The Artbook Collector 2024 Awards
- The Artbook Collector
- Jan 5
- 4 min read
Updated: Feb 3
January 5th 2025
This is the completely unofficial, The Artbook Collector Official Awards of 2024! I added 35 books to the collection that were released in 2024, so this is a fun look at some highlights.
None of this is to be taken seriously, but there are some books I feel should be pointed out after a great year of new releases.
Best Book Cover of 2024
Best cover goes to Sea of Stars: The Concept Art of Bryce Kho! Stunning art on the cover with some extra shine to make it pop, it stands out against a standard printed image seen on most. While there have been lots of great covers, the extra little effort to add reflective parts goes a long way.
Best Commentary and Insights
This award goes to The Art of Psychonauts 2! Ashley Esqueda and the team at Double Fine give lots of details about the game and art. You can do too much or too little, but this book hit the perfect balance and gives fans a lot to dive into!
Best Look at Unused Concepts
This award goes to The Art of Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course! Entire pages are dedicated to unused levels and characters, with early designs shown throughout. I love Studio MDHR for their willingness to share all!
Read a review here.
Best Use of Space
This award goes to The Art of The Cuphead Show! The last two awards and Cuphead artbooks are interchangeable, they both do a great job.
No space is wasted here, art and text fill each page without ever being overcrowded or disorganised. Exactly how all artbooks should be done!
Best Crediting of Artists
The award goes to Marvel for their self published Marvel Studios artbooks!
They still consistently credit each artist on every page. They are also listed at the back of each book, with the pages they are featured on too. Other books do this, but Marvel have been doing this for a long time and it should be how it's done by everyone. This year they released the following; Marvel Studios' Black Panther: Wakanda Forever - The Art of the Movie Marvel Studios' Ms Marvel: The Art of the Series Marvel Studios' Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3: The Art of the Movie Marvel Studios' Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania - The Art of the Movie
Marvel Studios' The Marvels: The Art of the Movie Marvel Studios' Deadpool & Wolverine: The Art of the Movie
Give Me More
The award for Give Me More goes to Marvel Studios: The Art of Ryan Meinerding! This book is a great showcase of art from Ryan Meinerding, covering Iron Man to Wakanda Forever. It's also ideal if you're missing out on the huge list of previously released movie artbooks, as it covers many of the MCU releases. I would love to see this treatment given to other artists at Marvel Studios!
Read my review here.
Worth the Wait
The award for Worth the Wait goes to WipEout Futurism: The Graphic Archives from Read-Only Memory!
After many years, there is now a book with the history, graphic design and art for both the series and Psygnosis/ Studio Liverpool. Looking back as far as 40 years at the studio is a joy!
Show Off
This has to go to Cuphead!
Two books, one for The Delicious Last Course, the other for The Cuphead Show, were released in 2024. Both are examples of how to make an artbook that all studios should look at. I highly recommend both!
Most Anticipated
The award goes to The Art of Dead Space from Dark Horse and Motive Studio!
The first games had great art, but this book also comes with the intrigue of being a remake, so I'm curious to see what's inside!
Best Publisher
The award for Best Publisher goes to Dark Horse!
They have become the lead in video game artbooks, I picked up 10 from them this year alone. Great quality, consistent and well priced, you can't go wrong with their books. I already have more coming from them next year. A handful are shown below.
Most Popular
The award for Most Popular Artbook goes to The Art and Making of Arcane!
#1 on book lists for weeks before release, it's so popular it requires reprints for demand. It very quickly became my my viewed video on YouTube too!
Artbook of the Year
The final award, for Artbook of the Year 2024 goes to The Art of Psychonauts 2!
It's been a very strong year for releases, but this had to take the final award. It's packed with everything you could want in an artbook, great art and insights, no wasted space and the book is huge. You can feel the care and thought that went into making it.
This was a great collaboration, writer Ashley Esqueda, designer John Doyle from Lost in Cult, developer Double Fine and publisher iam8bit created a superb artbook!
That's the end of the awards for 2024! If you want more, you can find flip throughs of each of the 35 books I added to the collection this year in the video section or on YouTube. You can also find a showcase video, with clips of each on here.
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