Released in 2017, this publication is a robust concept art book dedicated to Kong: Skull Island (2017). Written by Simon Ward, this book is massive, measuring about 12 inches by 11 inches, kind of what is referred to as a “coffee table book”. It presents some stellar looks at the concept art, but occasionally goes beyond that to provide information regarding characters and behind the scenes choices.
Structurally, the book starts with a forward by director Jordan Vogt-Roberts. This leads into a section on tackling making another King Kong film, discussing the entries that came before briefly before talking about how this would be different. After this is a section on the human cast that ventures to Skull Island, which is actually pretty long at 20 pages. It’s a rare example in the book as it’s largely filled with production stills rather than concept art, although it still features two pieces. It goes over some nice detailed bios, though, for the cast of characters.
Finally, the book then leaps into sections devoted to concept art broken out by sequence. These are chronologically ordered, for example starting with the 1944 scene at the start of the film before going into the arrival on Skull Island segment, Kong’s confrontation with the helicopters, etc. Occasionally they are spliced with segments devoted to a specific monster. For example, Kong is on page 64 while the Skull Crawler is on page 146. To close out, the book goes through a long segment devoted to unused scenes.
In terms of how the concept art segments are broken out, there is actually a fair bit of text and blown up quotes that discuss creative choices and considerations that were made design wise on the film. Rarely there will be production stills tossed in and, even more rarely, CGI model development pictures.
Now as mentioned, the book is massive and it puts this to good use, often providing full page views of the concept art. Sometimes these are two page spreads as well, although personally not a huge fan of these as detail is lost in the centerfold. Anyway, occasionally the size of the book is actually a downfall, as some of the digital art is blown up way larger than it should be. Probably the worst example of this is on page 50/51. This two page spread features a POV sketch from the UH-1 Iroquois helicopters as they are just approaching Skull Island. Since the image was blown up, the smaller isles show massive signs of edge enhancement while there is also pixilation that appears on the controls inside the helicopter. Suffice to say, this image was obviously created digitally and wasn’t intended to be blown up and presented this large.
Overall, despite a few faults in presentation choices, this is a solid and very informative book. It’s great for just picking up, thumbing through a few pages to learn something new, and then setting it down again. There are a lot of facts present as well as great views of the concept art. While it’s a bit expensive, it’s well worth it for people who are big fans of the film and want something graphically that will let them dive in a little deeper. |
