Dutch art gallery Cook & Becker recently released a coffee table book that features art from the role-playing video game "Final Fantasy XV." The book curates the various artworks and renderings featured in Square Enix's fantasy masterpiece.
The book is titled "The Art and Design of Final Fantasy XV." It features high-resolution art and sketches from the video game and the computer-generated (CG) animation "Kingsglaive."
Designers at Cook & Becker went to the Tokyo offices of Square Enix to put together all of the book's material. They worked closely with artists who did artwork for the game.
In putting together the book, Square Enix's artists advised the book's creators not to stick too closely to the narrative of "Final Fantasy XV." They wanted to show that the art can stand alone on its own.
This vision is what led to the overall design principle of the book. The book is enormous, presented in landscape layout. The "regular" edition is 40 centimeters (cm) wide by 23 cm long. Meanwhile, the Collector's Edition is more extensive, measuring 49 cm wide by 33 cm long.
"The Art and Design of Final Fantasy XV" is intended to be a visual experience. As such, the 220-page tome mostly features art that fills the whole page, with little in the way of text. Some of them are never-before-seen and are made especially for the book.
As significant as the book is, there are no encyclopedia-like entries or walls of text in it. Just art, and the occasional blurb (as in the case of recipes included with food artwork).
The book comes in three editions. The regular version sells for $49.95 on the Cook & Becker website. The signed Collector's Edition is limited to 500 copies and is unfortunately currently sold out. The unsigned Collector's Edition is limited to 1,000 copies, and each one sells for $169.00
"The Art and Design of Final Fantasy XV" are in hardcover, and the Collector's Edition comes with a luxury box and art print.
