Book Review: The Art of Pocahontas

The Art of Pocahontas is an oversized art book with huge image prints and large typesetting fonts.

The content is split into the following categories: Preproduction and Concept Art, Story, Charater Development and Animation, Layouts and Backgrounds, Effects and Colors.

Pocahontas is actually a Native American woman who married an Englishman John Rolfe way back in 1595. You can read more on the real Pocahontas on wikipedia.

Much of the challenge in making this movie is the balancing of the story, myth and legend. There's great writeup in this book on how scenes were adjusted to best convey themes while entertaining audiences.

There are over 400 colour and black-and-white illustrations in the book. Most of the scenes and characters are captioned by the story artists, examining the character motivations and story arcs. These are incredibly detailed and is what breathes life into the characters. Reading those captions is my favourite part of the book.

In the layout and background section, the descriptions explain how compositions work in the scenes to complement stories. It's educational, with timeless principles applied and explained.

This book really gives a good sense of the incredible amount of work done behind the scenes to create the animated movie. It's a very interesting as well as an enlightening read.

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