A Sky Longing for Memories: The Art of Makoto Shinkai

This is one of the most beautiful animation background artbooks I've seen. I've actually reviewed the original Japanese edition 新海誠美術作品集 空の記憶 ~ The sky of the longing for memories ~ which was published in 2008. Publisher Vertical Comics has provided a huge fan service by translating the book into English. It's certainly worth translating and more people should get to see this book. The only difference I noticed is the lack of dust jacket. Even the paper used is the low gloss type. Colours are reproduced wonderfully. A Sky Longing for Memories: The Art of Makoto Shinkai is the artbook that collects the background art for 5 Centimeters Per Second, The Place Promised in Our Early Days and Voices from a Distant Star. I've watched those three anime films many years ago and can't really remember what the stories were about. But one thing that I cannot forget is the beautiful background art in those films. The commentary provides talks about the design aspect of each scene and it's really insightful. Now that all the text has been translated to English, I can now understand the amount of work that goes behind each painting. Attention to details is amazing. You'll find out that all the background art are well researched and tediously put together. Some scenes are the results of several photo references used together, while some others are painted over photos while taking into account the colour scheme. There's research done on design of trains, vending machines, LED lights on signboards, routes of the trains so that they can be accurately portrayed in drawing. To draw Akari's homemade lunch, the staff actually cooked and packed the meal, then photographed it for use as reference. All those tiny words on fare charts, open pages of books are actually all hand drawn in. Environment scenes painted with photo reference take into account the seasons and colour of the air. There's something about Japanese anime art that makes them look so fine. The level of detail in the background really makes a huge difference to the visual aesthetics. Every piece of art in this book is perfectly composed, and colour scheme carefully chosen. It's just awe-inspiring to see how many pieces of art there are to come out from the films. It's not all from Makoto Shinkai as there are other artists involved as well, many are interviewed at the back of the book. There's also a section that talks about how the scenes are created for animation. I highly recommend this book for its stunning art. (See more pictures of the book on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)

The images were too small in some places, but otherwise a beautiful art book.

Es un libro hermoso. Me encanta para entender el arte de Makoto Shincai

Oh my god the clouds Makoto makes are breathtaking. Not only is this book an amazing look through, it gives great examples, references, and ideas for making art. The interesting view angles, the color palette, and perhaps even the style. I highly reccomend this book to anyone who enjoys illustration and anime.

I really love Makoto Shinkai backgrounds, colors, details and everything. It is a good book... but scrolling through pages made me feel like I want to see each picture in a bigger scale, I feel like I need to zoom-in, but I can't (at least full page for each image or larger scale for the whole book would be good). It is more of a collection of background thumbnails, or pieces that scaled down to that size, than art-book to appreciate every piece of his amazing art. Quite a disappointment for me personally. Good things, that paper is good. Also, they have part in a book where they talk about techniques of creating these kind of backgrounds. Very nice.

Got this for my boyfriend for his birthday. He is difficult to buy gifts for, but his favorite movie has this art featured in it. He really liked it and thought the gift was awesome! I am so happy I bough it.

Amazing detail and picture quality. Makes for a great coffeetable book and starts conversations. I wish it was a bit bigger to the stunning artwork would shine even more. There is also interviews of Makoto-san and his staff, notes and comments regarding the moviemaking prosess.

Thought it was going to be more of a visual book but am extremely happy with it, from its content to the quality!

Exactly as order, would've like it to have come in a plastic sleeve incase of wet weather But perfect. :D

Excelente aquisição, recomendo!

I'm a fairly recent convert to Makoto Shinkai's work, having only become aware of him when the buzz around Your Name happened. I am fascinated by the level of detail in his anime and so this book of background art is right up my street. Anyone interested in digital landscape painting, concept art or anime art in general would enjoy the book. The chapter detailing some of the process used is interesting and useful to digital artists however as some have noted some of the images are a bit on the small side.

There is a big crease from the back cover of the book. I don’t know if it was from the packaging or shipping. But the quality of the book is good.

It's absolutely beautiful