A collection of over 500 sketches and drawings from artist and illustrator Phillip M Jackson (AKA JollyJack), covering everything from monster designs to saucy pin-ups, along with many cartoons featuring the cast of webcomic "Sequential Art".
Caution: contains adult humour and some suggestive images.
I have just recently become a fan of this great artist through his "Sequential Art" strip & having all but devoured all 600+ strips in two days, decided to purchase this MASSIVE tome. Not long after my 2nd or 3rd flip-through, I decided to tag all my favorate pics with little Post-it page markers. when done I realized that practically EVERY OTHER PAGE was tagged, said "Screw it." & removed them. Long story short: I was VERY happy with this book. Artwork ranges from sexy to silly to REALLY sexy (with a few badass thrown in for good measure) all with Jolly Jack's distinct style. And yes, I too was mildly disappointed that some of the hand-written text wasn't legible - but not enough to affect my rating. All in all, if you enjoy good artwork & don't mind if some of said artwork is NSRW, you can't go wrong with this impressive tome.
Following SA for a while and while some of the art is recognizable when it was posted on the collectedcurios.com site, most of the art was new to me. After picking up two Little Victory issues and then seeing the sketch tome, it fun to see how much Philip's art style has progressed since he began. Unfortunately (yeh, broken record time) more than a few punch lines on some of the pictures are hand written and while the detail in the inked pages are solid and sharp, the penciled dialogue is lost almost completely. It's quick fix if Tome #2 comes out: Illustrator or Photoshop those dialogue stuff in! Overall, the book is great, aside from those dialogue problems. And, if anyone is expecting a clean family book a word of warning, some of it is cute and some of it is very not. ;)
Does contain some problems with text quality, but "the problem places" can be count with one hand. Great tome of great works from the Master himself. Great and inspirational buy.
Firstly, excellent service from Lulu.com - within 5 days of me placing the order, it was on my desk, which was certainly a welcome surprise. The book itself is monolithic, with a forward from PMJ himself, and from there on out it is solid art. It easily provides hours of viewing, with Jackson's sardonic, satirical approach to his own art and to his surroundings emanating from each piece. Ngall001 summed up the contents, there is a vast range of work, in both traditional and digital media, with a variety of anonymous characters, as well as the ever present cast of Sequential Art, and of course the eye-poppingly proportioned Ms. Sinclair. All of the images are printed at the finest quality, with the reproduction of the traditional scans clean and defined. So, conclusively, if you are after a means by which to judge the artists approach, skill and implementation, this book is the place to start, and for what you get, £20.00 is certainly brilliant value.
This was my first purchase from Lulu.com - and I don't regret it at all. Having been a longtime follower of Mr Jacksons highly amusing and entertaining webcomic collectedcurios.com and having recently found his work on deviantart.com also, I decided to purchase this book as a way of saying thanks to him for providing such a high standard of entertainment over the years, and I'm glad to say that it exceeded my expectations in every way. The title says that this book is a 'tome' - and it certainly is! - it's a huge and rather weighty compilation of line-work and sketches (not in any chronological order), with illustrations ranging from completely finished black and white pieces to much faster 'sketched' images which have a softer and more immediate feel to them. The one thing that becomes apparent on flipping through the pages of this book is that all the images have such a clear sense of movement and animation that even the standing poses of some characters seem filled with dynamism... More > and energy, a true testament to the artists talent. The quality of reproduction of all the pieces is first-rate, and the images are all very clear and presented simply one per page throughout the whole book. Text is almost non-existent, with a few notes and speech-bubbles scattered throughout the pages to add to comedic effect or provide dialogue for the characters. All in all, if you are a fan of comedy illustration, of Jolly Jack's work, or of pencil sketching in general this book should find a place on your bookshelf. It would make an excellent gift for an illustrator, or anyone who enjoys hand-drawn comedy - a word of caution however, some of the illustrations are rather 'mature' in their presentation, so perhaps not an appropriate gift for a younger artist.< Less
