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Product Details
Hardcover: 160 pages
Publisher: Chronicle Books; First Edition edition (February 25, 2009)
There have been several fine books about Pixar's relatively brief yet extraordinary history and artistry, as well as "Art of" books on the features. None of these books take such a detailed, thorough and image-rich look at this extremely important aspect of "how Pixar does it."
Amid Amidi, co-creator of the essential website Cartoon Brew, gives roughly half of the moderately coffee-table-sized volume over to an intense chronicle of Pixar's story told through its shorts, which are truly instrumental in the development of Pixar's features, technology and especially their creative team. What is especially impressive is seeing the degree of loving detail that goes into these mini-masterpieces, which can be as short as 3 minutes and 20 seconds (For the Birds).
I can really appreciate the difficulty of writing the establishing section, distilling highly technical systems and challenges in understandable terms while avoiding the obvious out of respect for the readers. As each short appears in the book, historic narrative is woven in order sustain the context of the films and their impact. For that reason, the very early film sections (devoted to Andre and Wally B., Luxo Jr., and Knick Knack) are somewhat lengthier. Once the Pixar organization is "up and running" as far as the text is concerned, than each entry focuses on the films, their directors, artists and particular challenges.Read more ›
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This book contains every short films Pixar has made. That's from 1984's The Adventures of Andre & Wally B to 2007's Lifted, including three feature film-based shorts.
The format of the book is a bit peculiar. The accompanying text for all the short films are presented together at the start of the book, the art goes behind. There are no additional captions for the illustrations except for labels of credits.
The writeup is great. There's a short history of Pixar before it was even known as Pixar (founded in 1986). Following on, it details the making of each short film. There are interesting things like how depth map shadowing and tweening were used in Luxo Jr or how John Lasseter would animate into the morning and sleep under his table.
There are also plenty of stories on how each director thinks about their design and their stories. Especially intriguing because the background of these directors are amazingly varied. For one, Gary Rydstrom made his debut directing Lifted, and he's a sound designer. Each of the directors have lots to say about their production process.
If you've owned To Infinity and Beyond!, you have read some of these production stories already. The Art of Pixar Shorts provides additional information, and it has the feature filmed-based shorts which are not in the other book.
Now for the art. There are sketches, film stills, storyboards and some full colour illustrations (colour keys and beat boards).
For the 13 films featured, I felt that the amount of art shown was slightly underwhelming. Sketches from the earlier films were too little. For example, there are only 3 pages of sketches for Andre and Wally B (totalling 4 big pencil character sketches), 3 pastel paintings and 2 pages of 4 film stills.Read more ›
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This book has a great combination of finished art and sketches. It also has a nice lead in to what it takes to be a strong animation company in this tough competitive industry. I love the book and think it is a must have for any Pixar fan, Artist, and general animation junkie alike... Buy it you wont regret it. Z
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I'm fascinated by computers and animation, thus reading "The Art of Pixar Short Films." The material describes the early days at Pixar when they were learning the art of/how to regarding computer animation. Very difficult, even impossible, at first, but so much better than the early Disney days. Sometimes years of work were required for the short films - mostly to develop the new computer techniques. Fortunately, the group of pioneers at Pixar were given that freedom by first George Lucas and then Steve Jobs. Computerized animation is no child's play, and the results are so good that with a decent plot they also appeal to adults.
My only reservation about this book is that it doesn't go deeply enough into the details of how the automation works, nor provide samples before and after the techniques. I guess that's material for another book.
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