The Art of Bolt by Mark Cotta Vaz is the trusty sidekick guide to Bolt — the latest film from Walt Disney Animation Studios — and the newest volume in Chronicle Books’ line of Pixar/Disney animation art books, following The Art of WALL-E. The Art of Bolt documents the evolution of a movie whose “creators built from scratch an ingenious animation process that blurs the line between hand-painted and computer-generated filmmaking.”
Packed with vivid conceptual art “that functioned as beautiful building blocks for the unique look of the film,” The Art of Bolt has the feel of a travel journal filled with sketches and paintings done on a cross-country road trip of urban and rural America, paused for lengthier rest stops in New York, Ohio, Las Vegas, and Hollywood. The bulk of the art consists of scenery studies that show off the expert use of light effects in the film, with sketches of Bolt, his friends Mittens the cat and Rhino the hamster, and the humans they interact with — “physiologically accurate yet perfectly caricatured at the same time” — sprinkled throughout like thumbnails of interesting people seen and met on the journey.
The Art of Bolt is printed on heavy, art-quality paper, and presents a selection of preliminary sketches, character studies, storyboards, colorscripts, and full-color images, along with material from the Disney archives that illustrates how the Bolt creative team sought to return to Disney’s animation roots in their development of the film’s “painterly” look, a blending of classic 2D and modern 3D animation styles. The art is interspersed with quotes, interviews, and essays from the director, producer, designers, artists, and others involved in the production of Bolt, all of which open a fascinating window into the making of this underdog tale.
Order now at Amazon.com:
The Art of Bolt
The Art of Bolt is distributed by Chronicle Books (International/US) and Raincoast Books (Canada).