Friday, September 2, 2011

Retreating to the Last Outpost



To my handful of followers of the Last Outpost Art Book Review, first off thank you for your interest in things I love! Its a deeply felt pleasure to share with all of you!
In order to keep things simple and focused, Im pulling back all of my separate blogs and will just post everything to my home base blog, The Last Outpost
Ill be posting even more books and other good stuff so I encourage you to follow me there.
Also, I tweet about even more books, every Monday on my twitter so if youre on there, try following me @en_b
Thanks again for your continued attention over the years!
Ian

Monday, May 23, 2011

Cartoon Modern



Ok, guys, I'll be honest. Mr. McGoo and most of those modern cartoons were my least favorite as a kid. But now Im older I can really appreciate that modern look. This book is a good one if its something youre interested in. It also has a lot of fascinating information regarding animation history and the moment the Disney Studio's basically closed and or shelved all of its interest in modern style animation. Those must have been some crazy days!! Well, all of those great modern artists in the animation field had to go somewhere and this is a nice and thorough book explaining where they went and what happened. Lastly its the same size as all the PIXAR books so it fits nicely on my shelf with that heavy bunch.
Go get this one! Modern animation is back and Im sure you want to be well ahead of the curve of its return.

Cartoon Modern; Style and Design in Fifties Animation
Amid Amidi
195pgs HC
Chronicle Books
ISBN-10 0-8118-4731-4
ISBN-13 978-0-8118-4731-5

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Disney Archive Series; Design


If I didnt like to spend money on books but I needed one, easy to find and affordable Visual Dev book from Disney- This is the one I would get. It has a little bit of everything from just about every Disney feature and short all the way up to "Tangled". Its a lot of art and nicely edited, pretty good size and not too much writing. Also, the printing looks great throughout! This archive series from Disney continues to impress me, and this DESIGN one is the best to date.

Walt Disney Animation Studios,
The Archive Series
DESIGN
287 Pages HC
Disney Editions
ISBN#978-1-4231-3420-6

Monday, January 3, 2011

James Gurney; Color and Light


It's a New Year and only right to start off 2011 with a textbook sort of Peek-a-Book. This one is really, really great! James Gurney goes over a lot of topics in here and keeps it all in bite sized bits. Ive always been a mild fan of his, but this book turned me into an all new, ravenous fan. I guess I was never crazy about Dinotopia, but this book shows a lot of his non Dinotopia work and its astounding! He is definitely a master of knowledge and technique. The book starts off with examples of other masters new and old and captions explaining why they are to be considered masters. He has all my favorites in here (Even an old favorite, Arthur Streeton has a page). Then he does about a 2 page spread for all the topics involved with painting and seeing- light, form, color etc etc... too many too list!! All of them explained very clearly and simply. I learn something new every time I open a page. This is just a really great, affordable book with priceless contents. I cant recommend it enough!

Color and Light
James Gurney
221pgs SC
Andrews McMeel Publishing
ISBN-13: 978-0-7407-9771-2
ISBN-10: 0-7407-9771-9

$14.99 on amazon- total steal for this book