Customer Reviews

Disney Lost and Found: Exploring the Hidden Artwork from Never-Produced Animation

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

 

 

It's interesting to see what might have been in the history of animated Disney movies. Sometimes it's easy to read between the lines of the fairly neutral text and see why the movie would have been a bad idea, or why portions were cut, and other times it's baffling, but the artwork is always stunning and deserves to be enjoyed by a wider audience than the Disney archivists!

To be fair, the book really should have been clearer in it's title that it is in fact mostly just art. There's not so much 'exploring' the pieces as there is simply showing them. However, as an artist who collects these sort of books for inspirational rather than more critical reasons; I really love this book.

The book is split into three sections - the first features storyboards (and some inspirational art) from some (actually made!) Disney movies. The other two sections are entirely devoted to the art of two different uncreated Disney movies; each has a page of introduction and then pages of art.

The art is very nicely nicely reproduced - lines are crisp, and details are visible. You can see the direction of pencil lines and the brush strokes used. One of my biggest irritations with books like this is that sometimes they try to cram too much art on a page and details are lost, but this book takes care to - for the most part - allow beautiful backgrounds to dominate a whole page rather than making them itty bitty.

Personally? I love this book and would suggest any animator/sequential artist add this one to their collection.

I enjoyed this book and thought it was well done, but I have two comments:

- Solomon covers only a handful of those unfinished animation projects and scenes. As a Disney fanatic, I occasionally stumble across reverences to abandoned projects, so I know there were many more, and the word that popped into my mind when I was finished reading this was "tease." The Introduction corroborates this: "...Studio artists began work on hundreds of others over the years that were left in varying stages of completion." (page 6) Those who are looking for a comprehensive reference on abandoned projects/scenes will be disappointed.

- This book is mostly pictures. They are (in most cases) gorgeous and instructive, but I counted only seven full pages of text. If you're looking for a detailed reference on animation, this isn't it.

I own other works by Charles Solomon and consider him a credible animation expert.

It includes projects that seem to have never existed to most fans. The artwork varies, some of it is interesting and others well, were 'lost' for a reason. This book is more for a collectivist.

I got this book hoping to see some of the great stuff that never made to the public. Well, there were a few things, but with a history as long as Disney's I expected WAY more content. The book featured only a handful of "lost" projects, and granted, they were fun to read about and see the scraped concept art.

If I were to do it over, I would not have purchased it.

If you appreciate Disney, animation or just 'Disney animation art', you should enjoy this book. The images are quite nice and are a nice add to anyones collection/library.

The book doesn't leave up to the expectations. Its has some really realy nice pages, but most of if is not that great. You kinda understand you they were ideas that didnt move foward.