Walt Disney's Fantasia- John Culhane
Like the 'Art of' books published by Chronicle, this one tells the stories and shows concept art for all sections of Fantasia. If Art of Tangled was a 4.5/5, then this book is a 6/5. It's much longer than Chronicle's books (by forty pages), which means there's much more room for the author to write paragraphs on paragraphs of details like symbolism in the film, how the music was adapted to Fantasound, how characters were designed, and he even gets into criticism of certain elements. It probably has less art than Chronicle's books, but I think that's forgivable due to how comprehensive the material is. This is what an 'Art of' book should be, and any fans of Fantasia should definitely read it.
Up next, The Illusion of Life.
EDIT: Totally lied. Up next was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: The Art and Creation of Walt Disney's Classic Animated Film - J.B. Kaufman
It's basically an Art Of book that just wasn't published by Chronicle. It's longer (by almost 90 pages), but at the same time the amount of interesting or information is probably on par with their books. For one, the text resorts to a lot of summary of the film. Books such as these are meant to be written for someone who has already seen the film, and for that reason summaries are unnecessary. Aside from that, the concept artwork (which fills most of the book) is nice to look at it, but I also feel like there are too many examples of just cel backgrounds. I've seen the movie and I know what the backgrounds look like. They occasionally make them interesting by showing the different cel layers that make up a shot, but the book would have strongly benefitted from showing actual concept art. It's entirely possible that, as a result of how old the movie is, that this material didn't exist anymore. But, still, a note on that would have been nice.
Overall it's not as good as Culhane's Fantasia book, but still interesting.
Up next: The Illusion of Life (for real this time) and an audiobook: Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl.
Edited by Vorahk1Panrahk2, Jul 10 2014 - 03:49 PM.