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Dark Horse Books

The Art of Steven Universe: The Movie Paperback – December 31, 2019

by Cartoon Network (Author)

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Go behind the scenes of Cartoon Network's highly anticipated film with this unique art book!

This magical deep-dive into Steven Universe The Movie is designed by Ryan Sands (Frontier) in conjunction with Steven Universe creator Rebecca Sugar! See preliminary character designs, witness the formation of settings and storyboards, and discover the art that shaped the full-length movie! It's a new kind of artistic adventure with with Garnet, Amethyst, Pearl, and--of course--Steven.

Print length

104 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Dark Horse Books
Publication date

December 31, 2019
Dimensions

8.56 x 0.33 x 11.01 inches
ISBN-10

1506715079
ISBN-13

978-1506715070
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Chris McDonnell
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Rebecca Sugar
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Dark Horse Books; Illustrated edition (December 31, 2019)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 104 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1506715079
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1506715070
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.56 x 0.33 x 11.01 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #398,439 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #727 in Historical & Biographical Fiction Graphic Novels
- #795 in Art of Film & Video
- #927 in Dark Horse Comics & Graphic Novels

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Samantha G.

After pre-ordering over half a year ago, personally this is a huge let down.

Reviewed in the United States on March 4, 2020

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I expected so much more from this "Art" book. Crazy to me that it's an official Cartoon Network book, because it really looks like some rando put this together with what they found & were able to copyright. The "bulk" (it's a thin book, ~100 pages) of this book is super, SUPER rough sketches, that are blown up to fill entire pages. Every once in a while, a rough sketch will be roughly colored. There are a couple pages of storyboards, which are ironically small compared to all the other blown up content. There are some (like 2) full color, full page designs in the beginning but they're just landscapes. I expected to see much more character art, and much more finished art. It's Cartoon Network! They own the copyright so not like they don't have access to better content. I'm pissed, obviously. It didn't cost much, but I've been waiting for this since mid-last year. I'm so disappointed.... Can you return a preorder?

35 people found this helpful

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Miles

Extremely lackluster

Reviewed in the United States on March 3, 2020

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This book didn't really bring anything new to the table. The very little writing showcased had already been discussed by Rebecca Sugar briefly. A lot of the book had a bunch of concept sketches that felt like they were thrown in there to use up space. There were even 3 or 4 pages dedicated to enlarged sketches of spinel just stretched out. Most of it were just sketches of Spinel and some of Steven and Connie. Nothing else was shown on the corrupted gems or side characters or even the crystal gems themselves. This entire book felt lazily put together in all honesty. I craved information about the process and fun tidbits on the thought processes. My eyes ended up glazing over by seeing a bunch of messy sketches. Overall a very boring "art of" book.

25 people found this helpful

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Swank IvyTop Contributor: Steven Universe (TV Show)

Excellent companion book! Light on new insights, but packed with great concept art!

Reviewed in the United States on March 4, 2020

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The Art of Steven Universe The Movie was released March 3, 2020. It's a wonderful journey through the concept art, character development, and experience of fashioning these ideas into the movie we all love.

Nuts and bolts: The book is published by Dark Horse, and it was designed by Ryan Sands (a zine specialist), with commentary by Takafumi Hori, Kat Morris, and Rebecca Sugar. It includes art by Rebecca Sugar, Kat Morris, Takafumi Hori, Alonso Ramirez Ramos, Angie Wang, Ashley Fisher, Becky Dreistadt, Chromosphere, Danny Cragg, Elle Michalka, Hilary Florido, Ian Jones-Quartey, Jasmin Lai, Jeff Liu, Joe Johnston, Julian De Perio, Katie Mitroff, Leonard Hung, Miki Brewster, Patrick Bryson, and Paul Villeco.

An introduction explains the same origin story that Rebecca Sugar told us in the movie DVD's commentary: that she accidentally restored her phone to factory settings and lost years of important stuff, and she ended up applying that devastating premise to her movie. That combined with the concept of "breaking" the main premise of a TV show to make a movie was how she got started developing the story.

The opening of the movie styled like a storybook is blocked out with some great drawings and breakdowns of which narration would go to what storybook pages. This is combined with some partial sheet music for "The Tale of Steven." Rebecca writes about how she felt having to wrap pre-production on Season 5 only to take on this even bigger movie challenge. The biggest challenge was writing all these songs in such a short time--six weeks--and having to deal with the stress, being crushed under all that pressure while still wanting to do this story so badly, and it was humbling to still have to work so hard to sell the idea. The feeling of relief to finally be done that Steven expresses in "Happily Ever After" is very similar to what Rebecca went through feeling like she wanted to be finally done but still knowing what she had to do to climb an even bigger mountain.

Some very cute Steven-at-age-16 and Connie in Space Camp clothes follow. Notes indicate that Steven and Connie are the same height now, but his poofy hair is just slightly higher than her head.

Notes from 2017 also give us the "Neckstravaganza": design notes on Steven's new form, with a neck and a jacket. It's very cool.

Some beautiful Joe Johnston boards follow, with sequences from the "Happily Ever After" song. We also get Angie Wang's final design (with Ashley Fisher's color) of the injector, including some sketchy concept art for it from Rebecca Sugar and Hilary Florido. In the rough concept notes, they call this the "Mega Injector," with notes for Takafumi Hori to use for scale. It looks beyond huge in a Leonard Hung drawing.

Spinel concepts are next. Some notes explain that aivi & surasshu (the usual composers) were involved very early since it was a musical, and Rebecca included them when pitching the story to the Crew so they could organically develop the sound. The heart shape was central to Spinel from the beginning, and early versions of her had an entire heart shape to her head.

(There's a doodle of what looks like a cartoon dog in the pile of drawings shown in this section. It's not clear what that was.)

Spinel was given the heart imagery partly because Rebecca had learned early on about the importance of symbols, and when it came time to assign one to Steven, the star was chosen because it's so positive and is read as gender-neutral. Rebecca still hadn't used hearts for anything, so it was time. They also incorporated really old, dated character design ideas to make Spinel feel like an outdated cartoon from the rubber hose era.

The aspect of her design with the running mascara versus cute eyelashes predated the rotation of her Gem. Rebecca likes to start with more realistic sketches when she's figuring out a character, and then she'll move to making it more cartoony. A quote from Miki Brewster is shared: "Spinel can do anything, as long as it's entertaining!" Her "best friend" form is described as "a doll for friendship fun & games! Of a different era--hokey, charming, weird...super gullible and trusting. Incredibly loyal, constant entertainment machine!"

When it comes to developing her "worst enemy" form, Rebecca explains a bit that she has a really complicated relationship with old cartoons because nostalgia is not compelling to her--the animation from the 1930s is so neat, but considering the social limits and the way the industry was at the time, Rebecca doesn't think she could have participated. Especially considering nowadays she even had to struggle to be allowed to tell the stories she needed to tell and it would have been impossible five years ago. The norms of the time aren't entirely extricable from the art itself.

Takafumi Hori weighs in with commentary on how fun it was to animate a scary but fun character on top of Miki Brewster's boards for the "Other Friends" fight sequence.

Next, moving on from the central new character, they also spend some time discussing Steg. Rebecca first explains "Steg Multiverse" as a character so uplifting he can make you fly, combining Greg's unending support and Steven's positive power. She makes reference to the early "stegosaurus" concepts they had for his look, but they didn't want to lose the opportunity to have his hair flow. Rebecca confirms that the pompadour idea was established in "Steven and the Stevens" so they wanted to give it to Steg, and she credits Paul Villeco for really finalizing his design and bringing him to life.

And of course the poofy hair from Steven and the double-necked guitar was essential for Steg.

Next, the book gives us a whole page of handwritten notes about "Drift Away." Kat Morris explains the intentional duality of the scene--how Spinel should be shown seeing her own past with new perspective, being embarrassed, blending together who she was with who she is. The partial lyrics to the song and some sketchy boards are offered.

Rebecca shares her personal connection with the subject matter--how she once left a stuffed animal in her garden and the side facing the sun faded. It really made a mark on her as a child that things changed without her, because of her actions, and that she'd left this treasured toy alone without thinking about it all that time, letting it be affected by the elements without her interference. She wrote "Everything Stays" for Adventure Time based on that plushie, and realized that she was writing about it again for the Steven Universe movie.

Many beautiful miniature boards are shown in this section.

Partial sheet music for "Drift Away" is also offered here. It's credited to Rebecca Sugar and Aimee Mann. The music sheet is followed by some lovely images of the garden by Julian De Perio, Patrick Bryson, and Leonard Hung.

Takafumi Hori returns for a discussion of the final fight sequence during "Change," which he animated from Jeff Liu's boards. He discusses trying to keep the fight feeling dramatic and serious even though Spinel's fighting style is funny. He wanted to keep her tension. Hori-san throws in a word of thanks for being allowed to work on his favorite show again, praises Jeff and Miki, and compliments Rebecca Sugar's demos. He hoped we'd get a soundtrack album. (Of course, we did.)

Some final boards by Rebecca Sugar and Becky Dreistadt of the characters in their show gear descending the steps close out the book. There are also some cute little doodles at the end on the credits page, like a head of lettuce with caption "lettuce adore you" and Spinel in a drifting go-kart laughing, captioned "drift away."

The back cover pictures Steven with his arm around a heartbroken Spinel, comforting her.

Overall, the book is wonderful--the accompanying information is generally not new to anyone who watched the DVD's documentary and commentary, and many of the sketches have been released one way or another directly by the artists through Instagram, Twitter, or Tumblr blogs. There was still plenty of wonderful new concept art that wasn't already out there, and looking at some of the iterations Spinel and Steg went through was particularly captivating.

There was no new insight into the development of the plot beyond the premise and the Spinel-related conflict, though; nothing about how they decided to focus the Garnet storyline, the Pearl storyline, and the Amethyst storyline for how they would each get their memories back, and there was no spotlight on their movie versions--modern Cotton Candy Garnet, copycat baby Amethyst, and factory settings uncustomized Pearl. I was hoping especially for some Amethyst stuff because the movie was the first place we got to see her with the simple default outfit and segmented limbs.

It was primarily an art book with commentary on some of the most definitive movie aspects--it didn't reach the depth that Art and Origins gave us. It has a start-to-finish feeling in a sense, but it's mostly just splashes of information that are fun to know. It's a great companion and definitely should not be missed by any fan of the movie. I recommend it heartily!

7 people found this helpful

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C.A.

Not as high quality as the last steven universe art book.

Reviewed in the United States on March 6, 2020

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Alot of the sketches are really amazing however most of the pages look like they were just thrown together. There's even a page full of marker sketches that are so faded that you can barely tell what was drawn. On top of that you have pages with very few sketches and lots of white space and pages where you just have one sketch that takes up half the page and the rest of it is just blank. Then there's two pages with 0 art and just photocopied notes of how the scenes should look. This is an art book.

However overall the work included is pretty great. Would have included a higher rating if the pages looked less slapped together and if there was more variety to the art included. Most of the art and design work is just spinel. She was the major point of the film but she wasn't the ONLY one.

Overall this book didn't feel as complete and well done as the previous steven universe art book and I was disappointed. A lot of the pages look unorganized and reminds me of image search results from Google. If you're a massive fan of the movie and just can't live without seeing this then you should get it but I really don't recommend it. There are some nice points in the book but it's meh overall and you could probably find most of this art online somewhere for free.

11 people found this helpful

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Brockus

I love it

Reviewed in the United States on March 3, 2020

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It's SO SO GOODDD

7 people found this helpful

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Nifty Keen

Get "Art and Origins" instead

Reviewed in the United States on March 4, 2020

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Nothing new I hadn't already learned in other interviews. Lovely sketches, but the documentary on the movie DVD goes much deeper in-depth. Buy the DVD and read "Art & Origins" which is the in-depth Steven Universe art book you're probably looking for.

8 people found this helpful

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Blake D. Morgan

Shameless cash grab with virtually no content

Reviewed in the United States on March 16, 2020

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After seeing the huge amount of content in the first art book based on the series, I expected the same from a book based on the movie. Instead it focuses almost completely on Spinel, ignoring almost all the other characters, including most of the Crystal Gems, except for Steven. I have yet to find any drawings or descriptions of substance not readily available on the Internet. This book is an incredibly thin and disappointing attempt to capitalize on expectations garnered by the excellent work done on the Art and Origins book.

4 people found this helpful

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Connor Tierney

Good, but only just.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 19, 2020

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To preface this, I adore this show and adore the art almost obsessively, and in that regard this book does deliver but my issue with it is that it feels somewhat thrown together. Compared to the art and origins book that came before it, a lot of the book design choices in here feel poorly thought out, for example there are two 2 page spreads in a row of around 3 animatic poses of Spinel by Takafumi Hori which are blown up to fill the pages and don’t feel like they’re doing anything for the space they’re attempting to fill. We do get design work for the most important character Design elements of the film like teen Steven’s design process and the same for Spinel and Steg, but the book just feels baron with poorly cropped sketchbook sections omitting parts of drawings, as well as model sheet drawings that are low quality and pixelated. I hate to knock something like this because I’ve been so incredibly excited to get it, but I can’t say I’m impressed. I’m happy to see all of this behind the scenes stuff because it’s my favourite part of any artistic process but I just wish more thought had gone into this.

3 people found this helpful

Sue Page

Quality

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 15, 2020

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Good service

Frixo

Illustrativo principalmente sull'antagonista del lungometraggio

Reviewed in Italy on April 11, 2021

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Fascicolo costituito nella maggior parte di illustrazioni dello sviluppo del personaggio di Spinel, dal concept al design definitivo. Mostra in alcune parti anche il materiale delle fasi di progettazione di alcune sequenze del film e dei personaggi principali nei loro design aggiornati, come concept, bozzetti, storyboard, pezzi di spartiti musicali, tavole...
Un piccolo approfondimento sul film in se e non sulla serie o sulla stagione "Future", della quale mostra solo brevemente e marginalmente il nuovo design dei personaggi principali.

Anche nei materiali il fascicolo è curato, di formato A4 verticale con copertina flessibile di cartoncino lucido con alette. Le pagine sono di carta molto pesante, come per gli altri libri della stessa serie, soltanto che in questo volume hanno carta opaca.

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Cliente Amazon

Altamente incompleto.

Reviewed in Spain on July 13, 2020

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El libro para mi es interesante y está bien hecho -a mi me resulta útil para lo que buscaba, pero se le pueden encontrar fallos importantes. Abusa muchísimo de colocar sketches rápidos de varios artistas, pero luego no los concreta en arte final o en el diseño definitivo de los personajes (el sonado con una cantidad desproporcinada de diseños primarios de un personaje concreto, pero no se ve una sola imagen del diseño final, el de pantalla). Cuando aparece algo de animación, no se explica qué estás viendo, lo que resulta confuso. Hay storyboards, pero no se ve como se concreta en los fotogramas de la película...
En fin, no es un libro. Es medio libro.

One person found this helpful

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Cliente de Amazon

EXCELENTE LIBRO, MAL ENVIO.

Reviewed in Mexico on March 9, 2020

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CON RESPECTO AL CONTENIDO DEL LIBRO NO TENGO NINGUN COMENTARIO, YA QUE ES EXCELENTE. EL ENVIO POR PARTE DE AMAZON ES MUY MALO. HASTA AHORA, TODOS LOS LIBROS QUE HE PEDIDO HAN LLEGADO MALTRATADOS. ESTE EN ESPECIAL LLEGO EN UNA CAJA MAS GRANDE QUE EL LIBRO Y CON UNAS BOLSAS DE AIRE ADENTRO, LO CUAL HIZO QUE EL LIBRO ESTUVIERA SUELTO DENTRO DE LA CAJA Y LAS ESQUINAS SE MALTRATARAN. APARTE ESTABA MUY POLVOSO Y LAS TAPAS PARECIERA QUE LAS ESTUVIERON MANIPULANDO Y ESTABAN ARRUGADAS. OJALA TENGAN MAS ATENCION A ESTOS DETALLES.

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