Customer Reviews

The Art of Bolt

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Length:: 0:34 Mins

Bolt is one of the movies John Lasseter supervises in Disney, after coming over from Pixar. He starts to book off with a foreword that explains the artistic style Disney is trying to achieve -- 2-D painted backgrounds. Throughout the book, there are snippets on the way John has helped the team.

In this book are character designs, storyboards, digital paintings, sculptures and colour studies. The captions from the staff explain the challenges faced when creating the movie. It helps readers understand why certain buildings are modeled that way and why certain scenes are composed and shot in another way.

I like the production design, and how the movie looks. It's somewhat similar to how Open Season do their backgrounds, but this time applied to the urban landscape.

The number of character designs are limited mainly to Bolt, Penny, Mittens and Rhino. Not a lot of experimentation character sketches are shown. Did they get the correct design that fast? It's not a bad point. They do include many varying poses and sketches for the final character designs. Anyway, the only art books I've read that screams character designs straightaway are The Art of Kung Fu Panda and The Art of Bee Movie.

The environment paintings are beautiful. Captions for them always relate back to the story. The level of detail just goes to show how much research was done -- as recommended by John Lasseter.

There's not a lot of film stills and 3D talk. This book is more on the art, how the art is created generally, and why they are created that way.

I'll say it's almost as good as the other Pixar art books I have.

(More pictures are available on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)

The Art of Bolt provides incredible insight into the movie's production, it explains the influence John Lasseter, who produced several Pixar productions had on the film and how directors Chris Williams and Byron Howard shaped it and includes nearly 150 pages of artwork, plus a beautiful piece of art hidden under the cover that most will probably miss. Unfortunately the books fails to provide much information on the movie's early production, when it was called American Dog and the dismissal of director Chris Sanders.

I saw my first animated film (Dumbo at the Carthay Circle Theater in LA) in 1949. Since then, I have loved good animated films for the characters created by the animators, the emotions communicated by the stories, and the rich imagery. Before the advent of "Art of..." books, one had to be content with spin-off comics or Golden Books to see anyting resembling the art from the movie, and that art was rarely - if ever - drawn by the original character designers, or animators. I think the first "Art of..." books I bought were celebrations of the history of Disney animation. Later on, Warner Brothers and others. Now, each new animated feature is closely followed with a lush compendium of sketches, storyboards, concept paintings, etc. While some of these books are certainly better then others, I find them all (not that I have ALL of them...as yet) to be a way to both enjoy the film when I'm not watching the DVD, and to better appreciate the DVD as I'm watching it.

I ordered this book to help me to learn more about 3d animation and see if i can find way of how i can make my 3d animation character and how do different parts of jobs are responsible for specific part of characters, background, story, everything that come with into one big story so smoothly. i found this book very intersting and wish they would add little more details how do they come up with the characters.. but i think they reserve that as their secret to their success. That is fine with me because i am interesting to work for disney someday...

For those curious as to the thought that went into creating the style of Bolt, as well as those just wanting to have their own piece of the movie, this is an excellent book. It goes into the basics of design for all the characters, and even takes you step by step through their processes. Interestingly, it shows where they took cues from previous Disney movies and other such things as well. Also, the number of pictures in this book make it a wonderful coffee table book -- showing off bits from the movie, concept art, and even character sheets. Anyone that's interested in this movie at all, and indeed, in Disney's methods and inspiration should pick it up!

Loving the art of animated movies I encourage you to get this book full of valuable information about the making of the characters of Bolt the movie.
The book came is excellent conditions, brand new, and it was a smart buy.

I purchased this book for an artist. He is thrilled and so am I.
Ordering was easy, book arrived more than on time and in perfect condision.

There are great character designs in here but not a much. It seems there are more digital landscapes than there are drawings of the main character. All quality stuff, but comes up short with the amount of character drawings you get.

When I bought this book I was hoping for lots of character designs but sadly it is very lacking. Especially for the main character! Bolt has maybe 4 different designs. There's more design work for Rhino and Mittens then there is for the main character.

The author can't stop gushing about the backgrounds and how they made it tack sharp with a painterly overlay to make the style unique to this movie. This is something I hadn't even noticed in the movie itself so I'm not sure why they spent so much time on it.

This book might be awesome for someone else but I was majorly disappointed in the lack of character art.