Book Review: The Art of Madagascar Escape 2 Africa

This art book follows a style very similar to The Art of Kung Fu Panda. Character art is presented before background location art.

There are lots of character designs, background paintings and even discarded storyboards and art. In-depth descriptions are included before each character or location. These stories contain stuff like character motivations, challenges to creating Africa the continent and production strategies to make characters more prominent in New York City and other stuff.

All these make for very interesting read on the production and creative process.

However, the book is strange at some parts. There are some incredibly detailed paintings which were printed at only 4 inches wide. Lots of details can't be seen. While some of the full page rendition of the main characters are great, some really don't deserve to be blown up that big because of — again — the lack of detail. I really don't think broad pencil sketches for Marty the zebra should command a single page, as do the 3D render of Gloria the hippo.

Some of the beautiful scene paintings really deserve a bigger canvas.

Once the section for background location art starts, the book becomes considerably much better. Now, most of the digital paintings are displayed big for all the glory.

On the last few pages includes the discarded characters and storyboard. There's also a page on 4 stages of production and another page on props. There are not many movie stills, which is great.

Unfortunately, I cannot comment on whether the book contains art from both the movie because I've yet to watch them.

Overall, this is still a pretty fun art book to get.

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