parka
April 23, 2009, 3:22am
#1
I’ve bought the book already, since it was in stock at my local bookshop. Lucky!
Below’s my book review, which is not certified to be free of spoilers but I try my best.
If you want to check out some pictures of the book, just head on over to my blog since I remember the forum doesn’t allow posting of product images.
If you’re still wondering about the real story of Pixar’s Up, this book provides very good clues (or spoilers). I’ll just say it’s about Carl, the old man, going on a journey in search for meaning to his life. The directive from the top was to make Up “the studio’s most emotive film to date”.
Tim Hauser has provided a good writeup into design style and production process of the movie. How the story is conceived by Pete Doctor, built upon and evolved through production is included. There’s also a section on travelling to some strange jungle to do research.
The challenge for this movie is aimed at simplicity. The character designs are based on simple shapes like squares (Carl), ovals (Russell, balloons), bullets (dogs), etc. I’ve the impression there are less sets and characters compared to other Pixar movies. There seem to be only the city, the sky (flying objects) and the jungle (big). You can see the focus is going to be on the characters.
In contrast to other Pixar art books I have, most of the art included here are digitally created. Welcome to the digital age. It doesn’t really matter how the art is created if it’s good art. But digital art just have that certain computer feel to them which is more pronounced when in concept art that has less detail.
The art included are character designs, storyboards, color scripts and few environmental paintings. There are lots of character sketches for the main characters, Carl, Russell and the house. Readers looking for the plot will find that in Lou Romano’s colour scripts. It seems that there’s a new (to me) character designer, Daniel Lopez Munoz, doing plenty of sketches.
I’ve since stopped counting the number of Pixar art books I have - lots. This is another wonderful addition to my collection, recommended to Pixar fans.
PS.
“Hey this doesn’t look like one of Pixar’s better art book is it?”, a colleague remarks to me. Well, I guess it’s not for everyone.
Sky
April 23, 2009, 4:39am
#2
Please re-post this in the following thread: The Art of Up.
Make sure to look around next time to make sure you aren’t creating a new thread, when you could have posted that information in an existing thread. (If us mods think your post necessitates a new thread, we can split off the post and use it to create a new one.) Thanks.
Locking “Up”.
