Ballantine's Brothers Hildebrandt books
Star Wars - The Art Of The Brothers Hildebrandt
The Art Of The Brothers Hildebrandt

Star Wars - The Art Of The Brothers Hildebrandt (1997 - Del Rey/Ballantine) (Bob Woods text) By our lights, this volume scores as the best presentation of the Hildebrandts's art, but I'm not sure I really celebrate it - Yes, most pages feature one of their paintings created for the Topps Company 100-piece art-card set Star Wars-Shadows Of The Empire, or other various franchise tie-ins, but so many of those pages *also* carry any combination of, say, the pencil preliminary for that piece, and/or some related diagram, and/or an action-figure photo, and/or photos of the people modeling the pose. Some pages are so cluttered that those extraneous items cut into the nether-regions of a presented painting. Add to that, not only bits of the expository text, but also narrative blurbs, such as quotes from the source-project or the artists, some of them also laid on the paintings. While mathematically open to interpretation, I'd say that out of 128 pages, 22 could be said to have multiple different images thrown on the page, while 102 'focus' on a single composition. 18 of those pages present nine images spread over the book's central gutter, seven acceptably, two not-so-much. Certainly seems to have been geared for the uber-franchise-fan audience, rather than art-lovers.

The Art Of The Brothers Hildebrandt (1979 Ballantine Books) (by Ian Summer) At nearly 10.5-by-11 inches, this is a more square-ish book than the usual. This was another of the emergent 'must have' SF/Fantasy-art volumes that came out in the 1970s. The Brothers Hildebrandt had caught fire with a few years of painted calendars depicting the adventures from J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy books. From there, they got involved with some other sword-&-sorcery projects and then suddenly the second major poster for the smash hit film STAR WARS (initially for British promotion). Why not collect together a bunch of that great art and get it into the hands of the people that were groovin' on it all ? So, this 109-page volume hit the bookshelves to storied success. There is one acceptable double-page-spread (two that aren't . . .) and another 43 featured large-reproductions. Most of the full-page paintings are faced with a white page, blank except for a caption (title, creation-year, current holding collection, use, author/editor (if a cover) and, if a solo piece, which of the twins executed it). Speaking of solo-pieces, be aware that Tim Hildebrandt did two of those and Greg Hildebrandt did eight. There are six greytone illustrations that were done for THE SWORD OF SHANNARA book, but then there are strangely four more black-&-white reproductions of *color* posters commissioned & distributed by Coca-Cola on college campuses. There's also another ten pages, of text, that served as an introduction to the artists. Anyway, it's a fun collection to have, though it is looking like the more modern collections are proving more effective. Certainly STAR WARS, THE FANTASY ART TECHNIQUES OF TIM HILDEBRANDT, GREG AND TIM HILDEBRANDT-THE TOLKIEN YEARS and FROM TOLKIEN TO OZ-THE ART OF GREG HILDEBRANDT score significantly better as collections, with 18 of the images here being repeats from those books (though some of them are better displays and it is nice how some of them are held to a single page here while somewhat spreading across the gutter there).