The first Captain America art of book surprised me in how well designed and interesting it was. It incorporated a lot of comic history into not only the concept art, but the final film design. This book continues that, but with less emphasis on the comic origins; that is, there's not as much "history" included.

Just like "Marvel's Thor: The Dark World - The Art of the Movie", this one is laid out chronologically vis-á-vis the film. Cap's redesigned costume is given an overview, as is Black Widow's, but where the book really shines is with the Winter Soldier and Falcon. Bucky's section is especially interesting because he's the only modern character in the film. The Winter Soldier was created in the late 2000's, unlike Cap and Falcon who have been around for 50+ years. In the comics, he has a domino mask and the concept artists pay homage to that with the military ant-glare paint around his eyes under the goggles. The design and physical implementation of his metal arm was very cool. Falcon also gets a lot of pages devoted to his design, and deservedly so. The various concepts for his wings are incredibly interesting as well as how the SFX render them in the film.

The other really strong point of the book is how physical locations, like the Triskellion and Smithsoneon, were conceptualized to fit real-world locations. The section on the museum has full page spreads of the murals drawn for the film, and has a beautiful fold-out rendering. The Triskellion section was far better than I would have expected in how much emphasis was put on making it realistic in its location along the Potomac River and how they reduced the helicarriers from 5 to 3 because 5 would not fit under the river! The destruction of the helicarriers, and how the battle damage from every main gun was fully mapped, has some brilliant concept art to accompany the explanation.

My main criticism of the book, and why I deducted a star, is the over emphasis on storyboarding. This is where a sequence is mapped out via small black and white panels. This is useful and interesting - ONCE - to see how an action sequence is developed and how art is fundamental to that process. However, there are six different sequences included here comprising 30+ pages of the book. They got boring very fast.

Just like the previous releases, the hardcover book has a wrap-around image on the cover instead of s dust jacket and a different wrap-around image on the slipcase. One change I noticed is that unlike the previous books, which were all 10" high without the slipcase, this book is 9.5 inches. The slipcase has a bit of padding at the top and bottom so that it is the same size as the other film slipcases. I'm honestly not sure why they did this, though I am glad the cases all line up nicely on the bookshelf. Overall, this is another fine installment of the Art of Marvel Films collection. Highly recommended. ( )