The Artbook Collector 2025 Awards
- The Artbook Collector
- 3 hours ago
- 9 min read
January 5th 2025
It's the end of another year, so it's time for the completely unofficial, The Artbook Collector Official Awards of 2025! 44 books released over the last year were added to the collection and now that the last one has arrived, I can give out some awards.
This is a fun look back and not to be taken too seriously, as these awards are decided by just myself and based on the on the books I now own and have reviewed. The categories will also change based on what was released too, to highlight some notable books. It has been a great year though, making some of these awards very hard to pick winners for!
Best Book Cover
For the second year in a row, this award has to go to Bryce Kho, for not one, but two book covers!
Kho created custom art for his new books, both coming with gold foiling for some extra flare. The covers for Sea of Stars: Throes of the Watchmaker: The Concept Art of Bryce Kho and Overflow: The Art of Bryce Kho can be seen below, highlighting his incredible artwork, with each book also giving breakdowns of their creation too! The releases from 3dtotal Publishing are well worth adding to your collection.
Best Book Production Quality
This award goes to Creating Worlds: The Disney and 20th Century Studios Cinematic Art of Dylan Cole!
2025 delivered a noticeable improvement in binding and print quality for multiple releases, and not just from one publisher either. It lead to many books avoiding image loss in the centre fold, which can really ruin an artbook.
The standout though was Creating Worlds from Insight Editions (Titan Books in the UK), a book that showcases the stunning art of Dylan Cole for a collection of movies, including Avatar and Maleficent. It's a large book with 296 pages, but the binding included a lot of page signatures and and enough flexibility to fully showcase the art that takes up the full spread. As well as this, the print finish is exceptional, with true blacks and clear details in even the smallest elements of an image, possibly the best I've seen in an artbook.
Read my full review of Creating Worlds here - Book Review.
Best Look at Unused Concepts
This award goes to Marvel for their Marvel Studios artbooks!
There were a lot of books that were generous with sharing unused designs, but Marvel have been consistent at showing them with multiple releases in 2025, with some being very notable. While the books haven't quite hit the heights of former years, there have been some interesting pages of character concepts that never made it to the screen.
Below and in photo order are the following examples;
The Leader horror concepts from Marvel Studios' Captain America: Brave New World - The Art of the Movie
The 'Golden Surfer' from Marvel Studios' The Fantastic Four: First Steps - The Art of the Movie
Loki 'God of Stories' costumes from Marvel Studios' Loki: Season Two - The Art of the Series
She-Hulk character concepts from Marvel Studios' She-Hulk: Attorney At Law - The Art of the Series
Best Use of Space
In another competitive category, the award goes to Starfield Visual Compendium from Dark Horse!
The partnership with Bethesda delivered a huge 368-page hardcover book, but it still packed a lot of art in on every page. There are many different approaches to page design, but the goal here was clearly to share as much of the early sketches and full-colour concepts as possible, so empty page space became the enemy.
As you can see below in the photos and video preview, there is a wealth of artwork, but they are still very readable and the print quality helps maintain image clarity throughout. It can often make a book look messy including so many images, buy the design team did a fantastic job here and the book offers a huge amount to pore over for Starfield as a result.
Read my full review of Starfield Visual Compendium here - Book Review.
Buy Here  / Buy Here (UK)
Best Crediting of Artists
This award goes to The Art of DOOM: The Dark Ages from Dark Horse and id Software!
Crediting is very hit and miss in the artbook world, and while this book was lighter on text with its art-heavy focus, it still made sure you knew exactly who created what on the page. They also listed the artists in the back of the book in a clear way too, you can't ask for much more than that!
Read my full review of this incredible book here.
Give Me More
The 'Give Me More' award goes to God of War: 20th Anniversary Retrospective from Dark Horse!
This was I book I ordered as fan of the series and wasn't expecting it to feature so much art, as its description gave no indication of how much would be included in the two-volume set. In fact, it's not really advertised as an artbook at all. However, there is a huge amount here alongside the history of God of War's development, making it perfect for lovers of the series and concept art. Splitting the Greek and Norse Saga was a thoughtful approach that I also really appreciated.
The 'Retrospective' is something that I hope Dark Horse does again for other games, whether it be Killzone and Ratchet & Clank from PlayStation as well, or titles from other publishers and developers too.
Read the review of God of War: 20th Anniversary Retrospective with more previews here - Book Review.
Buy Here  / Buy Here (UK)
Worth the Wait
The winner of this award is Metroid Prime 1-3: A Visual Retrospective from publisher Piggyback!
23 years after the release of the original Metroid Prime in 2002, this book features the concept art behind the trilogy and 2023's Metroid Prime Remastered. Across its 208 pages, the book includes early sketches, full-colour concepts, 3D models, and more, made with different art techniques and styles to create a wonderful collection of artwork for fans. Producer Kensuke Tanabe delivers the insights inside, with very honest thoughts and memories of the series while working with Retro Studios.
The book is a welcome addition to the shelves of players, but if you need more convincing, read my review here.
Buy Here  / Buy Here (UK)
Best Animation Artbook
Titan Books and Skydance Animation take this award with WondLa: The Art & Making of the Limited Series!
Stepping up to take on the usual suspects for animation artbooks, this release clearly takes inspiration from them while holding its own. It's a great showcase of the undeniable talent of the art team involved in adapting the WondLa books, but with many members of the team having an impressive resume in animation and movies, it's hardly a surprise. From early ideas to developed designs, as well as insights on the shows creation, this look behind the scenes is more than worthy of the award.
Read my review of the book - Book Review.
Buy Here  / Buy Here (UK)
Best Art Showcase
This award is for the book that best showcases the work of an individual, so it had to go to Creating Worlds: The Disney and 20th Century Studios Cinematic Art of Dylan Cole!
Dylan Cole's goal for the book was to show his art as it was originally created and allow it space to breathe, and he executed that brilliantly. The page design is simple, drawing all attention to the images, and so it very much feels like walking through an art gallery. In combination with the high quality of the print finish and binding, this is a superb look at the artist's work.
Best Deep Dive
The winner for this award goes to Outer Wilds: Design Works from Lost in Cult!
A number of books joined the collection in 2025 that feature deep dives into the development of projects, but this look at Mobius Digital's sci-fi hit Outer Wilds was the standout this year. It perfectly balanced the written history, insights, and development of the game alongside the wonderful concept art, leaving you wanting to jump right back into the game. Engaging from start to finish through the excellent writing and interviews, fans will learn a lot about the game and the team behind its creation, all contained within this well-designed book.
Read the review of the book to learn more and see more previews - Book Review.
Most Anticipated
A late book listing takes this one, as The Art of Avatar: Fire and Ash from DK is my most anticipated artbook for 2026!
Although its existence is not a surprise, you can't help but be excited to see listings appear online. Noted as coming on July 2nd, this book will highlight the concept art behind the most visually impressive release in cinemas this year, including a look at the new locations, characters, and cultures of Pandora. If the previous book, The Art of Avatar: The Way of Water, is anything to go by, this will be well worth adding to your collection.
Best Publisher
Taking it for the second year running is publisher Dark Horse!
If you play video games and enjoy concept art, Dark Horse will no doubt make their way onto your shelf. They have become the go to for some of the biggest developers in the gaming industry, but also work on releases for animation and comic books too, so a new release is always around the corner. Their greatest strength is their consistency, delivering large hardcovers with great paper and print quality, as well as implementing continual improvements too, such as the reducing image loss in the centre fold.
12 Dark Horse books joined the collection in 2025, and that's not all of their releases! Many are some of my favourites of the year too, including The Art of Assassin's Creed Shadows, God of War: 20th Anniversary Retrospective, The Art of DOOM: The Dark Ages, and Starfield Visual Compendium. Check out the slider below of some their releases from the last 12 months.
Artbook of the Year
The final award, the one that everyone wants to see, but is the hardest to choose. This year it goes to The Art of Star Wars Outlaws from Dark Horse and Massive Entertainment!
It was an incredible 12 months of releases and a handful were more than worthy of the award, but I kept coming back to this one and so it felt right to make it official. Like other books, the production quality, page design, insights, and of course, the artwork, are brilliant. On top of this though, this book had a lot to live up to, because not only does Star Wars have an insane amount of glorious concept art from some of the best in the industry, but it also has a rich history of exceptional artbooks too. Fortunately though, the artists delivered stunning artwork and the book does a great job at presenting it to fans.
It ticks a lot of boxes for me; a well-made book, early 'blue sky' concepts and sketches to epic full colour pieces, a look at multiple aspects of the game, interesting insights, great page design and use of space, and incredible artwork. I was happy that The Art of Star Wars Outlaws continues the legacy of the extraordinary Star Wars artbook catalogue, making this look at the adventure of Kay Vess and Nix highly recommended!
Read the review of The Art of Star Wars Outlaws here - Book Review.
Honourable Mentions
It's only right to mention the books that were also considered for Artbook of the Year!
Creating Worlds: The Disney and 20th Century Studios Cinematic Art of Dylan Cole - The undeniable talent of Cole got the showcase it deserves in this release, making it recommended for not just his fans, but those that love movie art in general.
The Art of Assassin's Creed Shadows - The series from Ubisoft has always delivered great artbooks, with this one being on of the strongest in the line-up. The environment art is outstanding yet again and depicts moments, rather than static scenes. Like the Star Wars Outlaws book, it ticks many boxes for an 'Art of' release and perfect for fans wanting more from the game.
Starfield Visual Compendium - If you love sci-fi design and want a lot of it, this is the book for you. I was impressed by the sheer amount of art included, which was matched by the book making it very presentable throughout. The art team at Bethesda are fantastic too, making it a book you'll keep coming back to and is ideal for artists looking for a volume of reference material.
That's the awards for 2025! Let me know what you think and be sure to check out the YouTube channel here to see previews of many of the books mentioned here, as well as over 30 more releases from the year!
You can see a list of last year's award winners here - The Artbook Collector 2024 Awards.
