parka blogs art book reviews

Lines and Colors

Parka Blogs Art Book Reviews

Posted on December 4, 2008 Author cparker 2 Comments

The big selections of books available through the online sellers works well for finding a book that you already are familiar with and have decided to buy, but browsing , a practice of key importance to all book lovers, is hard to duplicate in the window of a web browser (despite the name).

This is particularly difficult in the case of art, illustration and design books.

The online booksellers have tried to make up for this in various ways with reviews, recommendations, ratings, and more recently, small visual excerpts form the books.

The latter, as exemplified by Amazon, is particularly bad at delivering on its premise, hampered perhaps by overzealous intellectual property lawyers and poor think-through on the part of the company. These “Look Inside” features usually disappoint, showing a table of contents, some opening pages and a bit of an index, but little (if any) of the heart of a book. I get the impression the preview pages are chosen by an algorithm or numeric formula, rather than a person.

Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a site where art related books are reviewed and described, accompanied by a few carefully chosen (by a human), high-resolution images that really give you an idea of the book’s visual content?

Enter Parka Blogs , a blog by Teih Yi Chie, an illustrator and cartoonist, blogging under the alias of Parka, who makes a point of doing just that.

The Art Book List is heavy on movie and animation concept art, illustration, anime and science fiction, but within that vein does a great job on the books that are reviewed. (If anyone starts a review blog like this for gallery and museum art books, please let me know!)

The reviews themselves are succinct and give a nice overview of the book. The killer feature though, is the selection of well-chosen images from the books, images that are actually representative of the books’ content (are you listening, big-time online booksellers?), and often supplemented with video “flip-throughs”, in which the entire book is quickly flipped through, giving you on overall impression of the amount and kind of images that make up the body of the book.

The still images are linked to larger versions on Flickr, the largest of which are nicely high resolusion, giving you a browsing experience that is next-best to actually having the book in your hands when deciding what to buy.

The Art Book list is divided into types of movies, individual studios (like Pixar and Studio Ghibli), as well as collections of work by individual concept artists, illustrators and others.

There is also a shorter list of Intsructional Books .

The site provides a list of relevant links; and the blog itself can also, of course, be read like a blog, browsing back by date or searching out topics of interest. In addition to the reviews, he covers topics of interest in similar veins. I came across Parka Blogs when he was kind enough to post a brief article about Lines and Colors a few days ago.

The Parka Blogs book reviews are accompanied by links to the reviewed books on Amazon. Purchases made through his links return a small percentage to the reviewer so he can, what else?, buy more books to enjoy and review.

(Images above: from Parka’s reviews of The Art of Star Wars Episode III Revenge of the Sith , Miyazaki’s Magical World , Covers by James Jean and The Art of Kung Fu Panda . See my posts on Hayao Miyazaki and James Jean .)

2 Replies to “ Parka Blogs Art Book Reviews”

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Thanks, Parka. The addresses have been updated.

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Parka Blogs Artbook Reviews

I’m not sure if everyone’s already aware or not, but Parka Blogs is a fantastic resource for those of you who like to collect artbooks. If you’ve wondered if you should buy an artbook, but have been deceived by nice covers in the past, see if it’s been reviewed on Parka. He does a great review, shows photos of the interior, as well as a flip through so you can get an idea of what it looks like.

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Hiren: Keita Okada Artworks & Making Book

Author : keita okada.

¥ 2,530

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This is the first collection of original and copyrighted works by Keita Okada, who has attracted attention for his sculptures of dragons, lions, and fantastic beasts.

It also introduces his original techniques for creating powerful sculptures, including ZBrush rough and tumble, scales, wrinkles, teeth and fangs, and 3D printing details, all in the making of dragons and lions!

Category： Japanese Art Book

Tag： Beast , dragon , Lion , Modeling , ZBrush

Author profile

Keita okada (villard inc.).

Digital sculptor, 3D concept artist. Born in Hiroshima Prefecture in 1991. He has been freelance since 2015 and mainly works on concept models such as creatures. Established “Villard” Co., Ltd. in March 2017. He has been involved in various domestic and international works such as the ZBrush Central Top Row Award. He is one of the young 3D sculptors who are currently in the spotlight.

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• Review: Alldocube iPlay 60 LITE: 11-inch Android 14 tablet with 4G

Submitted by Teoh Yi Chie on April 11, 2024 - 6:13pm

Review unit provided by Alldocube

The Alldocube iPlay 60 LITE is an affordable 11-inch Android 14 tablet that comes with 4GB RAM, 128GB storage, microSD card slot and has 4G support. The price of USD 109 on AliExpress is extremely competitive.

Pros and cons at a glance

+ Design looks good + Build quality is solid + Display is vibrant, bright and sharp + Laminated display + Has auto brightness + Has microSD card slot + Has 4G SIM support + No bloatware + 8 hours or more battery life easily depending on brightness + Attractive pricing - Performance not as responsive compared to iPlay 50 Mini Pro - Speakers are loud but sound slightly hollow - No 3.5mm audio jack - No biometric unlock - Stock Android has limited features - USB-C port with USB 2 transfer speed

This tablet is the more affordable version of iPlay 60 that I reviewed a few months ago. And here are the differences:

The main differences are resolution, pen support and battery capacity. iPlay 60 is the better tablet, but it's also USD 50 more.

• Dimensions: 168.3mm x 256.8mm x 8.4mm (HWD)
• Weight: 544g
• OS: Android 14
• Processor: Unisoc® Tiger T606
• RAM: 4GB RAM+8GB Virtual RAM
• Storage: 128GB
• MicroSD card slot: Yes
• Display size: 10.95 inches IPS
• Resolution: 1280×800 (138 PPI)
• Brightness: 300 - 350 nits
• Front camera: 5MP
• Back camera: 13MP
• Cellular: Dual SIM 4G LTE
• Bluetooth v 5
• Wifi 802.11 ac/a/b/g/n 2.4GHz/5GHz
• Port: USB 2 type C
• Battery capacity: 8000 mAh

Things included

The pen shown above comes with a mesh tip and disc tip. It's not an active stylus so there's no palm rejection, tilt and pressure sensitivity.

Bezels are thin and uniform on all sides. A 5MP front camera is in landscape orientation. Body has rounded corners but not the display.

A glossy screen protector is already applied.

The weight of 544g is considered lightweight for an 11-inch tablet.

Cellular support is for 4G. You'll probably need a headset for making calls as the tablet is difficult to grip with just one hand.

I forgot to mention that 11-inch is big enough for reading comics where text size cannot be changed. I do prefer large tablets for reading comics though.

4GB of RAM is included. 8GB of virtual RAM shared from internal storage is advertised but that's not really real RAM. When many apps are opened, inactive apps will often reload.

128GB of internal storage is included with storage expansion possible with the microSD card slot.

The tablet is advertised to be the first in the world to run Android 14.

The OS features are quite limited and the default user interface looks ugly. There's Google Play Store so you can always install your own launcher to get more features and customise the UI to look better. I use Nova Launcher.

Battery life

Battery capacity is 8000 mAh. I was able to get 8 hours of battery life easily with auto brightness. Charging speed is slow though.

A budget tablet will have limitations as expected. Ultimately it really comes down to how much you want to spend. If you want better specs, there are tablets with better specs but be prepared to pay more.

The main selling point of this tablet is obviously the price point and this is a decent tablet for those with limited budget.

Availability

The Alldocube iPlay 60 LITE is available on AliExpress .

If you buy from the affiliate link above, I get to earn some commission but at no extra cost to you. Your support allows me to put out more reviews like the one you've just read.

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