The Art of Brother Bear

I will be honest, I never saw this movie. But I return to this book all the time. The background previz paintings and especially the on site ones make me drool. Im not sure if Disney still sends the Visual Developers to the actual location of the Feature to capture in real life, the look and feel of the environments the film takes place in- but they did on this one and a lot of those on location sketches and paintings are included in this book. That was the dream, at least for me, an aspiring background artist, to travel with a talented art team and draw and paint on location. Some real zingers in here from Paul Felix, Robh Ruppel, the master; Jay Xiangyuan Jie, and the rest of the team. Theres some good character work in here, but mostly you will find Backgrounds and Layouts. I saw a survey on deviant art (?) about what people like to see in an "art of book" and to my dismay, background paintings and sketches were near to the bottom. To me, although I like good character stuff, the backgrounds and layouts are by far my favorite things to look at and draw inspiration from. Everyones different though thats for sure.
Hard to believe but on amazon you apparently can buy this book used for 0.33 cents, or new for less than $6. This book is definitely worth that small cost, so go get it!

The Art of Brother Bear
H. Clark Wakabayashi
124 pages (HC)
Disney Editions
ISBN 078685420-0

The Art of Bolt

I think you can get this book for about $8.00 now on Amazon and its really good. I actually thought this movie was super under-rated. Its been a while since I saw it but I remember really enjoying this animated feature from the original SoCal Disney Studio, Disney Pictures. Flipping through this book reminds me how good it was and of course of the extremely talented team that brought it all to life. Nice character work but the background paintings in here really shine- cheers Mr. Paul Felix!
So go ahead and grab this one for the shelf, well worth the price.

Art of Bolt
Mark Cotta Vaz
160 pages (HC)
Chronicle Books
ISBN 978-0-8118-6531-9

Andrew Loomis and Figure Drawing

Listen, there are a ton of figure drawing books out there. More than a ton. But you just want one really good one right? Well maybe not but all I want is one and that one used to be a raggedy photocopied stack of papers Lee Ballard ran off for me in the fine arts department office. The book copied was: "Figure Drawing For All Its Worth" by Andrew Loomis, and it had been out of print for years. We were art students and there was no way any of us could afford that book, but check it out! They reprinted it! I think I got mine for $16 on amazon, I think its costs about $26 new now but its still a steal for this super informative volume of figure drawing and figure drawing techniques. Everythings in here, proportions, fore shortening, values, poses, lighting, and more- everything you need to know about figure drawing and more. Still dont believe me? Check out the reviews from artists you might believe, such as Alex Ross or Norman Rockwell. Yes, Norman Rockwell- I told you this book was old! So if you need a figure drawing book this one is the one, way better than Bridgeman or anything else I have ever come across.

Figure Drawing For All It's Worth
Andrew Loomis
204pg (HC)
Titan Books
ISBN 9780857680983

Availability: Amazon USA