Pixar’s Finding Dory is currently dominating the global box-office and with The Art of Finding Dory you can take a look at how this success was brought to the big screen. The book offers a great look at the designing of the beautiful world and memorable characters of the film, but also its great story.
The book is divided in three parts, one chapter for each act of the film. Each chapter takes you through the act showing off concept art of the characters, sets and some breathtaking paintings of scenes from the movie. Every once in a while there is some text to explain and give some context to the artwork which is a great return to form after having completely textless art books for Inside Out and The Good Dinosaur. While I would’ve liked some quotes from the artists throughout the book I was already glad to discover that this book wasn’t just a compilation of artwork.
This book puts a big focus on story, which is a fun variation from other art books that usually only focus on the art side of a film’s production. Each act has a few pages featuring storyboarded scenes (deleted as well as that made it into the final cut) from the movie and besides those pages a lot of sketches and fun character designs by story artists are included in this book as well.
Usually art books tend to put more focus on characters than anything else, this book, however, puts a large focus on the world building and environment and set design. Most of the major characters had been designed for the previous films and the new characters only got 2 to 3 pages each with very little development (mostly finalized work). The environments, however, get a lot of attention. From rough sketches to finalized full color digital paintings, a lot of different design work from the environments can be found in the book and it’s a great extension from the film as it moves to the different locations very quickly.
The Art of Finding Dory is a great return to the classic Pixar art book formula after disappointments with The Art of Inside Out and The Good Dinosaur. The book offers a great in depth look at the making of the film and the art in the book is breathtaking. While I would’ve preferred some more variation in some of the pages with not only finalized, but also some earlier design work I think they overall made a great selection of artwork. The addition of more details on the story process and a bunch of storyboarded sequences of both scenes that were in the film as well as deleted scenes was great and overall I hope the book is only the first in a new series of amazing Pixar art books.
Purchase:
Amazon: US | UK
Book Depository: US / UK
A special thanks to Chronicle Books, who provided review copies of the book.
