-----
There are several Mamoru Oshii book lists on the Internet, but they do not provide detailed descriptions of the contents. My collection of Mamoru Oshii books is not yet complete, but I would like to write a short summary for each of those books.
I apologize in advance for any grammatical errors or incorrect information.
-----
title: THE ART OF 天使のたまご
(THE ART OF ANGEL'S EGG)
release: 1986 (enlarged in 03/30/2004)
publisher: Tokuma Shoten
[contents]
character design board
imageboard
illustrations
making of the film
[review]
In my review of the storyboards for Angel's Egg, I mentioned that Oshii was deeply influenced by Yoshitaka Amano's character design boards. This book contains all of those character design boards. Although the illustrations are quite simple compared to the animation.
After Oshii completed the storyboard, Amano created image boards for the major shots. He drew more than 200 boards. According to Oshii, none of the staff saw Amano sleeping or eating anything. Oshii was amazed at Amano's artist-spirit. Amano himself stated in another book that he was very tired after finishing the image boards.
By the way, there are two versions of this book, the original and the enlarged version. The enlarged version has 80 additional pages. There were many missing image boards in the original version, but the enlarged version covers almost all of them. Unfortunately, it is quite difficult to get the enlarged version these days. I bought it for 9,000 yen or something.
The "Illustration" chapter includes video package art and book cover art.
The "making-of" chapter includes key animations and screen captures. It also explains Shichiro Kobayashi's ideas for the film.
In the fish shadow scene, Kobayashi drew the pavement joints on the cells instead of the background sheet. He placed the cell of the fish's shadow between the pavement joint cell and the background sheet. Since the shadows do not cover the joints, the fish only appear on the surface of the stone. That made the fish shadows very realistic.
