Pixar Fanboy » Books

Preorder the Art of Toy Story 3

Tommy — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 21:25:59 +0000

Just in case your wallet hasn’t had enough Toy Story preorders in one week, the Art of Toy Story 3 book has just been put up for preorder on Amazon, and it looks amazing!

The book will be available on May 26, 2010, and you can be sure to read a review here as soon as I can get my hands on one. You can preorder the Art of Toy Story 3 on Amazon.

Toy Story Comic Book from Boom! Kids

Tommy — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 02:46:36 +0000

Good news for all of you Pixar comic fans, Boom Kids just released the first issue of it’s new Toy Story comic book! The first arc of the new series is being written by Jesse Blaze Snider and illustrated by Nathan Watson.

I had a chance to read the first issue (#0), and it was a lot of fun! It took me a while to get used to seeing the Toy Story characters in comic book form, but they lend themselves to the medium nicely. The story revolves around Woody and Buzz and feels like a classic Toy Story tale.

Snider came to fame on the MTV show “Rock the Cradle” and is an active musician as well as a comic book writer. You can check out the Boom Studios website for more details, but I highly recommend picking up a copy or two!

Pixarpedia: An Early Review

Tommy — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 22:38:35 +0000

I’m happy to give you Pixar Fanboy’s first book review: Pixarpedia: A Complete Guide to the World of Pixar…and Beyond!. Pixarpedia is a book being released by DK Publishing on August 31st. They were kind enough to send me a review copy early, and I’m glad they did. This book is a delight, and a must have for all Pixar fans, young and old.

It’s a very large, hardcover book with beautiful glossy pages filled edge-to-edge with photos. It’s around 350 pages long, and features a forward by Andrew Stanton. Pixarpedia is divided into three parts. The first contains:

The Foreword by Andrew Stanton
In the Beginning – A brief history of Pixar
Making Movies – general knowledge about Pixar
How to Make a Pixar Movie
Timeline – a timeline of Pixar’s work from 1986-2011

The second and largets section of the book is The Movies…. In this section, each Pixar feature film and many of their shorts are given their own chapters. The final section of the book , …and Beyond, is filled with themed pages and behind the scenes facts for each film.

Being an encyclopedia of sorts, Pixarpedia has a lot of information. For all my fellow Pixar Fanboys, a lot of it will already be known, but there is also a lot of interesting facts and anecdotes that I hadn’t read before. Each film’s section starts out with a beautiful two-page spread introduction, and then goes straight into character bios and descriptions of locations and organizations. It’s fun to read about the minor characters in the films. For example, I never knew Bob Parr’s boss at Insuracare was named Gilbert Huph. Ironically, Lee Unkrich’s revelation about Woody’s last name Pride isn’t featured in the book.

Besides the character bios, we’re treated to the occasional map and diagram, like the above spread of Nomanisan Island from The Incredibles.

The …and Beyond! collects information based on themes in Pixar films, such as friendship, love, villains, supporting characters, and more. The book just briefly mentions Toy Story 3 and Cars 2, with no mention of any of Pixar’s upcoming films. I guess we’ll have to wait for volume 2 for that!

It takes a long time to read every bit of information in Pixarpedia, but it is worth it. Even if you know a lot of the information presented, it’s nice to have such a great looking book sitting on your coffee table. There is no doubt that between The Art of Up, Pixarpedia, and The Pixar Treasures, this is a great year for Pixar book fans.

Pixarpedia is being released on August 31st, so head on over to Amazon and preorder your copy today for only $26.40!

Ride ‘Em Cowboy Picture Book Preview

Tommy — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 18:56:30 +0000

Lorelay Bove is an artist who interned at Pixar and is currently working at Disney Animation Studios. She recently illustrated a Toy Story picture book titled Ride ‘Em Cowboy that hits store shelves on September 1st.

The only description I could find of the book online is from Copperfield’s Books.

“Everyone’s favorite “Toy Story” characters are back in action. Join Andy’s toys for a rodeo match up between Woody the cowboy and Jessie the cowgirl. Buzz Lightyear, Bullseye, Slinky Dog, and the rest of the gang add to the thrills. Full color.”

The art looks great, and as Lorelay mentions in her blog post, the book almost looks vintage due to the finish of the paper.

I love when Disney utilizes its talented artists for their children’s books, rather than uses coloring-book quality stock art. Another great example of this is Beware of Dug!
by Christian Robinson, whom I’ll be interviewing soon for the site.

You can preorder Toy Story: Ride ‘em, Cowboy! on Amazon, and make sure to check out Lorelay’s blog for more!

Toy Story Comic Book from Boom! Kids