Book Review: An Animator's Gallery: Eric Goldberg Draws the Disney Characters

This book is a nice tribute to Eric Goldberg, a legendary artist and animator from Disney. He's probably best known for animating the genie in Aladdin.

This is not exactly a portfolio-kind of artbook. Eric Goldberg has created more work that the artworks featured here.

This book is actually a collection of caricature drawings of Disney characters that are to be displayed at the Shanghai Disney Resort. These drawings are framed and hung in the main corridor of Roy E. Disney Animation Building in Burbank, California, before they make their way to the new resort.

Each artwork is of a character drawn in smooth lines and striking black and white. I love the use of black and white, and how Eric Goldberg brings life to these characters with strong poses and silhouettes, no doubt the same techniques he has used for creating animation. Each page is dedicated to just one or two characters. This is a huge artbook and the artworks are printed pretty large, and look to me as if they are printed at the actual size of the original art.

The familiar characters you will see are Mickey and the gang, Snow White, Peter Pan, Aladdin, Pocahontas, Simba, Cruella de Vil and other iconic characters. There are also characters from the recent Disney and Pixar films, such as Wreck It Ralph, Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Frozen, Wall-E, Big Hero 6, Cars and many more, and a handful from The Nightmare Before Christmas.

The book does talk about Eric Goldberg and his career as an animator at Disney. There's lots of behind-the-scenes stories to read. Of course, since the artworks are created for the Shanghai Disney Resort, part of the text talks about that project. There's also mention of his inspiration Al Hirschfeld a few times.

It's a nice book to get if you're into Disney character art drawn in pen and ink style.

An Animator's Gallery: Eric Goldberg Draws the Disney Characters (Disney Editions Deluxe) is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN)

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