Book Review: 'The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey: Chronicles - Art & Design'

'The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Chronicles - Art & Design' is a gorgeous hardcover book that is packed cover to cover with over a thousand images of concept art, photographs, sketches and paintings from the artists working behind the scenes to help bring Peter Jackson's vision of 'The Hobbit' onto the screen.

The book is compiled by Weta senior concept designer Daniel Falconer with a foreward by Production Designer Dan Hannah and an introduction from Richard Taylor, Weta's Design & Special Effects Supervisor. Each chapter of the book details a particular section of the film; starting with Bilbo Baggins, Bag End, Hobbiton and the rest of the Hobbits, through to a very detailed look at each of the Dwarves (even a quick look at Moria and the Battle Of Azanulbizar), the wizards, the trolls, the elves, Gollum, the landscapes and the other creatures from Middle-Earth that feature in the film. Each chapter is looked at in depth with prelim sketches, beautiful concept art and photographs.

There are two special fold-out features to this book; a large replica of Thorin's map, printed in glow-in-the-dark ink and a three page fold-out replica of Bilbo's burglar contract.

You can see as to how much detail has been put into this book, with the Weta team working very closely with the production team to make sure that the book is packed to the gills. Apparently this is only the first of a series of lavish hardcover books from Weta. If that's the case, and after reading this volume, I can't wait to see what the other books in the series will be like.

***** out of 5