The Art of How to Train Your Dragon 2 Hardcover – Illustrated, May 6, 2014

The media could not be loaded. This book is as good as the artbook for the first film, The Art of How to Train Your Dragon. In other words, it's a beautiful artbook.The concept art is split between designs for the characters, dragons, environment and props.Hiccup and company from Berk are five years older now, and they are redesigned slightly to reflect their age. Nicolas Marlet is still the main character designer and a lot of his drawings are included. He still uses traditional media to draw in similar style the expressive and almost cartoon-like characters. Artist Zhaoping Wei provides the more finished look to the characters.Both the viking and dragon designs are a joy to look at, and of course there new characters and dragons. There's Stoick's Skullcrusher, blacksmith Gobber's Grump, Valka's Cloudjumper, the two gigantic Bewilderbeast and of course other miscellaneous dragons.Designs for the props and sets are also wonderful. I love the whimsical look and feel. There are many interesting creations, to name a few, such as the dragon wind vane, dragon feeding stations, houses and buildings, traps and war machines.Environment paintings are really beautiful and scenic. There aren't many of those but when they appear, they are breathtaking.Alright, some downsides. There's a good amount of text talking about the story and art, but the lengthy passages are not easy to read because of the small font size. My other complaint is the paper feels thinner and softer than the first book. If they make the paper any thinner, it would be magazine paper. Note that there are two publishers for this book, Newmarket Press and Titan Books. My edition is Newmarket Press. I read another reviewer comment about the paper stock from Titan Books being thin as well. So these are my two quibbles.Overall, it feels like they've packed more artworks than the earlier book. Despite the minor downsides, I would still highly recommend this book, as well as the first artbook.4.5 out of 5 stars.(See more pictures of the book on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)

Is the second book of the series i bought for my sister and she loved it as much as the first one, beautiful artwork, lots of references and very helpful!

As soon as the first trailers appeared online me and my friends who are all animation majors watched them constantly. Once the book came out I had to buy it, ironically enough it came out on my birthday so it was a wonderful gift to myself. I constantly keep going back to look at the character designs of my favorite characters. I love Valka's design and love the fact that they went back to her first designs from the first artbook. Just seeing that process of the designs makes me value my character designs more as that is what I wish to work with.Even though there were only two AR codes I didn't mind since at first I didn't even know they were there till last week, then I looked it up and just watched the storyboards and the finished piece. So that was also a treat, I wish they added more though but I can see why they didn't since the movie isn't out yet.Now all I can do is wait for the movie. Getting this book is making the wait worth it.

Vino en perfectas condiciones y antes de tiempo, 100% recomendado sobre todo para cualquier fan de httyd.

Product came in great shape and early

The book came in great condition and on time. I ordered as a Christmas gift and the recipient loved it!

By giving 4 stars I am not saying this is not best product, it's just I expected that content would be... a bit different. More like drawings and sketches I saw at the end of the movie HTTYD 1. Maybe I misconceived or forgot already how those sketches looked like but... It doesn't matter. I like the book and since it will be the present to a girl who is a big fan of these series and is professional drawer, I am sure she will like it even more.If were a bit bigger fan of this art I would definitely gave 5 stars but no, so here it is - fair 4 stars. Btw, despite all I wrote above, I do like this book and suggest to fans of series to, if not buy, but at least borrow from friends or find electronical version of book (I bet Amazon has it somewhere here: "seek, and ye shall find").P.S.: It could be I will change my mind and will give 5 somewhen later (if system will allow me to do this). Another note: I would definitely share some photos but my camera is so bad.

The art is so beautiful, and it came in tact.