The Art of Halo: Creating a Virtual World

The Art of Halo is a collection of concept art used for making the games, along with commentary by Eric S. Trautmann. The book includes a foreword by Jason Jones and a preface by Marcus R. Lehto.

Content
The majority of the book focuses on the development of the major aspects of Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2, from the Weapons, the games environments and the Character designs. There are many early sketches and concept art for these things, much of it by Shi Kai Wang and the Bungie art team. Certain sections show the influence of earlier Bungie games on Halo's design. One section shows a timeline of Bungie's history. The ideas are shown as they evolved, from a series of sketches to storyboards and their eventual animation. Finally, some screen shots are included to show how the ideas were eventually incorporated into the Halo games.

There are also many explanations for the processes and the development. Some of these explain things Halo fans had not previously known, like the role of Grunt Ultras. They also explain what the intentions were for many of the ideas and how they changed over time.

The final section of the book contains a few full-page pinups of various concept art, including scenes in the levels of Halo and ideas of new characters.

Trivia

 * While the book shows ranks of certain species within the Covenant the Elites' section is missing the ranks of Ultra and Councilor, probably because these rank models did not appear until Halo 2.
 * There are several images of character design from when Halo was going to be a RTS game.
 * There are many errors in this book, such as a caption pointing at a Plasma Grenade, but pointing it out as an Assault Bomb. However, the Assault Bomb was on this page. Another mistake consisted of calling the Prophet of Mercy the Prophet of Truth.
 * This book shows the Easter egg on the Assault Bomb, where it has writing on it.