[BOOK REVIEW] The Color of Pixar

The Color of Pixar presents hundreds of film stills from Pixar’s entire filmography all the way from 1995’s Toy Story to the upcoming Coco in a beautiful spectrum of color. Each frame in this book only appears on screen for 1/24th of a second at a time, but this book challenges you to take a closer at the images and discover the way colors are utilized in Pixar’s filmography.

The book opens with a foreword by John Lasseter and introduction by Tia Kratter. In his foreword Lasseter talks about how color is used to convey emotions and help the audience feel a certain way in Pixar’s features. Although the moments captured in this book are really only created to be seen in the blink of an eye, each one is a piece of art in itself that many talented artists worked on very passionately and hard. Tia Kratter, shading art director at Pixar, talks about her experience with color while working as a shading art director at Pixar, where working with color is a big part of her job. She also introduces us to her idea behind making this book.

The book’s foreword and introduction are followed by the content of the book, stills from all of Pixar’s feature films sorted by the colors of the rainbow. In all honesty it’s not the most interesting book. While it’s fun flipping through the book by color there isn’t anything in the book besides that. It’s interesting to see what different colors are used for in film and it’s nice to take a better look at certain moments from the films, but overall it isn’t very exciting. It’s a great resource to study, but besides that there isn’t really much to this book.

The Color of Pixar is a beautiful little coffee table book with gorgeous images from all of Pixar’s films, however it’s very unnecessary. It’s just a compilation of stills from Pixar films sorted by color. No information, nothing extra, just that. And while it’s fun to flip through the book and focus on all these moments from the films, after going through it once most people will probably be done with it. I can imagine this being a great resource for students, however. It’s a great book to study the usage of color in film and it’s definitely something you could use often when working on projects. Overall I wouldn’t recommend this book if you’re expecting to get something more from it than just a bunch of stills from Pixar films.

Purchase: The Color of Pixar
Amazon: US | UK
Book Depository: Worldwide

A special thanks to Chronicle Books, who provided a review copy of The Color of Pixar.

Edited by: Hannah Wilkes