animation

Marc Davis is certainly one of the master animator and draftsman Disney has ever hired. He has worked on iconic characters such as Cinderella, Alice (in Wonderland), Tinker Bell, Maleficent and Cruella De Vil.

This book is a retrospect of his work and the influence he has over other artists. I was actually expecting some sort of biography but there's only a short two-page worth of text on his life and career written by veteran animation writer John Canemaker. The rest of the text are essays from Davis peers and those who know him, such as Andreas Deja, Glen Keane, Pete Docter, Charles Solomon, Don Hahn and others. Reading about Marc Davis through the account of other animators and artists is still every bit as engaging.

There's also a chapter written by Marc Davis himself based on excerpts of his notes for an unpublished books. This chapter talks about anatomy of motion and provides some drawing tips.

The pictures in the book is a mixture of photographs of Davis and his family, him at work, personal sketches, animation artworks from Disney and his paintings. His sketches are lively and the designs are always clear. The characters have their characteristic stance that really brings out their personalities.

Besides the pencil sketches, there are also coloured design drawings he did for Disney theme parks. The back portion of the book features his paintings which are not too animation-looking like, but gives us an idea of his personal expression. Last chapter is on his wife Alice Davis with some accompanying artworks from her as well.

This book has been getting some flak from other reviewers who commented on the lack of more pictures. I wasn't familiar with Marc Davis' work beforehand but after a quick search online, I can see many of his artworks, but I can also say that many of those in this book are not available online.

It's a good book.

4 out of 5 stars.

Marc Davis: Walt Disney's Renaissance Man (Disney Editions Deluxe) is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN) and Book Depository

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ディズニー『ベイマックス』の美しいアートブック

この本が特に面白いところは個人的に言うと環境デザインだ。本の半分ほどが環境デザインで、舞台のサンフランソウキョウ、ヒロの家、カフェ、サンフランソウキョウ工科学校、フレッドのマンションとポータルなどが含まれている。

サンフランソウキョウは西と東の建築と美学が混ざった一つのキャラクターのようだ。アーティストたちがサンフランシスコと東京からの影響でどう町を作ったのかを見れるのは面白い。

美術監督スコット・ワタナベ（Scott Watanabe）によると、『鉄コン筋クリート』『攻殻機動隊』『アキラ』などのアニメ映画の影響があるらしい。確かに環境アートを見ていると、『鉄コン筋クリート』のアートブックのスケッチを思い出す。同じような雰囲気は明らかに出ている。

町の環境コンセプトアートを見ていると日本風の屋根や橋、鯉のぼり、鳥居のデザインが含まれているゴールデン・ゲート・ブリッジ、日本語で書かれた看板、桜などの日本要素が見られる。とても独特なサンフランシスコ要素には有名なケーブルカー、急な坂、ヴィクトリアンスタイルの家などがある。

環境はかっこ良く見えるようにデザインされているのではなく、暮らしやすさと長い間人が住んでいた感じを強調している。例えば、道やヒロたちの部屋は散らかっていたり、完璧でないようにデザインされている。

本の後半はヒーロー、悪役とその他のキャラクターのキャラクターデザインだ。ここにもデザインに分かりやすい日本の影響が見られる。ヒロの初期デザインの衣装には忍者やパトレイバーまでもある。ベイマックスは役割が大きいのでページ数も多い。ゴー・ゴー・のヒーロースーツは『トロン』と今は思い浮かばない日本のおもちゃ／ゲーム／アニメを思い出させた。彼らの普段の姿はかなりスタンダードで特に目立たないが、ヒーロー衣装はかなり良い。

本の最後には少しだけ照明、新しいディズニーのハイペリオンレンダラー、カラースクリプトなどのの撮影法について書かれてある。

文も環境やキャラクターの紹介や、デザインについてスタッフのコメントなど、適量入っている。映画のストーリーについては全く触れてない、デザインだけについての本だ。

全体的にはとても良い映画とのセットだ。

５星のうち4.5。

ハードカバー: 168ページ
出版社: Chronicle Books (2014)
言語: 英語
ISBN-10: 1452122210
ISBN-13: 978-1452122212

アマゾンには他にもたくさんのレビューがあります。

このサイトのリンクから購入していただくと私にアフィリエイト料金が入ります。それをもとにして今後より良いレビューをお届けします。

『The Art of ベイマックス』は以下の書店にて取り扱い中。
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English

Bonnie Arnold (How To Train Your Dragon 2), Jorge Gutierrez (The Book of Life), Travis Knight (The Boxtrolls), Tomm Moore (Song of the Sea), Dan Lin (The Lego Movie) and Don Hall (Big Hero 6) discuss the stories behind getting their films made and the competitive state of feature animation.

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I didn't expect this artbook coming and only got to know of it a month after it was released.

It's a delightful companion featuring concept art for the film. The style of art is similar to that of Madagascar. Everything is very stylized, the shapes are simple and strong, characters are cartoony and funny looking.

The main character designs are for mutant penguins, Dave and the 31 octopus henchmen, Dr. Octavius Brine, the "elite undercover interspecies task force" North Wind and other unused amusing looking spy members. The mutant penguins look really funny. The other thing I like are the beautiful patterns on the octopus henchmen.

For the set locations we have the Antarctica, Fort Knox, Venice, Shanghai, the Aquarium, the sophisticated look of North Wind jet and headquarters, Dave's submarine's exterior and interiors and 4 pages of unused locations. The whole feel and vibe is different from the other Madagascar movies because the penguins are in sort of more urban landscapes.

Other artworks included are the coloured storyboards, sketches of Dave's backstory, snow globes, octopus inspired interior designs and the technical breakdown of how they created the Venice chase sequence. Author Barbara Robertson has included a good amount of commentary by the artists and staff talking about the designs and characters, delving into the origins and motivations of all those weird and cute but serious acting animals.

It's a beautiful artbook, a delightful companion to the Penguin's first movie, or as Benedict Cumberbatch refers to them as "Pengwings".

4 out of 5 stars.

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Fantastic artbook for the fans

Once again, I'm blown away (no pun intended) by the production value of not just the animation but also the art and direction. All the Avatar companion artbooks have been fabulous, from the original series with Aang, to Book 1 and Book 2 of Korra.

The presentation of this artbook is similar to the earlier two books with the artworks still arranged in chronological order.

The book's filled with lots of character designs, just like the animation is populated with people. There are the main characters, the villains especially and the plenty of town people. Occasionally there are the Studio Ghibli inspired spirits and other creature designs.

There are quite a few storyboard sequences included. Some are the comedic scenes while most of them are action fight scenes. You may have seen some animated line art sequence of Korra online, well, one of them is in the book showing Korra doing a whirlwind kick. The art is amazing in simplicity and clarity. I just love the anime style art.

Also included are the many beautiful environment paintings and layout sketches.

The Avatar world is rich in detail and stories and once again the creators Bryan Konietzko, Michael Dante DiMartino and director Joaquim Dos Santos have provided insightful commentary that delve more into the characters and interesting story arcs.

This is a fantastic artbook. Highly recommended to fans who can't get enough of the animation.

Check out the other Avatar artbooks if you haven't at
http://www.parkablogs.com/content/book-review-avatar-last-airbender-art-...
http://www.parkablogs.com/content/book-review-legend-of-korra-book-1-%E2...
http://www.parkablogs.com/content/book-review-legend-of-korra-book-2-%E2...

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

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'Tortoise and the Hare' retold by Mercedes Benz.

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Mr Hublot is a Luxembourgish animated short film directed by Laurent Witz and Alexandre Espigares, and produced by ZEILT Productions. The 11-minute film won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short in 2014.

The main character Mr Hublot is actually inspired and based on the character design sculptures by Stephane Halleux. These sculptures are created with spare parts, recycled objects and joined together with imagination to form characters and daily objects. It's sort of like steampunk creations but Halleux's sculptures has more of a sense of life and more stylised as though they were designed with animation in mind. The sculptures look like they can be used for stop-motion animation, but the film is actually in 3D.

This book is the art and making of the film. Collected within are the beautiful concept artworks of the characters and environment, storyboards, sculptures, colour scripts and scene paintings. There are lots of accompanying commentary that talks about the film production, the characters, inspiration and technicalities. The commentary, however, will make more sense to those who've already watched the film because it does talk about story elements at times.

I particularly like the design of the urban city called Luxcity. The concept sketches and paintings are really detailed. There are wireframe renderings as well as the finalised textured look. I love architecture and the chaotic look and amount of details gives the city a nice sense of character in itself.

This is a fantastic book that goes behind to scenes to show you what it takes and the complexity to create a film like this, a film that took 3 years to produce.

It's a visually beautiful book with its unique stylized look.

The book's written in French and English. It's a 150-page large format hardcover. You can only get it from the film's website at http://www.mrhublot.com

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Here's the beautiful artbook for DreamWorks Animation's Home.

This is a large 168-page hardcover artbook actually has two publishers, namely Insight Editions and Titan Books. The page count is listed wrongly on some websites as 156 pages.

The book collects the character designs, environment art, storyboards and commentary.

There actually aren't a lot of character designs, relatively speaking when compared to other sections. Well for the aliens we only have the cute plush-toy lookalike Oh and Captain Smek. And rest are main of up Tip, her mum and Pig the cat. The human designs are alright, and nowadays they all look pretty much the same in 3D animated movies, especially female characters. The more interesting ones are the aliens of course.

The other designs are for the Boov alien motherships and their smaller bubble spaceships, the red flying car, and many other miscellaneous graphics and symbols.

Emil Mitev's expansive digital scene paintings are the highlight of the book. The highly detailed wonderfully realised landscapes are just awesome to look at. There are several locations in the movie, such as the main city, Paris, China, etc, and it's really cool to see how they are adapted in the movie. I always like checking out animation architecture styles.

At the time of this writing, the film is not out yet so be aware that the book has lots of spoilers.

Overall, it's a nice companion artbook to the film.

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As a kid, I watched and followed He-Man with enthusiam. That was many years ago and the only characters I could remember today are He-Man and Skeletor. Going through this book is therefore a nostalgic experience. Not just that, it also introduces me to a world of MOTU that I never knew.

The Art of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe is an artbook that looks at the art and design for the animation, comics and toys. Instead of photos of toys and their packaging boxes, you'll be looking at the character designs and packaging art.

There are interviews with many of the creators, such as with Emiliano Santalucia, Joshua Van Pelt and James Eatock, founders of the Power and the Honor Foundation, writer of many MOTU minicomics Steven Grant, illustrator and animator Larry Houston, writer Paul Dini, illustrator Earl Norem, concept artist William Stout, designer David Wolfram and many more. It's interesting to find out how the toys, comics and animation are made, the conceptualisation that went behind, and the creative process used to maintain the series.

The first chapter starts with the business side of making toys to appeal to young boys. It's enlightening to read about the methodology and thinking that goes into toy design, or creating a character that boys can look up to, and eventually buy. There are several notes and internal memos from the Mattel Male Action Team that outlines how they should develop this particular toy market. The book covers not just the creative side but also the business side.

As for the artworks, you'll get to see storyboards, animation cels, including a piece of plastic with He-man and Skeletor that you can overlay onto the background art, toy posters from Mattel, comic covers, designs for the character, background, toys, maps and unused concepts such as toys and characters that never got made.

Personally, I've only watched the animation and don't read the comics or collect the toys, so the bulk of the content in this book are new to me. The artworks are fantastic. There are sketches as well as those fully painted pieces. There's even an illustration by movie poster master artist Drew Struzan.

The latter part of the book covers the relaunch of the toy line and animation from 2000 onwards. Again, it's quite interesting to see the modern take on the classic characters with the current visual styles of comics and animation.

This 320-page hardcover is a wonderful collection of pop culture. Highly recommended to all fans of He-Man and MOTU.

Art of He Man and the Masters of the Universe is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN) and Book Depository

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Pinocchio: The Making of the Disney Epic is an epic book on its own that looks at one of Disney's early classics, Pinocchio. This huge 352-page hardcover book is devoted to the complete production process and the stories surrounding how the film was made.

J. B. Kaufman has done a good job tracing the history of Pinnochio, going back to when the story was first written by Italian author Carlo Collodi. The book then goes into where Walt Disney got involved, the circumstances that lead to overtaking Bambi to become the second animated film released by Disney.

There's a huge section devoted to how the story was treated prior to its release in 1940. This includes many of the discarded ideas, sequences, and what went wrong with them. There's also a lot on every character that from the final film as well as those that were cut. That covers the screen writing process. Then there's another section that covers the final screenplay. It's very comprehensive and comes with quotes from the staff.

In addition to the story treatment, the book also features the art, although they take a backseat to the written text. There's still a lot on the artistic style and how they went about animating the film.

The book also has a chapter on the music. Pinocchio won an Academy Award for Best Original Score for the Oscars.

The huge amount of content included is quite amazing considering that books for modern animated films nowadays don't even go beyond half the number of pages that this book offers.

It's a great making-of book for anyone who wants to read up more on Pinocchio.

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Just like the earlier artbooks for the series, this is another a wonderful companion. Going through the book brings back nice memories of watching the animation. Korra's story arc may have its ups and downs but this book presents an overview from the production point of view.

The large hardcover is similar in format to the other Korra artbooks. It has 184 pages. Some places have listed it incorrectly as having only 120 pages. This book is much thicker than that.

Publisher Dark Horse has once again done a fantastic job at filling the book with plenty of concept and production art.

The artworks are sorted by the episodes of the show. There are character designs, background art, concept sketches, storyboards and miscellaneous art from guest arts. Many characters have taken new roles and evolved with a change of look. And it's great to see Toph again (who contributed the funniest moments in the show). The painted background art often come with pencil sketches as well.

There's insightful commentary by Bryan Konietzko, Michael Dante DiMartino and Joaquim Dos Santos. They talk about the design, story and character development. For that, you get a deeper understanding and appreciation for how the animation was made.

All the good things from earlier artbooks apply to this book as well. Needless to say, this is a fantastic book that all fans should get.

Highly recommended.

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

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Glen Keane's still on top of his game

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SPOILER ALERT

This is a delightful artbook for the sequel to Hotel Transylvania. The first artbook is also great.

There are actually two publishers for this book. One is Cameron + Company and the other is Titan Books. They are selling in USA and UK, Europe respectively. Prices differ slightly.

The book I have is published by Cameron + Company. It's a 160-page hardcover without any dust jacket. The cover has some texture, like those watercolour coldpress paper texture, which is very nice.

Since most of the concept art for the characters have already appeared in the first artbook, the character designs focus on changes to selected characters, and of course the new characters such as Denisovich aka Dennis, Vlad and Johnny's family, and a handful of other new monsters. The designs look fantastic. Characters are funny looking, cute at the same time even though they may be monsters. Overall, I like the shape designs of the monsters. Ideas for the monsters are sometimes really quite funny, such as Bluetooth which is really a monster that look like a blue-coloured tooth.

Rest of the artworks are of story scenes, environment art and storyboards. Layout of the book really plays up the pictures at big sizes. The environment artworks are wonderful. I like the designs of the castles and the different rooms. Lighting and mood are well captured. The storyboards included are funny gag sequences in the movie.

There are lots to read about the production process and character and story development. You'll find out how they create Dennis' head full of curly hair, how they handle family dynamics between humans and monsters, many visual and funny ideas that went into the movie.

The book's really packed and the art is great. Fantastic artbook!

The Art of Hotel Transylvania 2 is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN) and Book Depository

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The one published by Titan Books that's selling on Book Depository is slightly cheaper for international buyers.

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I've always read about the nine old men in other Disney related artbooks and finally there's one whole book dedicated to them. And who else more suitable to write it than Andreas Deja who's a veteran animator himself, and one who has worked with the legendary animators.

This 392-page hardcover is a wealth of information and inspiration on traditional 2D animation. It probably best that you have watched all the old Disney classics because they are mentioned throughout, that's in addition to the obscure short films that have been made along the way.

The chapters are grouped to each animator, namely Les Clark, Marc Davis, Ollie Johnston, Milt Kahl, Ward Kimball, Eric Larson, John Lounsbery, Wolfgang Reitherman and Frank Thomas.

Each chapters talks about their career and the projects they handled with selected sequences picked out for more explanation. After going through the whole book, you'll sort of get how animation works behind the scenes at Disney, find out how the nine old men think about their work on hindsight. Some of the meetings with Walt Disney are mentioned and the interesting part is finding out how these animators interpret or handle Disney's instructions or criticism. There are also sequential storyboards included that talk about the animation principles behind.

This book should be helpful to animators with all the analysis into the creative process.

It's a very insightful and inspiring book. Highly recommended to all animators.

Other animation related books I would recommend are Directing for Animation, Mike Mattesi's books, Drawn to Life and Directing the Story.

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

The Nine Old Men: Lessons, Techniques, and Inspiration from Disney's Great Animators is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN) and Book Depository

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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.

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Oh, wow, they actually released the book before the film opens. It goes without saying that if you want to avoid spoilers, you should go through the book only after the film. And don't even order it first because it will tempt you to look at the awesome art. It's that good. Actually, as good as the first and second artbooks.

It's such a delight to see Po, Master Shifu and The Furious Five again. I love the mix of mundane and awesomeness in the series. In many of the concept paintings, we see Po in heroic poses and in many other, it's him in all sorts of funny gags. It's not just him, there's the serious Tigress who has to handle her warm and fuzzy students - imagine the juxtaposition. LOL.

As for character designs, you'll see some updated changes to the original cast, mainly costume changes. In addition, there are a lot more panda characters now, there's Po's father Li, Mei Mei, Bao, Lei Lei, Grandma Panda and a whole village of pandas. Master Dogway is back. Of course there are baddies too, like Kai and his many animal warriors.

The book has many highlights for me. First of course is Nicolas Marlet's wonderful character sketches. Second would be the beautiful scenes and environment paintings. I just love the stylised look and choice of colours. Third, the book has lots of interesting information to read and it's authored by Tracey Miller-Zarneke who has done a good job with earlier books. Fourth, I like the Chinese influence when it comes to designing the set, such as the Chinese temples, noodle shop with all the posters, training hall, scroll room and all the beautiful scrolls. Fifth, well, the book is packed with lots of wonderful artworks such as storyboards, colour scripts, character and environment designs.

By the way, the book's published by two publishers, Insight Editions and Titan Books. Both are hardcover with 168 pages. Content should be the same.

Most highly recommended. One of the best for 2015.

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

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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.

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With the success of Pixar came an avalanche of computer-generated animation but not all animators are following the hi-tech pack. Monocle Films travels to the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and southern England in search of storytellers who think outside the computer box.

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Check out this beautiful animation directed by Uri Lotan for a music video

Official music video for Jane Bordeaux's 'Ma’agalim'.

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This artbook is awesome because it reminds me of how much I like anime art.

This 248-page paperback is packed with beautiful anime character artworks by Atsushi Nishigori. The amount of work included is astonishing. How can one artist draw these many pieces?!?

The three main anime titles featured are The Idolmaster (2011), Gurren Lagann (2007) and Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt.

The only title I know of is Gurren Lagann. While I've never heard of the other two, well, good art is still good art. I love the anime style art, dynamic poses and settings. You'll see Yoko from Gurren Lagann a lot so that's a bonus. There are also some miscellaneous illustrations for the monthly pulication Newtype.

In addition to the full-coloured artworks, there's also a good portion of sketches, storyboards and (Japanese) commentary regarding the designs. The last few pages feature sketches that are not associated with any titles.

This is a brilliant artbook for anime and Japanese pop culture fans.

You can get the book at Amazon.com, Amazon Japan or CDJapan.co.jp

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Sketching For Animation feels like an academic book to me, and it's priced like one too at USD $49.

The book looks at the overall view of sketching and how it's useful for animation. The subjects discussed are using shapes, perspective, drawing figures, landscapes, capturing movement, developing ideas, characters and layout and composition.

There are tips and techniques being discussed but they are mostly written in the form of observations, or quotes from other artists. What's good is you'll be able to know a wide variety of drawing principles involved to create a good piece of art. The downside is there aren't a lot of specific instructions or rendering techniques so to pick up those skills you will have to explore books that are more in depth.

Another highlight of the book is there are lots of ideas for drawing. The author Peter Parr has numerous examples that can give you insight on things and places to draw, and also learning points to take note of. There are also short assignments at the end of each chapters.

What I find lacking in the book is perhaps the connection between the sketching techniques and animation. While there's attempt to refer to sketching techniques taught to animation but I felt there could be more examples or perhaps reference to more well known animated films or shorts. The last few pages are more interesting because they feature artist interviews and gallery of work and you can read about their thought process for their films and project.

Overall, it's a nice book with lots of ideas and quick tips on sketching. It's like an introduction to sketching that teaches you the benefits but when it comes to the exact techniques and application, you might learn more with books that are dedicated to specific areas mentioned in the chapters of this book.

Peter Parr also has another book published recently called Zen of Drawing which also feels like an extension of this book.

Sketching for Animation: Developing Ideas, Characters and Layouts in Your Sketchbook is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN) and Book Depository