Capturing Archetypes: Twenty Years of Sideshow Collectibles Art

These books are an excellent reference to the awesome skills of the Sideshow Company. I'll be dead honest: I don't think I will ever buy one due to cost, but these references are a less expensive way of owning a bunch of them!My only gripe is that there are less full shots of the figures. I would have loved to see the full figure shot imposed on the page to give you a better reference of how amazing these figures really are!

What first drew me to this book was the amazing cover of the Aliens sculpture and it's attention to detail. I was hoping the rest of the book would capture (no pun intended) the detail of other sculptures and I was not let down. I have a few of Sideshow's figures (more like statues) and was happy to see a couple of them included! I would recommend this book to any lover of action figures, sculptures, and scifi/comic book movies. Will have it on my coffee table for years to show all my friends!

The book was OK, I guess I just expected more from Sideshow. The pictures were Fantastic but unfortunatley many were dark which made it hard to appreciate the true detail. Many of the pictures took up 2 pages unneccesarily. The pictures was sized just a bit too big for the page which made them go to a second page. 2 problems with this, 1 a portion of the pic gets lost in the binding, 2 75% of the second page was wasted space. I would have preferred smaller pics that only needed 1 page, then you could have included more pics in the book.

Sideshow has given us many masterpieces over the years , this book is a celebration of those works of art. Some amazing high quality photos have been included. I wish this would have small write ups on the characters as well . Bar that this would make a great addition to any collectors bookcase.

When I initially heard about this book I was very excited. The opportunity to have a collection of some of the greatest comic and film inspired sculpts in a hardcover book is what I've been waiting for. Being a traditional sculptor myself and working as a Character artist, I am very inspired by figurative sculptures and art. This book was the perfect chance for Sideshow to display their beautiful sculpts and show the fans that don't have these sculptures why they are the best at what they do. Unfortunately, they did not do that.This book could have been so much more than what it was. The quality of the book and the reproductions of the sculptures were well done and at a high resolution, but instead of providing various veiws of the sculpts they instead waisted intire pages. At times even bleeding a very small or insignificant part of the sculpture onto the opposite page. Thus, leaving an almost intirely opposite black page with a small description or quote of the sculpture. Why they would not think to include some pre production designs or other interesting notes or images about the development of the sculpt is completely beyond me. I literally got through the first 10 pages or so and had already counted about 4 black pages.Their attempt to create a mood by adding the fog / smokey atmosphere along with limited lighting in my opinion was the wrong direction to take. There should have been more focus on displaying the pieces in a well lite environment so that the viewer could see all of the details and craftsmanship.Needless to say I was disappointed with this book.

I am giving this book five stars, I really enjoyed going through the book and the attention to detail, I may not be able to purchase all the Archetypes but at least I have this cool book.

I was really excited to hear sideshow would make a book showing off their amazing sculptures. It would have been a great opportunity to see a lot of the old statues and maybe even images of the process of making the sculpt. However, the book doesn't express any of those aspects. As a designer a lot of the book has wasted black pages. The images are only well shot for the casual viewer, but to those with a passion about sculptures and artworks it's a huge disappointment. On top of that the book that was shipped was damaged on both the top and bottom corners leaving the pages bent. On some of the black pages are huge smudge marks making this book not even worth getting. Overall, it was disappointing had so much potential to be a really good book if they just added more images of the concept arts, sculpture designs, and their first sculptures.

Sideshow Collectibles is suppose to be a top of the line company when it comes to producing high end sculptures, so when I purchased this book thinking it would showcase their masterful works, I found myself disappointed by how they were presented. In their previous published showcase books they presented full figured sculpts while maximizing the page space. In this endeavor they seem to go a more creative and artsy approach by using 2 page spreads on closeups with very little caption on wasted negative space. Maybe they wanted the sculptures to speak for themselves but being advertised as "Twenty years of Sideshow collectibles art", there was very little to go by. I was hoping for more from a book that was suppose to showcase twenty years worth of work.

Acquisto obbligagotio per tutti gli appassionati delle opere di sideshow e scultori amanti del genere, ci sono solo splendie fotografie come un catalogo d'arte, avrei gradito qualche "dietro le quinte" come in "sculpting a galaxy".

Après de magnifiques statues créées par des doigts de fées et des mains de maîtres, voici le livre qui rend hommage à deux décennies de production à travers de superbes photos.Bien que le livre ne nous montre pas tout ce que le studio Sideshow a su créer, ni les différentes étapes de fabrication,on peut tout de même contempler un grand nombre de leur réalisation.Il n'en reste pas moins que chaque création a été photographiée non pas comme un simple article de catalogue mais comme une œuvre d'art, en jouant avec les ombres et les lumières, en se focalisant plus sur un détail que sur l'ensemble de la pièce, ...Je le dis encore un très beau livre pour de très belles statues et il suffit de prendre en exemple la couverture du livre pour ça, l'Alien Big Chap ! (Normal que c'est la plus belle, je la possède ! :-) )

Le livre en lui même est intéressant avec des photos exceptionnelles des plus célèbres statues de Sideshow par contre ça s'arrête là car au niveau texte, rien !! aucun commentaire sur les photos ni historique sur Sideshow. J'aurai aimé en savoir un peu plus sur l'histoire de Sideshow, les personnes à l'origine de cette entreprise, les artistes ainsi que sur les méthodes de travail (design des statues, sculpture, peinture, toutes les étapes de fabrication en gros). Rien de tout ça n'est présent dans ce livre qui est au final qu'un gros catalogue de certains produits Sideshow. Il aurait dû l'offrir aux clients pour l'achat d'une statue plutôt que de le vendre mais il n'y a pas de petits profits pour Sid. Au niveau du livre, la qualité est médiocre avec quelques pages ayant des impacts à l'intérieur et certaines pages collent les une aux autres ce qui fait qu'à l'ouverture des pages, les photos présentent de nombreux petits manques qui correspondent à des micros déchirures. On retrouve avec ce livre la qualité actuellement présente dans les produits Sideshow, globalement superbe mais manque de finition.L'emballage dans lequel est expédié ce produit ne convient pas du tout (trop grand sans protections intérieur) ce qui fait que les coins du livre se sont abimés durant le transport. C'est la première fois que je suis déçu par un emballage amazon.

une couverture fantastique et de jolies photos. Deux remarques négatives : l'absence de commentaires et un papier fragile dont les pages collent (sur un album de 2014 c'est dommage) sans gravité heureusement.

De magnifiques photos, mais dommage qu'il n'y ait pas plus de figurines, une par page. ça permet de les avoir en grand mais c'est un poil frustrant.