The Art of WALL.E

If you like seeing the work that goes into making a movie, this is a great book to get.
Maybe not the best of Pixar's "art of" books, in my opinion,
but it is full of wonderful sketches and paintings that led to the final film.

If you take a look in this book, and actually carefully go through every page, you'll see that Pixar puts an incredible amount of work and effort to make sure its animation looks ideal and stunning for every scene. The rough sketches and digital animation look amazing and the book explains many nuances in the whole making of the movie.

First of all let me say that my rating doesn't have anything to do with Wall-e which is a great movie or Pixar which I love.

Here I'm rating this book only. Regrettably, I must say that "The Art of Wall-e" is a missed opportunity. It could have featured many more drawings about wall-e (the actual character) and its genesis. Out of its 160 pages this book manages to devote to the design of this robot and to drawings showing how wall-e "works" a mere 4 pages (pages 48-49 and 52-53).

Also, at page 102 we are told that "there were nine revisions of Eve" and yet, we are only shown that robot more or less as it appears in the movie instead of as a work in progress which would have been much more interesting and stimulating by giving the reader insight into the artists' creative process.

Unlike the previous "Art of" books about Pixar movies, this one doesn't really delve into the evolution of art direction or characters in a major way (except for the humans in the movie) as if what we see in the movie weren't the result of several iterations (as it most definitely is).

In short, great art but much left to be desired.

Ever since I was a kid, I'd buy an animation art book almost yearly. The Art of The Lion King was probably the first art book of this type I ever had given to me and it kindled my love of animation art all the more, finally in these pages were beautiful concept illustrations, story board art works, inspirational paintings and final prints from the film, all of which were bound up in beautifully presented cloth covered large scale folio editions (originally printed by Hyperion). Books like these emphasised the storytelling process the Disney studios believed in and presented imagery which spoke volumes above the text, since the key to all great artistic works be it in animation, illustration, theatre design or film is the artists ability to simply draw from life, observe it, relish it and understand it -- and from that process you have great storytelling, you need imagination naturally and that's the art part, how you see marks you out ........... these books just need to show us more art when the film was evolving as that is inspirational and they could be designed better.

This is a fine book but doesn't really live up to my expectations when compared to what came before. It is smaller, I can't see the point in printing images which are the size of postage stamps on these pages and I want to see more final, well chosen film prints and pencil, painterly, illustrations than these digital smooth works which lack texture. The Monsters Inc. art book is a better example of Pixars ability to portray wonderful characters and displays more traditional means of creating concept illustrations for these films.

When I saw the previews for WALL*E, I actually got a lump in my throat and misty-eyed. I *knew* this was going to be a Kleenex movie. It turned out that I only had to use my tissues a few times, but I was so impressed by how Pixar could tug at my heart with a little robot who had virtually no dialog. This book tells exactly how the Pixar team went about creating an endearing character with some tough "limitations", meaning that other studios would have flagged under the challenge.

This book is packed with compelling concept and final art. Tim Hauser digs deep to get the story behind the story and will inspire you with the process of bringing WALL*E to life.

If you saw the film and wondered, "How did they do that?" then this is the book for you.

On another note, Animation Magazine said of the book, "the generously illustrated book is another one of those friggin' amazing collections whose pages we wish we could wrap around ourselves each and every day....Buy it. Read it. Touch the pages. Look at the immaculate illustrations. Find a home for it on your coffee table..." And I think they should know!