The Art of Pixar

The Art of Pixar is a gorgeous book that represents the humble beginnings of an animation studio that is now loved by fans worldwide. The first colorscript was drawn by Ralph Eggleston for Toy Story. That was in 1993 and it had enchanted John Lasseter, Steve Jobs and the rest of the then little studio. Today, many years and films later, it's nice to see that Pixar is still creating them, using them to communicate the emotional arc of their stories. Collected within the 320 pages of this beautiful book are the colorscripts up to the latest movie Cars 2. Also included are the colorscripts for the many animated shorts that, if I'm not wrong, are all appearing in this book for the first time. The 100 over pages at the back are for selected pieces of art, one printed per page. These are the work from the last 25 years. It's quite cool to see the artistic styles used by different artists to create the colorscripts. I love the pastel ones by Ralph Eggleston and Dominique R. Louis. The vector style art of Lou Romano for The Incredibles is still a refreshing departure of usual style of drawing them with pastel. Later on, the colorscript slowly evolved to being drawn digitally. The ones by Sharon Calahan for Cars 2 are so detailed I'm not sure if they aren't film stills. The book claims to have the complete colorscripts but that's not exactly true. Since I have the other Pixar art books published by Chronicle Books, I went back to compare the content. I found out that the book didn't include some of the colorscripts that were featured in the earlier art books. Some from The Art of Finding Nemo weren't included. However, this book includes a lot of new colorscripts that aren't in the earlier books. In particular, there are many more extra pages of colorscripts for Cars and Cars 2. The colorscripts for Ratatouille in this book are not even in The Art of Ratatouille . As for the selected pieces of art, many are from earlier art books. I guess there some are new pieces but I didn't do a detail comparison. Even if there are some duplication, you'll still want the book because of the colorscripts, all conveniently collected and beautifully laid out. The Art of Pixar is a tribute to art, animation and the amazing people working at Pixar. It's an inspiring book authored by veteran animation writer Amid Amidi. Highly recommended. (There are more pictures of the book on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)

I am an artist myself, so I bought this for when I have artist block and I don’t have the creative energy to produce or If I need some inspiration. It’s very cool book, it starts off as pastel color on paper and then into modern rendered colorscripts. There’s only word texts in the first 10 pages briefly discussing how the work came about and the use of color and design. Then you venture off into an infinity of color script concepts on how a movie came about. And it come with a hard cover case to store in, the book itself is hard cover too. Just minor dents and scratches nothing too noticeable. Only downfall is the paper cut I have from flipping through the pages in a hurry, but over all good quality of sketches and drawings into one book. Hopefully this book inspires new artist into animation and storytelling, and keeps aspiring myself to be one some day. Highly recommend this book :)

Absolutely beautiful! My husband & I just had a tour @ Pixar and saw a couple of these displayed on walls there. We loved them, and when I surprised my husband with this book it brought back the magic of our tour! He sat & studied half the book right after opening it! The images are neat but seeing the mood of the entire story arch without the details is very cool! It shows you how well they capture emotion & mood with color & how close to the original plan the movie hits!

Huge, heavy and fully loaded with Pixar's art design, all in color and fully illustrated (only few pages with text for the intro). Perfect gift for any pixar-fan/artist. People complaining about the product just didn't read the product description/title or maybe don't even know what a colorscript actually is.

If you have the regular 'Art of' books for each film, there is not a lot of new content here. Also there is not much commentary from Pixarians or otherwise. Still, it is just what is says it is, the COMPLETE color scripts... so they're all in there for every film and short, in their entirety, and they're absolutely gorgeous. Also, there is a comprehensive section containing 'world' art, which is basically environmental concept sketches. Bottom line, if you don't have the full Art Of (film) series, get those first because they cover each film in detail with a lot of great art and first-hand commentary. If you already have all those books (or at least the ones you're interested) and you would like to re-visit all the films and shorts in a new and abstract way then you cannot go wrong with this comprehensive volume.

It's a good cronology of pixar colorscripts, great for people in the creative area of that love the techinal stuff of disney.

I bought this book as a gift for my boyfriend for his birthday, he really loves animation and Pixar color schemes. The book is full of rich beautiful colors, the pages are thick and sturdy, overall the book is absolutely beautiful.

Great art of book. Interesting look into character design and layout of several Pixar productions. Lots of characters a number of sketches, etc. All well done and most quite interesting. I initially didn't think I would be interested in the several pages containing animation cell scripts of the movies highlighted, but there actually enjoyable as well. Overall, I found this book to be a great reference and fun behind the scenes look at Pixar. A worthy library add.