Book Review: The Art and Making of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

Note that there are two publishers for this book, Insights Editions and Titan Books. Mine's the Insight Editions one which is a hardcover edition that comes in a sturdy cardboard slipcase. Titan Books is just the hardcover with a dust jacket, and the price is lower.

I really enjoy the animation art books published by Insight Editions. The Art and Making of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is another wonderful art book authored by Tracey Miller-Zarneke, who's also wrote the sold-out The Art of Kung Fu Panda.

There are over 180 pages of art instead of the 156 listed erroneously on Amazon.

Inside the book is filled with concept art on the characters, the town and buildings, the props, storyboards, beatboards and colour studies. What I really like about the book is the art is created with a wide variety of medium. We have pens, pencils, markers, watercolour as well as digital drawings. The artistic style is incredibly varied and really colourful. There are even photos from the studio's in-house "Most Creative Breadboat" competition.

The book also comes with a lot of removable goodies. When you pull out the book from the slipcase, you'll be greeted by the smell of strawberries. That comes from the sticker book of food art. Additionally, there are removable sketches of top secret inventions, a huge map of the town, a multi-fold of the school's ridiculously long chalkboard and a few mini-booklets containing more art. This makes the book really fun to read.

All the major characters in the animation has writeup on them. Many of the art work are accompanied by captions from the production team. There are many interesting stories on production, such as figuring out how to make burgers bounce, break apart, and still look appealing. And how much food was ate while the artists were drawing delicious food.

This is definitely one of the art books to get for this year.

Most highly recommended.

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What the Titan Books edition left out:

• hard cardboard slipcase
• food scent sticker book
• multifold of the town map and chalkboard

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Places to get the one from Insights Editions:
Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.de | Amazon.fr | Amazon.it | Amazon.es | Amazon.co.jp | Amazon.cn

Places to get the one from Titan Books:
Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.de | Amazon.fr | Amazon.it | Amazon.es | Amazon.co.jp