What's up everybody? Today for most of us is Thanksgiving{my least favorite holiday} and this is the first of two parts of my 5th entry of the Strider Personal Journal. Why would i make two parts of one blog for the same day, you ask? Good question, but i'll give you the short story: I have some reviews for Street Fighter Tribute, UDON's Art of Capcom and SF20: The Art of Street Fighter for you. These are from my own experiences, so don't expect a professional review and prepare for a long part one. lol XD Anyway, let's get started. First off, Street Fighter Tribute: For those of you who don't know what is, it's a collection of fanart made by SF fans from all over the planet. UDON{the people who made the SF comics} held a contest for fans to display their finest works of art to them, and if possible, get selected by UDON to be shown in the book. However, they received more pieces of art than they originally hoped for{they saw around 1300 pieces according to the info they released in the end of the artbook}, but they could only fit around 300 for their book. Still, it has a lot of great drawings and it also has some comments from most of the artworks' creators, including the UDON team themselves, so that's something to look at. One thing to note, most of the pictures i have here are those selected for the SF Tribute, plus some of those that were turned down by UDON. Sure it's a little bit thinner than some of the other books UDON has released so far{and i do mean just a little}, but it's still a book i recommend. Next up, UDON's Art of Capcom: This artbook is made directly by our friends over at UDON to showcase their Capcom-related work. It namely contains the artwork they made for the SF, Darkstalkers and Rival Schools comics, but it also has some artwork based on other Capcom games you might know of. It also has some concept artwork and even some work no one has seen before until now in the book. The only downside to it is it doesn't have artwork based on certain games{like Strider, Power Stone and Lost Planet} but it's still worth checking out. And finally, SF20: The Art of Street Fighter: This is what i call the ultimate artbook. It has artwork made by Capcom's past and present artists plus freelance artists and artists from other big-name companies in two lineups. The main lineup is like this: Akiman, Kinu Nishimura, CRMK, Ikeno, Dai-Chan, Edayan and finally Shinkiro. The secondary lineup has the following: Shoei, Sensei, Shima Maeda, Harumaru, Akiko Nishizawa, Hideki Ishikawa, Uji, Shinsuke Komaki, Ooishi, L. George, Sakura, UDON, Polygon Pictures, Tamio, Syukou Murase, Falcoon, Nona, Takuji Kawano, the Namco X Capcom art staff, collaborative illustrations{or crossover artwork} and the Capcom design staff. This artbook also has commentary from most of the artists involved on their favorite pieces of work, as well as some Q/A for them on their fondest memories of the series. And there's even some never-before-seen artwork from the main SF games and SF-related games, merchandise and artbooks you wouldn't even think of seeing. This is now my personal favorite out of the three books i have, by the way. If you're a hardcore fan, casual fan or in my case, somebody in between, then this is the book for you. All in all, these three books are a must-own for any SF or Capcom fan/supporter, and that's saying something. :D The next books i'll pick up will be the Darkstalkers Tribute and the Dalkstalkers Graphfic File books, so be on the lookout for reviews on them later in the year. ;) Part two of the blog is coming up, so in the meantime, here's the cover art for the books and some preview pages for the SF20 artbook. Stay tuned. ;) -Tahj{Neo Strider Tahj}