ABAKAN 2288: kallamity's world of mecha design part one by Luca Zampriolo (Dec 26 2011) Paperback – 2011

 This is an amazing book featuring the mecha art and models of Luca Zampriolo, aka Kallamity. Great for anyone interested in assembling, building or designing mechas.The concept is set in the future in a world that has run out of resources. The idea is not particular unique but more to provide background. As usual, there will be one powerful entity, in this case the Weingart family, who has the power and technology to build all sorts of stuff of which some are mechas.The book starts of with concept art for the dystopia future world. It looks like there are mining plants built everywhere, even in cities with skyscrapers there are factories spilling out smoke just beside.The rest of the book are concept art for mechas and a selected few are being made into actual models. There are only a few featured because each one has an crazy amount of detail. One model took 11 months to finish. They are mainly the walker-type heavy mechas, a spaceship carrier and a crew all suited up. You can see some design influence from Kow Yokoyama which was mentioned in the book.There are photos of all the created parts either by casting or sculpting. The models are made from Milliput (bicomponent stucco) and plasticard. For one of the human models, Super Sculpey was used.Every piece created is intricately designed and worked on. For example, you can see all the tiny holes for ventilation grills. All surfaces have details even though some were eventually covered up by other parts. There are also many photos from different angles, and photos at different stages of completion.Lengthy commentary is provided on how each mecha was designed and built. It's not tutorial style so it's not a beginners book. Some of what's mentioned might make more sense to actual model builders. Towards the end, there are also some guest designers featured, like Michael Fichtenmayer, Ryu Seoung Ho, Matt Tomczek and Jason Stalnaker.Highly recommended for mecha lovers. Even if you don't build or assemble them, there are plenty of designs to see.(There are more pictures of the book on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)

There's not a whole lot to say other than some of the work in this book is just mind-blowing. I think it's amazing how he kit-bashed together all these awesome mech designs. Plus, if I remember correctly, he's spent 11 years working on this whole storyline he's created. You can tell he's passionate about his craft. I wish I was as dedicated. I'll admit, I haven't read through all the text just yet. I was more interested in the artistic side. His drawings/paintings aren't great, but I bought this for the sculpting/kit-making parts of the book. If you're looking for a book with lots of different variations of mecha, this is probably not the best place to look. A lot of the designs are similar, as they are supposed to be chronological upgrades of older mechs in this world he's created. Interesting stuff.

Nice story that goes with even nicer drawings. I didn't know anything about this author but I really like mecha design, this book fulfills both the imaging and a good story as well. I would recommend if you like mechas and sci-fi stories. I won't spoil or anything but the story happens in the future when only a handful of families control de world supplies of fuel.EDIT:So I finished reading this book and I wanted to give an update. This book has a small story about the mecha world, but also has some detailed photographs and tips on how the artist creates, models and paints some of its models. It has some techniques to use table salt to weather your model kits and, though it is not a manual on how to paint model kits, gives some good tips to amateurs like me.Overall I would recommend this book if you are interested both in mecha design and model kit building.

Just a very Cool book of making Models and Robots I have so many books that sometimes you forget how good a book is until someone else looks in it and say's dude this is the best Book on Building Model Robots and Mec's And it is the Best

The artwork (sketches, paintings, etc.) in this book is very inspiring - the text (back story of the mech universe) is ok, but reads much like a teenager's first novel. The plastic models on the other hand, are absolutely amazilicious! Totally unbelievable detail on each single one. If you are a scratchbuilder of kit builder you will be drooling over the inspiration you can find here - don't expect to learn how to make these models just from this one book, (most can be purchased as resin kits from the author) rather use it as a new yard-stick to measure your skill against and try to figure out how the author is creating the base models for his castings.Overall, would have liked more build instructions, larger model build images, and less text, but a still a great compendium of mech/post-apo art.

I'm a bit of a mech fan. I'm not an over-the-top mech fan. But now that I own a 3D printer, I am planning on designing and printing some mech models, and I was searching for inspiration. A fellow artist at work showed me his copy of this book, and after flipping through maybe three pages, I was online and ordering!It is a work of true inspiration and I'm happy to own it.

Great book explaining how the author came up with this series. Plus excellent documentation on how he scratch builds the models.

Beautiful book, great construction quality.