animation

Wreck-It Ralph has an interesting premise that will probably tickle gamers. It's amusing to see how gaming is spoofed. The book features the concept art, character designs, storyboards and colorscripts. There are lots of funny ideas and art.

The book is split into roughly three parts that correspond to the game worlds that Ralph has to travel through. There's the 8-bit world, the First Person Shooter world, and finally the Sugar Rush world where the go-karts are racing.

The first part looks at the 8-bit world as realised in 3D. The character designs are the cute big-head-short-legs type. I was looking out for game villains designs for the nostalgia but there aren't as many compared to the other characters.

The FPS world is a strong juxtaposition from the two other worlds. The concept art here looks like they can for Halo, Mass Effect, or Gears of War. There are background art, vehicles and the technology. The only giveaway is the more caricatured character faces, cute cy-bugs and Ralph's armoured suit showing his big belly.

The last part featuring the Sugar Rush world will get you into a sugar high just from looking at the pictures. There are landscape paintings of chocolate and candy, fluffy candy floss clouds, house of cakes, candy go-karts, biscuit soldiers and donut cops. There are even photos of the staff making models out of real confectionery. I feel unhealthy already after looking at so much sugar.

The contrasting worlds and their quirky game characters makes this a wonderful artbook.

The Art of Wreck-It Ralph is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN) and Book Depository

Behind the dust jacket is a nice embossed 8-bit Ralph on the hardcover.

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日本語

A Letter to Momo (ももへの手紙) is a 2011 Japanese anime film directed by Hiroyuki Okiura.

This is the concept artbook for the film. It's a 112-page paperback.

Collected within are character designs, background paintings and their reference photos, animation stills, storyboards and a few frame-by-frame animation boards. There's plenty of text and at the back are 30 pages of interviews with the staff on the art direction.

The character designs are of the main characters and a few town people. The story happens on an island, which is pretty suburban, very typical of most Japanese anime films with the town houses, streets. Looking at them feels a bit familiar.

If you like the film and know Japanese, you'll probably enjoy this book more.

This book is available at:
Amazon.com | Amazon Japan | CDJapan.co.jp | YesAsia.com

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This book is available at:
Amazon.com | Amazon Japan | CDJapan.co.jp | YesAsia.com

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Here's Amazon Japan shipping rates and buying guide for your reference.

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There seems to be two publishers for this title. Chronicle Books are publishing it with the orange cover, and probably for distributing in USA. Thames & Hudson publishes it with a red cover and distributes it for Europe. So the price of the book will vary depending on where you buy it.

Animation Sketchbooks follows in the same format as Comics Sketchbooks: The Private Worlds of Today's Most Creative Talents and Graphic: Inside the Sketchbooks of the World's Great Graphic Designers. It features the sketchbooks of creative individuals, in this case, those who work for animation, not necessarily just artists.

50 creatives are featured and with 320 pages, it still means that the coverage for each person is quite limited. The text comes in the form of quotes plus a short profile on who they are, what they do and have created. There's not much text. The focus of the book is on showing the insides of their sketchbooks.

The sketchbook pages come in the form of sketches, collages and doodles. A lot are random musings.

It's difficult for me to understand the purpose of the book, probably as a pool of random sketchbook pages to dive into. The text doesn't talk much about animation and the sketchbook pages aren't necessarily linked to animation.

If you want to check out more work, there's a listing of websites at the back of the book. These are the featured:

Nancy Andrews
Lilli Carré
Martha Colburn
Luis Cook
Suzanne Deakin
Jo Dery
Paul Driessen
Félix Dufour-Laperrière
Adam Elliot
Janie Geiser
Philippe Grammaticopoulos
Pierre-Luc Granjon
Brent Green
Laura Heit
Isabel Herguera
Don Hertzfeldt
Chris Hinton
Jonathan Hodgson
Stephen Irwin
Avish Khebrehzadeh
Fran Krause
Raimund Krumme
Simone Massi
Miwa Matreyek
Florence Miailhe
Mirai Mizue
David OReilly
Osbert Parker
Priit Pärn
Michaela Pavlátová
Regina Pessoa
David Polonsky
Jeff Scher
Allison Schulnik
Georges Schwizgebel
Maureen Selwood
Dash Shaw
David Shrigley
Cat Solen
Stacey Steers
Steven Subotnick
Chris Sullivan
Malcolm Sutherland
Jim Trainor
Ree Treweek
Paul Vester
J. J. Villard
Chel White
Run Wrake
Koji Yamamura

This book was borrowed from Basheer Graphic Books for review purposes. You can order the book from them. Check with Basheer on Facebook or visit their website.

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This book was borrowed from Basheer Graphic Books for review purposes. You can order the book from them. Check with Basheer on Facebook or visit their website.

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I love the Airbender animation series. I can still remember the strong nostalgia I had while watching the first episode of The Legend of Korra: Book 1 Air, recalling all the characters from the previous series, and watch how time has passed and given us a new generation to look upon.

The Legend of Korra: Book 1 – Air, The Art of the Animated Series is a nice addition to that experience. It's as good as the first art book Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Art of the Animated Series.

The cover art is different from the original product image. It has Korra looking rather too serious.

The book features development art from all the 12 episodes in Book One: Air. There are designs for the main characters, followed by the Republic City and its inhabitants and then we have art from each episode in order.

Character designs form the bulk of the book. There's Korra in different outfits, including those from Pro-bending gear, and also the cute four-year-old Korra. There are lots of line art and also coloured versions for the characters. Other characters are Tenzin and his family, Lin Beifong, Amon, Katara, and about most of the characters that appear in the episodes.

The environment art are beautiful. The buildings and sets have a mix of oriental, industrial and European style. The world has changed since Aang was the Avatar. You'll see some connection to the past, for example, with Avatar Aang Memorial Island. Overall, the world feels very different because it has evolved. My favourite piece is the aerial painting of Air Temple Island that appears towards the end.

The last few pages have some pretty cool miscellaneous art, such as the classic Avatar characters in their adult form, and also other characters drawn in non-animation style.

Throughout the book, commentary is provided by the main artists Michael Dante DiMartino, Bryan Konietzko and Joaquin Dos Santos. They give illuminating insight to the designs and stories.

Highly recommended to fans of the series, and those who like animation or character art.

It's one of my 2013 favourite artbooks

The Legend of Korra: Book 1 – Air, The Art of the Animated Series is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN) and Book Depository

There are less animals compared to the first artbook.

This scene on TV almost brought tears to my eyes. A wonderful sequence that connects Korra with the lives of past Avatars.

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Summer Wars: Material Book is the companion artbook for Summer Wars, the animated movie directed by Mamoru Hosoda. The original edition is サマーウォーズ完全設定資料集 which is in Japanese. Udon has translated the book into English.

The first section looks at the character designs. This film has a rather huge cast, and surprisingly they are all family members, except Kenji. That's 30 characters, including the dog Hayate. The designs are in line art form before they are coloured anime style. Character designer is Yoshiyuki Sadamoto

Next is the world of OZ. It's a rather big world with lots of things going on but the designs here are printed smaller, relatively speaking. All the props that appear are also too small, basically the items that are on the shelves. Then there are the many fun and interesting crowd avatar designs. Avatars with more screen time have additional pages of art. That would be for King Kazuma, Love Machine, Kenji, Natsuki and the others.

The back half of the book covers the environment art which consist the props, pencil layouts of the house and the colour painted versions. The detailed background drawings are mostly of the house, designed to be historic looking, and certainly looks very inviting. It would be so cool to live in such a house.

Also included is an interview with Mamoru Hosoda. Throughout the book are rather brief commentary on the designs.

It's a nice book to get if you're fan of the film.

Summer Wars: Material Book is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN) and Book Depository

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Floyd E. Norman is a veteran American animator who has worked in the animation industry for decades, more specifically from 1956 to 2000.

With this book Animated Life, he tells us the story about how it was like working for Disney as an animator. It's a story from the inside as he introduces us to all his coworkers and their jobs, talks about animation production, management, and reminisce about the good old days working with Walt Disney. It reads like a autobiography. There are lots of interesting stories, like how he bought Roy Disney's video camera and filmed the 1965 Watts Riots, quirks of different people, learning on the job.

The other half of the book is on tips, tricks and other observations, mainly observations. It can be about filming, getting fired, storytelling, marketing, new animators on the job, racial politics, Steve Jobs, etc. The last part are some brief exercises on storytelling and idea generation.

The book written in a very candid manner. You can tell he loves animation and it's like he's telling the stories as if they happened yesterday.

Since Floyd Norman is pretty much a Disney guy -- he was named Disney Legend in 2007 -- much of the animation industry is seen from his eyes while working at Walt Disney Studios. The stories are mainly from the early days. He did work with Pixar until Monsters Inc, but the later stories aren't as detailed.

It's a nice inspiring read for those who like to learn more about the animation industry.

Animated Life: A Lifetime of tips, tricks, techniques and stories from an animation Legend (Animation Masters Title) is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN) and Book Depository

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This art book for Cloudy's sequel is just as good as the first art book.

This is a very well done companion art book to the movie Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2. It's hardcover with 144 pages. The front cover is actually a gatefold that when opened up shows a beautiful landscape painting of the Swallow Falls with the wonderful food creatures. On the back of that cover is a 3-page colour script, essentially the storyboard from start to the ending.

The book covers the characters and creature designs, and the production designs for the environment and props.

Every page is filled with wonderful art.

As most of the characters are featured in the earlier art book, the emphasis here is the commentary on how they have changed since we last saw them. The extra characters are Chester V, Barb, Thinkquanauts, Sentinels of Safety and the other Live Corp employees.

The creature designs are for the foodimals, the complex food-based organisms (or the mutant food-inspired creatures as I would call them) created by the Food Replicator. Those foodimal designs are great, whimsical and creative. There are lots of hilariously cute foodimals with funny names, such as Cheespider, Tacodile, Watermelophant, Shrimpanzees and more. Their designs are almost as wacky as those from The Croods except they are made of food here.

Environment art are beautiful too. There are San Franjose city, Live Corp and the evolved Swallow Falls. The colour palette and shapes look inspired by Mary Blair and Maurice Noble.

In addition to the art, a scratch-and-sniff stickers booklet is included. The moment you open it, you can smell something sweet. The stickers are of the adorable foodimals. Each foodimal will have their own smell based on the food or fruit they are created from.

This book is a sumptuous visual treat. Recommended for fans of the film and art.

Alright, some technicalities to point out. There were two publishers for the first art book. It seems there are also two publishers for this book, namely Cameron + Company and Titan Books. I wanted to point this out because Titan Books left out some content in their version of the first book, namely the scent stick booklet and other stuff. I'm not sure if they did the same here as I only have the Cameron + Company version.

And from what I surmise, the Cameron + Company's published book is for the USA audience, and Titan Books is for the rest.

The Art of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 (Cameron + Company) is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN) and Book Depository

The Art of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 (Titan Books) is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN) and Book Depository

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日本語

The Noble Approach is a book that's part biography and part animation design tips featuring the late great Maurice Noble.

As a kid, I would watch the Warner Bros cartoons and never think about things like art and design. They are good which is why people watch them.

Well, in this book, you'll go behind the scenes and look at the person who has a hand at creating some of these animated productions, and understand his design philosophies.

Author Tod Polson who has apprenticed under Noble has done a good job with the biography detailing the designer's life and career right from the start. It's an inspiring tale of someone who has gone through a tumultuous period, with the need to support his family while still young, going through various career changes, having the ups and downs with co-workers, while still maintaining the passion to put out good design for animation and screen.

The biography is about a third of the book. The rest are his philosophies on design. It's on how he handles story beats, story elements, using reference, contrast, simplifying elements, colour theory, perspective, layout, and more. The text and the illustrated examples are insightful. It's a collection of design principles he has learned and compiled over the 60 years he spent in the industry.

It's a good book for those into animation and design, or into traditional animation design.

Another related book I would recommend is Dream Worlds: Production Design for Animation from animation designer Hans Bacher.

The Noble Approach: Maurice Noble and the Zen of Animation Design is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN) and Book Depository

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This book is as good as the artbook for the first film, The Art of How to Train Your Dragon. In other words, it's a beautiful artbook.

The concept art is split between designs for the characters, dragons, environment and props.

Hiccup and company from Berk are five years older now, and they are redesigned slightly to reflect their age. Nicolas Marlet is still the main character designer and a lot of his drawings are included. He still uses traditional media to draw in similar style the expressive and almost cartoon-like characters. Artist Zhaoping Wei provides the more finished look to the characters.

Both the viking and dragon designs are a joy to look at, and of course there new characters and dragons. There's Stoick's Skullcrusher, blacksmith Gobber's Grump, Valka's Cloudjumper, the two gigantic Bewilderbeast and of course other miscellaneous dragons.

Designs for the props and sets are also wonderful. I love the whimsical look and feel. There are many interesting creations, to name a few, such as the dragon wind vane, dragon feeding stations, houses and buildings, traps and war machines.

Environment paintings are really beautiful and scenic. There aren't many of those but when they appear, they are breathtaking.

Alright, some downsides. There's a good amount of text talking about the story and art, but the lengthy passages are not easy to read because of the small font size. My other complaint is the paper feels thinner and softer than the first book. If they make the paper any thinner, it would be magazine paper. Note that there are two publishers for this book, Newmarket Press and Titan Books. My edition is Newmarket Press. I read another reviewer comment about the paper stock from Titan Books being thin as well. So these are my two quibbles.

Overall, it feels like they've packed more artworks than the earlier book. Despite the minor downsides, I would still highly recommend this book, as well as the first artbook.

Notice the tiny fonts?

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日本語

Insightful look into animation direction

This book is written mainly for animators and those who want to learn more about animation directing. While I'm not into creating animation, I still learned a great deal from the stories and tips that come Tony Bancroft and the directors that were interviewed. The writeup is incredibly insightful.

Content is organised into eight chapters that look at the different aspect of directing an animation. The topics covered include finding the vision, understanding the workflow, story, working with people, handling politics, managing budgets and schedules and finding ways to learn and improve constantly.

Note that this is not a guided course to animation directing, but lessons and tips written from Tony Bancroft's perspective as animator and director for the several films he has worked on. The tone used throughout is enthusiastic and almost infectious.

Each chapter ends with a lengthy Q&A with an acclaimed director. It's basically an all-stars list of directors featuring John Musker (Aladdin), Nick Park (Wallace and Gromit), Dean DeBlois (How to Train Your Dragon), Jennifer Yuh Nelson (Kung Fu Panda), Pete Doctor (Monsters Inc), Eric Goldberg (Pocahontas), Chris Wedge (Ice Age) and Tim Miller from Blur Studios. It's a mix of directors with experience in stop motion, 2D and 3D animation.

The interviews don't actually follow the topics of the chapters. Instead, the directors talk about how they made it to directing, the challenges, developing and managing the film, the stages of production, responsibilities, budgets, handling people and even how they feel about meetings. There are a lot of interesting war stories. Just like Tony Bancroft, you can also feel the passion when they start sharing about the work they do.

Overall, it's a really insightful and educational book that uncovers the mysterious of what animation directors really do.

Directing for Animation: Everything You Didn't Learn in Art School is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN) and Book Depository

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Wonderful artbook

Holding this book in hand makes me think back to how excited I was when I first watched the The Legend of Korra. I'm not sure why but this does not often happen with other animation art books. Perhaps it's because I really like the stories and ideas from the world of Avatar.

This is a large 184-page hardcover artbook, similar in size to the earlier two artbooks, namely The Legend of Korra: Book 1 – Air, The Art of the Animated Series and Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Art of the Animated Series. The reproduction of the art is excellent. Images are huge and sharp and printed on thick paper.

Content in the book is split into chapters each dedicated to an episode in Book 2: Spirits. So there are 14 chapters for those plus one extra chapter for ancillary art.

The concept art featured are wonderful and beautiful. They are a mixture of character designs, environment art and storyboards, all completed with insightful commentary from creators Michael Dante DiMartino, Bryan Konietzko and director Joaquin Dos Santos.

The characters appear in the book in chronological order as they appear in the animation. You get to see how they are updated in terms of costumes and also the many new characters that are introduced. Most are full coloured while there are also some sketches. Main characters have lots of expression sheets included.

There are several pages of storyboards included and they have good dynamism in terms of composition and direction. There's also this nice sense of liveliness when you see the characters move in the storyboard sequences.

Environment art are mainly concept paintings, not the final ones used in the animation. They are nice because there are several for each location and you get to see the places from different angles. I like the environment art used for the backgrounds that come from the origin story as they are created in the style inspired by Chinese ink wash painting and Japanese woodblock printing.

As usual, there are also many creature designs for the animals and spirits. Those are fun to look at, such as rabbits with dragonfly ears, walking radishes, etc and the lion turtle is shown again with more drawings. Some of these creatures you'll read from the commentary are inspired by those from Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away.

Once in a while, you'll see art that will remind you of Avatar Aang, such as the family portrait photo of Aang with Katara and their kids. Those are quite nostalgic. The images of other Avatars sometimes also send me thinking about their possible back stories.

All in all, this is a truly wonderful artbook.

Most highly recommended.

Legend of Korra: The Art of the Animated Series Book Two is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN) and Book Depository

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The Art of The Boxtrolls is a pleasing companion artbook to Laika's third stop-motion film. There are plenty of pre-production art for the characters, sets and a substantial amount of text talking about the film making process.

The film is actually adapted from Alan Snow's Here Be Monsters! children book. For those who've read the book before, you might find it a bit more interesting to see how the characters are designed and made into stop-motion characters.

Michel Breton's design of old Europe and the houses on the sloping streets of Cheesebridge are delightful to look at. Art direction is driven by production designer Paul Lasaine and art director Curt Enderle.

Those who enjoy finding out how stop-motion films are made should find the text quite insightful. It takes about the challenges during production, such as creating the puppets, armature, costumes and the sets. There are many details that a director has to take note of and the book reveals a bit of those. Designers also talk about the little details such as props that don't draw attention to themselves.

I had thought everything in the film was physically made but in fact several sets such as the buildings in the background are actually computer generated.

My only gripe is there should have been more photos of the puppets because they look terrific. Readers expecting more behind-the-scenes photos would be disappointed but I feel the plethora of concept art do make up for it. This is a 160-page hardcover.

Ultimately, it's a satisfactory companion and a book I can recommend to fans of the film.

The Art of The Boxtrolls is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN) and Book Depository

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Today we have Joel Dos Reis Viegas from Steambot Studios for this interview. Steambot is a creative agency specialised in developing ideas and providing concept art for the entertainment industry.

I was told that they had just launch a Kickstarter campaign for an animation called URBANCE. I actually posted about it in March 2013. They are now crowdsourcing for funds to bring their dream to life, a 26-minute animated episode that represents the start of a TV series.

Watch the trailer below:

Their campaign ends on 6 Nov 2014 and you can see more details at http://kck.st/1rhtFmM

For one of the tiers, they will be giving out an artbook that features the art from URBANCE. The limited edition art book has already all been taken up. Even the standard edition is in limited quantities also.

Alright, onto the interview...

Qn: Can you tell us how Steambot Studios has changed since it was founded in 2006?

Since the creation of Steambot, we did produce a lot of art for video games and movies companies without necessarily saving time to really kickstart our IP's. Since Exodyssey, we always wanted to create a new IP at a larger scale than just producing books. Few team members didn't share the same overall vision, focusing more on the outsourcing service than the IP creation.

This year, Sébastien and I decided to fully assume the reason Steambot exists and launch URBANCE, our first Animation TV series. Steambot is more creative now than ever!

Qn: Producing a full episode of animation seems to be quite different from Steambot Studio's main line of work: creating concept art and providing art direction. What's the motivation behind producing an animation like URBANCE?

As concepts artists we often work on only one aspect of the production. But we did accumulate so much knowledge over the years that we though it was pity to not use them efficiently in creating something new and combine our love for urban art, music and animation. All in one. We had the chance to read a lot of scripts and we felt confident in making the jump and start writing too. That was a huge step!

Qn: What's the most challenging aspect of creating an animation? Do you guys have any experience in doing this? Your trailers look very impressive.

Oh, thank you! Well, we always been big fans of animation at Steambot. Producing the animation is definitely the most challenging aspect we had to face. I have a background in 2D and 3D animation (Les Gobelins school in Paris) and I also had the opportunity to animate or supervise animation in the past (Thief, Naruto, Skyland). But it was quite a challenge to do that for ourselves, that's true.

Qn: What's the process like for creating an animation such as URBANCE?

First, you have to design the characters and do A LOT of research.

Second, I block the design and make sure all the segments are easy to animate...

Then I start sketching from poses to poses directly in Toon Boom Pencil Check Pro software. It's simple and intuitive to use. This part is definitely the funniest but also the more challenging.

Finally I clean up my drawings and fill them with colours. This last step is the longest and the most repetitive, but it's very exciting to see your animation being made believable.

Qn: Can you tell us some of your favorite animated films or shorts?

So much to tell... Tekkon Kinkreet is definitely one of my favourite anime from all times. AKIRA, Redline, Spirited Away, Mind Game, Samurai Jack, L'homme qui plantait des arbres by Frédéric Back. These animes really influenced me.

Thanks to Joel Dos Reis Viegas for this interview. I hope his URBANCE Kickstarter campaign will be successful. Again, readers, you can back the campaign before 6 Nov 2014 at http://kck.st/1rhtFmM

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Take a look at the puppets from Boxtrolls behind the scenes.

By the way, there's The Art of Boxtrolls for the film.

Via Paperwalker

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Adventure Time fans would be delighted with this humungous 352-page hardcover. It's really worth the money considering the price and how much content there is.

Adventure Time: The Art of Ooo provides an in-depth look at the origin of the animation and the creative process of making one. It's packed with concept art of the characters, environments and the early sketches used by creator Pendleton Ward's for pitching to studios. The characters are amusing and the art style is certainly very "Adventure Time".

The highlight of the book is the lengthy interview-style text from the start to the end of the book. The staff artists talk about the stories, characters and art. It's written in a casual manner but yet is very insightful. You'll read about the history of Adventure Time, the story pitches and changes that led to Cartoon Network picking it up, style guides on how to draw the characters, interviews with voice actors, and a lot of interesting things that happen behind the scenes, the many side stories, muses.

For the artworks, there are lots of character designs. Finn the human, Jake the dog, Fionna and Cake, Ice King, Bumblegum Princess, Rainicorn, Earl of Lemongrab and many others. Environment art are of the various kingdoms, space, the Tree House, "Beautopia" and other settings in the post-apocalyptic, magical land of Ooo.

The character designs are unusual. The artists explain the style guides, like why Finn only has dots for eyes, the rules for the world of Ooo, e.g. if you're born with dots as eyes, you're not supposed to grow sclera, the white part of the eye. The Cosmic Owl's design was inspired by a light pattern that hits the urinals in the toilet at the workplace. Many of the designs look like they could be doodles from some kid's textbook. But that's also part of the charm because not everyone can draw like that. Pendleton Ward had great difficulty assembling a crew of artists who can draw just like that. All images are captioned to explain what they are and where they come from.

The last section of the book is dedicated to fan art. This section also has the staff artists drawing the characters in any style they like, e.g. such as in Street Fighter style.

Adventure Time: The Art of Ooo is a wonderful book that looks at the work it takes to make such as animation possible. It's well written, insightful and fun to read. Highly recommended to fans of Adventure Time.

There are two publishers for this book, Titan Books and Abrams. Abrams seems to be distributing for USA and Canada, and Abrams for Europe.

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Here's the artbook for director Jorge R Gutierrez's 3D animated film The Book of Life. Gutierrez was born in Mexico City and raised in Tijuana, and in this 192-page hardcover artbook, you'll see that the inspiration for this film comes from his hometown and the rich history of Mexico.

Highlights of the book are the designs for the characters and environment.

As far as character designs go, The Book of Life definitely has some of the weirdest and quirkiest designs compared to other 3D animated movies. Their costumes are heavily decorated and lushly coloured. For example, the goddess La Muerte wears a huge red hat with burning candles on top and little skulls hanging around the rim, and the bottom of her red dress is also covered with burning candles.

Many characters are actually puppets with exposed joints. Main character Manolo has stars, hearts and skulls plastered all over his boxy costume. Skeleton versions of the characters look great with fanciful skull designs just like how some tribes like to create artworks out of skulls. Even the bull Toro Muerto has its horns intricately carved with symbols.

The artworks are very much inspired by Mexican folk art. Gutierrez gets his inspiration from lucha libre, mustaches, street taco stands, bullfighting posters, Spanish comics, spaghetti Westerns, etc. The result is a very colourful and visual world.

The environment art for the Land of the Living, Remembered and Forgotten have influences from ancient civilisation such as Aztec, Mayan and Olmec. It's interesting to see the artists use those influences and design them for an animated film. If I don't know anything about the film, I would have thought the civilisation in the film celebrates colour.

There are lots of details to look out for. In the Land of the Living, there are several buildings with shapes inspired by Mayan temples. Tombstones are lavishly decorated with ornaments and offerings. Houses in the town are top heavy just like the characters to make them feel more macho. There are commentary throughout that talks about the designs.

The Art of The Book of Life is a wonderful, vibrant and quirky artbook. Highly recommended.

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So it's finally Blue Sky Studios' turn to have an artbook for themselves. It's well worth the wait.

This is a huge book. 304 pages. Hardcover. And it's heavy too. Note that if you're buying from Amazon, there might be an additional weight surcharge depending on the shipping location and speed. Also note that there are two publishers for this book, namely Insight Editions and Titan Books, distributing for different countries.

It's always a joy to look at artbooks of animation studios. DreamWorks Animation had The Art of DreamWorks Animation also in this year and Pixar had To Infinity and Beyond!: The Story of Pixar Animation Studios in 2007. The Art of Blue Sky is a wonderful addition. Now I'm waiting for one from Sony Pictures Animation.

This artbook tells the inspiring story of how the Blue Sky got started and the stories behind how each film got made. They worked their way from creating commercials to producing the Oscar winning animated short Bunny, and then moved on to creating feature length films. Along the way they grew from 6 founders to 150 employees while they were working on Ice Age and now they have 600 employees

The text talks about the themes, story arcs, characters, and even technical stuff like how rust is created in Robots, or the fur on animals in Ice Age. You'll read and find out how films evolved through production, the story rewrites, where the jokes from Scrat shorts come from, which are difficult special effects to pull off and more. There are plenty of interesting details and anecdotes.

For years, I've been wondering why there aren't any artbooks for some of their films, most notably the Ice Age films and Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!. But now I can finally see all the artworks that I've been expecting to see. There's a generous amount of work for Ice Age since there are four films. Horton's concept artworks are also very beautiful. Many artworks are previously unpublished ones that I've not see before since there weren't any dedicated artbooks for them. I do see bits and pieces floating around online but it's good to have them all in one place in this book.

Beautiful artworks are reproduced big to accompany the text. It's a pleasure to flip through each page slowly to admire the artworks, a mixture of sketches, digital paintings and artworks created from traditional media. There are works from Peter de Seve, Daisuke Tsutsumi, Peter Clarke, Kyle Macnaughton and a whole bunch of talented artists.

This book includes their first film Ice Age in 2002 to their latest Rio 2 in 2014. It's really great to see a Blue Sky Studios artbook that looks back at the art and work they have created over the years.

This is definitely one of my favourite artbooks in 2014.

Highly recommended.

The Art of Blue Sky Studios is slightly taller than The Art of DreamWorks Animation

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Where to buy
For international buyers, it might be cheaper to buy the Titan Books version from Book Depository where the price is inclusive of shipping charges. I recommend checking the prices using the links I've provided above to know who provides the best price.

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Beautiful artbook for Disney's Big Hero 6

I find this to be an interesting artbook particularly because of the environment designs. About half the book is dedicated to the environment designs which includes the city San Fransokyo, Hiro's house, the cafe, San Fransokyo Institute of Technology, Fred's mansion and the portal.

The San Fransokyo is like a character by itself with its blend of architecture and aesthetics from west and east. It's fun to see how the artists create a populated city inspired by San Francisco and Tokyo.

Cited by art director Scott Watanabe, there are also influences from anime films such as Tekkonkinkreet, Ghost in the Shell and Akira. Indeed when I look at some of the environment sketches, they remind me of sketches from the Tekkon Kinkreet anime artbook. The vibe is certainly present.

Looking at the city's environment concept art, you'll be able to spot Japanese elements such as the tapered rooftops, Koinobori (carp-shaped wind socks), a Golden Gate Bridge lookalike with Torii design elements, signboards with Japanese typography, wooden curved bridges, cherry-blossom trees, etc. There are also major characteristic San Francisco elements such as the roads with very recognisable cable cars, sloping hills, Victorian-style houses, etc.

There's an emphasis on function and a sense of feeling lived-in for the environments, so buildings aren't just designed to look cool. For example, city streets or Hiro's rooms are made to look a bit more messy or wonky.

The second half of the book features the character designs for the heroes, villains and side characters. Again, there's noticeable Japanese influence in the designs. Early designs for Hiro shows off costumes that look like ninjas or even Patlabor. There are more pages for Baymax because he's has a big role. Go Go's hero suit reminded me of Tron and some Japanese toy/game/anime that I can't remember. The characters in their non-hero forms are pretty standard and do not stand out, but their hero costumes look quite good.

Finally the last part of the book talks briefly about the cinematography used, such as lighting, the new Disney Hyperion renderer and colour script.

There's a good amount of text included in the form of introductions for each environment and character, and quotes from the staff talking about the designs. It's a book solely on the designs, with nothing being mentioned about the movie's plot.

Overall a nice film companion.

4.5 out of 5 stars.

The Art of Big Hero 6 is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN) and Book Depository