60 of 61 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful art from amazing artists, February 12, 2010
This review is from: The Art of How to Train Your Dragon (Hardcover)
Length:: 0:35 Mins
I can't believe my eyes when I saw this books on the shelf at a local bookshop, two months earlier than its scheduled release date.
Flipped a few pages, and saw the unique style of Nicolas Marlet, flipped back to the cover and found that Tracy Miller-Zarneke is the author and the movie's from Dreamworks. Those three names instantly reminded me of quality art book The Art of Kung Fu Panda. I'm glad to say that this book is as good and fun. By the way, Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois are the famed directors here.
Inside the book are more than 350 development artwork, including early character designs, story sketches, and concept paintings. The books is divided into three parts, the dragons, vikings and the environment with stuff like props and houses. Discarded art and characters are also included, like Hiccup's mother - who can cook a mean dish with dragon meat. Accompanying the art are plenty of interesting quotes and commentary from the production staff.
Nicolas Marlet and Simon Otto seem to be the lead character designers responsible for the concept art of the dragons and vikings, although a good amount of designs are actually from Nicolas Marlet. There's a wide range of wackiness and creativity to the drawings. The character digital paintings are great and the colours are really beautiful, kudos to Zhaoping Wei.
The environment paintings from Pierre-Olivier Vncent, art director, are beautiful. This guy really knows how to draw scenic yet precarious backgrounds like sloping hilltops, snow-capped sea arches and Dragon island which is like an ice-cream cone with molten lava as topping. Not only that, his tranquil pieces are also spectacular, National Geographic-spectacular. He has created places you want to visit but probably not because one wrong step and you'll roll down the hill.
There are even a few illustrations from Dominique Louis, who did some pastel concept art for Pixar. His using digital pastels now and there's no difference from his traditional work, I'm glad to say. The fun and stylised houses, statues, weapons, boats and other props are from Kirsten Kawamura and Mel Zwyer.
It's a fantastic book showing the creative prowess of amazing artists. Highly recommended.
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By the way, if you missed the "About the Author" section above, I have to mention it here again because Tracey Miller-Zarneke has authored some really great art books that you should check out.
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The Art of Kung Fu Panda
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The Art of Meet the Robinsons
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The Art and Making of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
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(More pictures are available on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fantastic Book, March 24, 2010
This review is from: The Art of How to Train Your Dragon (Hardcover)
Full of sketches, paintings, and creative thought, The Art of How to Train Your Dragon is what every "Art of" book should be... full of astounding art and insight. This is particularly important in the worlds of both 3D and traditional animation. This book, alongside others such as The Art of Kung Fu Panda, The Art of Robots, The Art of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, etc. is a great example of what it truly takes to bring such a detailed cinematic work to life. It carefully sections out the designs of each species of dragon, the human Viking characters, the difference in the dragon's and viking's environments. There are wonderful excerpts from the artists and production designers about their thought processes. The only complaint I have is that I wish it had even MORE! But as a freelance illustrator that is always my complaint. The art is beautiful and the character designs hilarious... you'll get a kick out of the Dragons of myth section showing the designs they didn't use. If you love great animated film character and concept art... buy this book!
One quick note, I have noticed a disappointing style shift in the more recent Disney/Pixar Art of books and as a huge Disney fan I would say they could learn something from the variety of art and character design in this and other non Disney Art of books.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful, June 13, 2010
This review is from: The Art of How to Train Your Dragon (Hardcover)
I bought this book to change my art style. For years I've been drawing, and trying to break away from, anime.
When I saw this film, I was in love with the way it looked (and I'm not talking about the CGI - though that was certainly wonderful). I love how the characters were done in a unique style and I thought "I want to do be able to draw like that!" I spent hours (from 3 o'clock in the afternoon to midnight) drawing, tweaking, yelling at ink pens running out of ink, and trying not to get eyestrain under the light of a dying bulb and I can already see an improvement.
I have plenty of references to go off of; from Toothless to Astrid to Hiccup - they're all there. I even drew one of my (leaner) characters looking like Stoick the Vast and it's now push-pinned to my wall! If I wanted to draw props and atmosphere (I'll start later - too lazy right now) I could because this book gives me many a reference.
Needless to say, this book has proven to be quite helpful in my endeavour.
It's also stitched, not glued.
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