Product Description

"When I grow up I want to be an astronaut!" declared a six-year-old Stephan in 1968, a year before man walked on the moon. Not surprisingly, his first doodles featured blazing rockets and spaceships. Growing up in France, and not permitted to watch much TV, Stephan spent a lot of time at the corner cinema. There he was introduced to the likes of the Werewolf, the Mummy, Dracula, Frankenstein and King Kong. He traveled on the Voyage to the Center of the Earth and experienced The Day the Earth Stood Still. The fantastic creatures and worlds in all of these classics were overwhelmingly cool. As Stephan's doodles of astronauts became doodles of monsters and aliens, he found himself enjoying drawing more and more--and the dream of becoming an astronaut gradually evolved into becoming a visual artist.

Quantum Dreams: The Art of Stephan Martinière is a collection of his sci-fi book paintings, video game designs and personal art. Stephan takes others' descriptions of faraway, imaginary realms--and makes them real.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #590477 in Books
• Published on: 2004-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 80 pages

About the Author
Smoothly morphing his considerable skill and experience, Stephan MARTINIERE shapeshifts from whimsical to hard-core science fiction, cartoon to realistic, illustrator to director.

In the past 15 years, Stephan has become known for his talent, versatility, imagination and professionalism, gaining constant recognition and praise through his work in a growing range of clients and projects.

Stephan has worked for three years as visual art director at Cyan, the creators of Myst, on their games Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, Uru: The Path of the Shell and the upcoming Myst 5.

As an illustrator and animation director, Stephan has won numerous Awards including:

- A Master Award and five Excellence Awards from Ballistic Media's Expose 3,

- Two Master Awards and one Excellence Award from Ballistic Media's Expos? 2,

- The British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Cover of 2004,

- A Silver Award for Editorial in 1997 and a Gold Award in 2004 from Spectrum,

A Thea Award for his work on the Paramount theme park Super Saturator in 2001.

As a director for the animated special "Madeline," Stephan won the Humanitas Award, the A.C.T Award and the Parent's Choice Award and was nominated for an Emmy Award.

Stephan is currently the visual design director for Midway Games.

Customer Reviews

Beautiful, a great reference material and overall an awesome collection of his works.
I am a heavy consumer of art books and I also enjoy conceptual art books. I love to look at collections by artists and for conceptual art, you have many books that are dedicated to a film such as "Star Wars" or "Batman".

And if you do enjoy those films, certain names tend to come up. One name I find is Stephan Martiniere. A Frenchman known for his work involving theme parks, animated television shows and special effects for films such as "Virus", "Red Planet", "I, Robot" and "Star Wars Episodes 2 & 3.

His book "Quantum Dreams" is a collection of digital paintings and concept art created for book covers, computer games and personal paintings all created on Adobe Photoshop.

Each page (or to be specific every two pages) feature Martiniere's concept and what he was trying to accomplish for a given cover or artwork.

There is no explanation of how he created it but at the end of the book is a one page several paragraph segment of how he works with Adobe Photoshop, the various layers and distortions and opacity levels that he does to create his work.

The majority of the work featured are not from his films but from various book covers and his own personal work. The photos are large and you can see the detail in his paintings.

I love these type of books that have the photos very big, especially if you need a book to be used as a reference. I for one, have used it to get ideas on lighting and ideas of how he was able to work with clouds and various areas in his work.

But for those expecting "how-to's", you're not going to find much in this book.

And for those expecting a lot of reading, you get a foreword by "Myst" creator Rand Miller, a two-page introduction and a page explaining of how Martiniere does his work but the main focal point are the images and a paragraph or two on how he came up with the idea of the artwork.

There are a lot of concept art books out there, many that cover digital painting as well. But what I like about this book is that it can be found online for a great price and whether you are a fan of his art, a student who is looking for a reference or just a person who enjoys perusing concept art books, this is a fine addition to your collection.

I am passionate towards Martiniere's concept art work and very glad to see the book being printed but showcasing the covers fairly large in order for us to see the detail of his work.

All in all, a very cool book to own!

Wonderful sci-fi illustrations page to page
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/RBS89EJ5T3VTJ This would probably appeal more to sci-fi fans and futuristic landscape concept artists.

This book is a showcase of Stephan Martiniere's art. The quality is great and obviously he's in a class of his own.

Most of them are for book covers and some computer game concept designs. Expect planets, star trails, space cities, humans with cool uniforms, and robots. Each painting is accompanied by the artist's comments.

There are 80 pages, and at the end, I felt wanting more. However, you can see more paintings on his website.

There are more pictures of the book on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.

Just what you'd expect from the cover art
Stephan Martiniere shares some of his excellent art and a bit of his technique in this well put together collection. The book is relatively short compared to some other art books but it is priced to match. Essentially if you like the cover you can expect more of the same kind of work inside. He tends to use a combination of extreme photo manipulation and painting to achieve his look. I found the book to be a worthy addition to my collection of art books, and I would recommend it to those who are interested in digital illustration.