hard-bound, with pages made from such high-quality paper, it will make you turn them with tweezers, they feel so expensive. The art is presented in chronological order with the film, so that reading it cover-to-cover is almost like watching the film. For most of the artwork, a little background information is provided in the corner next to a numerical key denoting which works belong to which artists. As for the quality of reproduction; I am rarely satisfied when something I've drawn is scanned onto a color-copier, which often is the best option for reproducing them. I still lose something in the translation from pad to paper, a little bit of hue here, some shading here, depth of line there. However, in this book there is nothing lost. (Nothing is lost, or the originals must be stunning to look at!) The artwork shows you just why the movie relies so much on visuals (and not on strength of character or plot). Artists Doug Chiang, Ian McCaig, and Terry Whitlatch to name a few, are so skilled at vividness, their works immediately juice your imagination into action. Looking at concepts for space-ships, you can almost hear them fly. The emphasis is on Doug Chiang and Ian McCaig, one a brilliant architectural and mechanical artist, the other a genius at characters and costumes. Whitlatch seems to handle most of the aliens, while gorgeous matte-paintings by Doug Chiang depict, in color, some of the more finalised concepts. If you are a fan of Star Wars, this book is a must for any in-depth knowledge of how things developed behing the scenes. For film scholars, I would also recommend this book, for the glimpse it provides into the realm of pre-production, especially for you film scholars who have never set foot onto a film studio, or a design office. For fellow artists, I can only say that these works inspire to improve my technique and work even harder at my art. It's always the test of an artist when he runs into someone who is superior; does the work make you want to quit art, or make you want to improve? This stuff will make you choose the latter.
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