The Art Making Of Arthur Christmas

Finally, the answer to the incredible question asked by every child: "So how does Santa deliver billions of presents to every corner of the planet in just one night?" According to Arthur Christmas, it takes millions of elves, an ultra-high-tech Mission Control, the S-1, a huge, mile-wide, state-of-the-art sleighship, three generations of working Santas, a family in a state of comic dysfunction, and Arthur, an unlikely hero on an urgent mission that must be completed before Christmas morning dawns. The voice cast includes James McAvoy as Arthur, Hugh Laurie as Steve, Bill Nighy as Grandsanta, Jim Broadbent as Santa, Imelda Staunton as Mrs. Santa, and Ashley Jensen as Bryony. This lavishly illustrated moviebook, The Art & Making of Arthur Christmas, offers more than 300 pieces of fantastic art culled from the archives of Aardman and Sony Pictures Animation, featuring drawings, paintings, concept art, background art, color keys, animation wire frames, and storyboards. The reader will enjoy fascinating insights from director/writer Sarah Smith, co-writer Pete Baynham, Sony Pictures Digital Productions President Bob Osher, Co-Founder of Aardman and Producer Peter Lord, as well as from the producers, animators, artists, designers, Visual F/X and CG supervisors, and other talented filmmakers who brought this hilarious movie vividly to life. This official tie-in to Arthur Christmas, the first film collaboration between the wildly successful Sony Pictures Animation (The Smurfs, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs) and Britain's deliciously wacky Aardman Animations (Wallace & Gromit, Chicken Run), celebrates everything we love about the holiday season and is perfect for anyone interested in movies, animation, or the simple joy of Christmas.

The Bristol-based animation company Aardman is best known for its most famous creations Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep. But despite the quintessentially British aesthetic and tone of its movies, this very British studio continues to enjoy international box office success with movies such as Shaun the Sheep Movie, Flushed Away and Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Aardman has always been closely linked with one of its key animators, Nick Park, and its stop motion, Plasticine-modelled family films, but it has more recently begun to experiment with modern digital filmmaking effects that either emulate 'Claymation' methods or form a hybrid animation style. This unique volume brings together leading film and animation scholars with children's media/animation professionals to explore the production practices behind Aardman's creativity, its history from its early shorts to contemporary hits, how its films fit within traditions of British animation, social realism and fantasy cinema, the key personalities who have formed its ethos, its representations of 'British-ness' on screen and the implications of traditional animation methods in a digital era.

Six-year-old Gwen writes a letter to Santa Claus asking for a pink Twinkle Bike. But when Gwen's bike accidentally gets left behind at the North Pole, it's up to Santa's son Arthur to get the bike to Gwen and save Christmas!

Based on the animated PBS holiday special. Arthur is certain Christmas will be perfect. But when it doesn't snow and D.W. decorates the tree with trolls and unicorns, Arthur isn't so sure anymore. Full color.

A tale packed with adventure, The Book of Life celebrates the power of friendship and family, and the courage to follow your dreams. To determine whether the heart of humankind is pure and good, two godlike beings engage in an otherworldly wager during Mexico's annual Day of the Dead celebration. They tether two friends, Manolo and Joaquin, into vying for the heart of the beautiful and fiercely independent Maria, with comical and sometimes dangerous consequences. This volume is an inspirational behind-the-scenes look at the making of the animated feature film The Book of Life, from visionary producer Guillermo del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth) and director Jorge R. Gutierrez (El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera).

Describes the famous villains created by Walt Disney animated films, the concepts behind their creation and the animators who made them come to life.

Arthur L. Guptill's classic Rendering in Pen and Ink has long been regarded as the most comprehensive book ever published on the subject of ink drawing. This is a book designed to delight and instruct anyone who draws with pen and ink, from the professional artist to the amateur and hobbyist. It is of particular interest to architects, interior designers, landscape architects, industrial designers, illustrators, and renderers. Contents include a review of materials and tools of rendering; handling the pen and building tones; value studies; kinds of outline and their uses; drawing objects in light and shade; handling groups of objects; basic principles of composition; using photographs, study of the work of well-known artists; on-the-spot sketching; representing trees and other landscape features; drawing architectural details; methods of architectural rendering; examination of outstanding examples of architectural rendering; solving perspective and other rendering problems; handling interiors and their accessories; and finally, special methods of working with pen including its use in combination with other media. The book is profusely illustrated with over 300 drawings that include the work of famous illustrators and renderers of architectural subjects such as Rockwell Kent, Charles Dana Gibson, James Montgomery Flagg, Willy Pogany, Reginald Birch, Harry Clarke, Edward Penfield, Joseph Clement Coll, F.L. Griggs, Samuel V. Chamberlain, Louis C. Rosenberg, John Floyd Yewell, Chester B. Price, Robert Lockwood, Ernest C. Peixotto, Harry C. Wilkinson, Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, and Birch Burdette Long. Best of all, Arthur Guptill enriches the text with drawings of his own.

Christmas is only days away and Arthur can't find the perfect gift to give Santa! Finally, he has an idea and with a little help from his sister, Christmas will be a success!