Rhett Wickham: The Art of Bolt Review
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Joe Mateo�s Cintiqe rendered storyboards are a return to nicely staged and fully detailed panels, and Byron Howard�s spectacular story paintings are artful studies of economy, which speak to his similarly economical approach as an animator, and bode well for this, his directorial debut.
Joe Moshier and Chen-Yi Chang are arguably the most influential character designers working at Disney over the past ten years, and in spite of all the references to designers from whose work they draw inspiration, they never seem derivative. Take, for instance, the four pages of Mittens designs, including some purrrfectly scrumptious studies by Jim Kim; yes, the character could be considered the illegitimate offspring of Chuck Jones�s zig-zag Money Cats from �Gay Purr-ee�, but Moshier, Chang and Kim grow that seed of inspiration into a first-rate, fully realized character design that lands successfully on all fours. Moshier�s pen and marker development art on the top of page 75 is worthy of its own limited edition print. In fact, it should be paired with his equally side-splitting graphite and marker rendering of Rhino, the fan-boy hamster at the top of page 90.
Moshier says of the sure-bet-to-be-a-scene-stealer
�Growing up, my favorite character was Baloo the bear from Jungle Book. I wanted to go up to him and just hug him. I feel like Rhino has that huggable appeal and, hopefully, people will respond to him. The thing about designing is you can create characters that kids will want to meet at Disneyland or become friends with in their minds.�
Wish granted, Joe. The line to hug Rhino starts here.
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Animation Podcast�s excellent Clay Kaytis, supervising animator on many Rhino scenes, and visual development artist turned voice-artist of Rhino, Mark Walton, add their comments to the many manic pages of hamster heaven that help make the book a visual feast. Nevertheless, it is impossible not to fee like you�re reading the chronicles of a family with some deep, dark secret that hangs in the air and haunts every conversation. This story and its characters did not simply spring forth from no-where, and the increasingly obvious lack of any mention about how Bolt himself came to be imagined grows heavier with each turn of the page.
The near mythic chronicling of how the messiah of Pixar breathed life into a dying Disney is comical by the time we reach the book�s final paragraph, a passage so ironic that it�s enough to make informed readers cough up a hairball:
Lella Smith (director of the Animation Research Library or ARL) sitting in an ARL conference room and speaking at the midpoint of the Bolt production, held up a piece of original art being considered for inclusion in an art exhibit. It was a Bill Tytla concept painting of the Fantasia sorcerer, pictured at the moment he grabs his hat from his apprentice and restores the cosmic order � Yen Sid himself, his eyebrows arched in that restless, �good, but not good enough� pose. It was the lesson a young animator named John Lasseter absorbed during his early Disney days, brought to Pixar, and had now revived at Disney with Bolt.
Now that they�ve dug up the artwork of Tytla - the animator many considered the greatest who ever worked at Disney and whose appeal to come back to the studio fell on deaf ears - perhaps the Animation Research Library could reveal where all the artwork from �American Dog� is hidden, because it�s nowhere in sight in an otherwise respectable collection of impressive production art.
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-- Rhett Wickham
The writer, RHETT WICKHAM, is an occasional contributor to LaughingPlace.com. and the publication Tales From The Laughing Place. He works as a creative consultant in film, television, themed entertainment and video games. He lives with his husband, artist Peter Narus, and their adopted �son�, Cooper � a retriever-spaniel rescue who will have to wait for the DVD of Bolt, unless AMC changes their admission policy. Mr. Wickham was a stage director in New York for twenty years, and is an alumnus of the Directors Project of the Drama League of New York. He was previously honored with the Nine Old Men Award from Laughing Place readers, �for reminding us why Disney Feature Animation is the heart and soul of Disney.�
The opinions expressed by our Rhett Wickham, and all of our columnists, do not necessarily represent the feelings of LaughingPlace.com or any of its employees or advertisers. All speculation and rumors about the future plans of the Walt Disney Company are just that - speculation and rumors - and should be treated as such.
-- Posted November 17, 2008