When I first encountered this book, I was tickled pink that the Dreamworks artists had gotten together to print a book of personal art. I flipped through it, admired the art, and put it right back on the shelf. It wasn't until fairly recently that I decided to fork over the cash to buy it. If you're an artist, then you know how much art books generally cost. It's comparable to buying college textbooks, so you better love the art inside.
Honestly, it's not a book I'll be re-reading over and over again. A lot of the art books I buy are used for reference, like the Spectrum series. The art in Spectrum books is mainly from the industry(created for a client). Not personal pieces. It's organized by medium-whether it was printed in a comic, or for concepts. This makes it incredibly helpful when I want to reference lighting, color scheme, or style for a particular industry.
The art in this book was lovely, but it felt like visiting Deviantart with all the dregs filtered out. Don't get me wrong, I think it's wonderful that such a diverse group works together to make exceptional animated films. But this is definitely a book for art lovers, not artists.
That said, I'd like to highlight some of my favorite artists in the book:
Devin Crane-His stylized girls look like the jumped right out of the 70's.
Goro Fujita- There's obviously a story behind his robot and kid paintings, and I want to know what it is!
Ritche Sacilioc-His urban war torn and massive metal structure environment paintings seem to belong is a video game.
Shannon Tindle-Her fantasy paintings are beautifully lit, making you want to live inside them.
Dominique Louis, Simon Rodgers, and Jason Willian Scheier are all amazing landscape painters. I'm in awe.
Patrick Mate-A wonderful sense of humor is evident in his work
Takao Noguchi-His fanciful illustration on the back cover was what convinced me to buy the book
No comments:
Post a Comment