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A review by natreviews
The Art and Making of Arcane by Elisabeth Vincentelli
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
Where to begin...
Let me start with the highlights. Basically everything Fortiche has put in. You can see the love they have for the show and by how they talk in Section 6 of this book. They go into enough detail for those who understand the industry can see how it's made, but high enough of an overview so people outside of it can still follow along. You can see how inspired the were to work on this project.
Now, the lowlights. Pretty much everything that didn't detail how Riot and Fortiche started working together and Section 6 was so high overview that it felt out of place. This is a book called "The Making" and it barely went into how it was made. For example, the drug Shimmer is a huge thing in the show. It transforms multiple characters, the show shows how it's addictive and basically built an enterprise. So you'd think the book would include how they decided what effects it would have on people, the different stages of shimmer addiction, how they transformed it from League of Legends to adapt it for Arcane. But nope. Just throw some sketches on a spread and call it a day. They really abandon the making part of it. I was really expecting something like The World of Cyberpunk 2077, while even though it didn't go into the making of the game, you could tell by the information provided how decisions were made in terms of world building. That's what this book really lacked. Main characters at most got a spread dedicated to them with no details on how they were adapted from game to show. Things were mentioned in the book as happening in the show that never happened. It's interesting to see how the writing of this book is really it's weakest point (not shading the author, this was mainly the interviews done with Riot's team that probably were taken out of context or couldn't include the full thing so only did a snippet).
If you wanted to see more of the making, read section 6 and that's it. The rest has really cool drawing and sketches, but you won't really get anything out of reading this that wasn't shown in the show, which is a shame.
Let me start with the highlights. Basically everything Fortiche has put in. You can see the love they have for the show and by how they talk in Section 6 of this book. They go into enough detail for those who understand the industry can see how it's made, but high enough of an overview so people outside of it can still follow along. You can see how inspired the were to work on this project.
Now, the lowlights. Pretty much everything that didn't detail how Riot and Fortiche started working together and Section 6 was so high overview that it felt out of place. This is a book called "The Making" and it barely went into how it was made. For example, the drug Shimmer is a huge thing in the show. It transforms multiple characters, the show shows how it's addictive and basically built an enterprise. So you'd think the book would include how they decided what effects it would have on people, the different stages of shimmer addiction, how they transformed it from League of Legends to adapt it for Arcane. But nope. Just throw some sketches on a spread and call it a day. They really abandon the making part of it. I was really expecting something like The World of Cyberpunk 2077, while even though it didn't go into the making of the game, you could tell by the information provided how decisions were made in terms of world building. That's what this book really lacked. Main characters at most got a spread dedicated to them with no details on how they were adapted from game to show. Things were mentioned in the book as happening in the show that never happened. It's interesting to see how the writing of this book is really it's weakest point (not shading the author, this was mainly the interviews done with Riot's team that probably were taken out of context or couldn't include the full thing so only did a snippet).
If you wanted to see more of the making, read section 6 and that's it. The rest has really cool drawing and sketches, but you won't really get anything out of reading this that wasn't shown in the show, which is a shame.