A review by gslife
The Art of Up by Tim Hauser

5.0

The Art of Up is the best film art book I’ve ever read. Too often, these books show a finished work without showing a process. I understand the reason for this, but I’m interested in the process. I want to see the rejected ideas and rough sketches that become the story. Pixar’s team puts all that out in the open with this book.

Not only are there early sketches and process of characters like Carl, Ellie, and Russell, but there are beautiful pastel color roughs that were clearly highly influential on the finished product. Pete Docter (the director of Up) and others at Pixar also talk candidly about production complications when it came time to turn the drawings into 3D models. For example, in a typical 3D set, you can cheat a little and have a bookshelf be a flat texture instead of individualized books; not so in Up. The house flies and crashes in the air, so the books have to fall off shelves — so they have to be actual book models. The pictures on the wall have to actually have an image behind them because they swing, but more than that they have to have a DIFFERENT texture — the faded look of wallpaper that’s lived forty years behind a picture frame.

Beyond these fascinating details and the beautiful art, the care and the ethos of Pixar shines through. Take these two quotes from Pete Docter: “For me, it was a lot easier to draw someone than talk with them.”; “But if we have friends, a family, that’s what life is all about. A sense of appreciation.”

Other quotes I liked:
- “Fantasy, if it’s really convincing, can’t become dated for the simple reason that it represents a flight into a dimension that lies beyond the reach of time.” - Walt Disney
- Sadly, though, our dreams have a way of eluding our grasp, as adulthood, marriage, work, and the other realities of life intervene.