The fifth art book release from publisher Iwanami Shoten’s most excellent ‘Hayao Miiyazaki Imageboard Series’ is the much beloved Porco Rosso ( 紅の豚 / 1992 ). The film is based on a 3 part manga series ( Hikotei Jidai ) first published in the Japanese hobby magazine Model Graphix and is also now collected in another of Miyazaki’s art book Daydream Notes. ( read book review here. )

Running at 92 pages, this book is the smallest by page count from the series yet, but quality always count for more, and this volume showcases 85 pieces of Miyazaki’s beautiful watercolor concept art illustrations for the film, including 15 previously unreleased pieces.

The biggest selling point and highlight of the book is the big print size; which allows for much better appreciation of Hayao Miyazaki’s gorgeous watercolor illustrations. I also like that the reproductions are presented close to their pristine look, with no overt color correction or saturation applied, something I noticed in some of Ghibli’s earlier Art Of books.

Publisher book synopsis – Hayao Miyazaki creates hand-drawn illustrations to conceive his ideas for his films and to communicate the concepts to his staff. These are called “image boards”. Hayao Miyazaki Image Board Series is a complete collection of Miyazaki’s “image board” artwork held at Studio Ghibli including unpublished works. In this large book with a trim size of 35.0 x 27.7 cm (12.8 x 10.1 in), portrait, the illustrations are reproduced at or close to their original size, in its true colors and texture of the original drawings realized by high-quality printing. Discover how the fascinating world of Miyazaki’s creation begins.

If you take a look at my previous review for The Art Of Porco Rosso and do a quick visual comparison, many of the pieces found here do overlap what is already present in that book. However, per my previous note on the improved quality of the prints in this new book, the color of the reproductions are more nuanced and truer to Miyazaki’s original work, with much less contrast treatment to forcibly push the vibrancy of the colors.

This, plus the increased print size as well as the additional 15 pieces of new art work make this new book a worthy upgrade and/or complement to the existing ‘Art Of’ book, and IMHO well worth your money especially if you’re a Porco Rosso fan like me. Recommended.

I also highly recommend checking out the earlier 4 books from the ‘Hayao Miiyazaki Imageboard Series’.

“Porco Rosso Imageboards Art Book 紅の豚 (宮﨑駿イメージボード全集 5)” details :

Dimensions – 1.28 x 25.7 x 36.4 cm
Softcover, 92 pages
Full color, In Japanese language

  
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