Art of Hercules: The Chaos of Creation

Rating:
Summary: STEPHEN REBELLOs BEST DISNEY BOOK
Review: "The Art of Hercules: The Chaos of Creation" is by far the best Disney book that Stephen Rebello ever issued. While Disney's HERCULES film was not as kindly embraced by the public as earlier efforts, Rebello's book "The Art of Hercules: The Chaos of Creation" seems to have stood the test of time and has even exceeded his earilier works. Yet, this book seems to have been doomed to a fate of obscurity worse the the film itself. The layout of the book is beautiful and well thought out. It concentrates not only on the characters but on the production design in great detail. This book is a magnificent piece of work. It has a proud place in my Disney collection.

Rating:
Summary: STEPHEN REBELLOs BEST DISNEY BOOK
Review: "The Art of Hercules: The Chaos of Creation" is by far the best Disney book that Stephen Rebello ever issued. While Disney's HERCULES film was not as kindly embraced by the public as earlier efforts, Rebello's book "The Art of Hercules: The Chaos of Creation" seems to have stood the test of time and has even exceeded his earilier works. Yet, this book seems to have been doomed to a fate of obscurity worse the the film itself. The layout of the book is beautiful and well thought out. It concentrates not only on the characters but on the production design in great detail. This book is a magnificent piece of work. It has a proud place in my Disney collection.

Rating:
Summary: Disney take on Greek Art!
Review: As an animation student, I just LOVE this book. It is full of colorful concept sketches, drawings, color thumbnails, and awesome storyboards. A really special part of the book is a collection of caricature sketches for the movie by Gerald Scarfe, an ink master of the century! If you like Hirshfeld, this is like Hirshfeld meets Disney.
There are few pages of storyboard, especially the beautiful color storyboard for the song "Zero to Hero". It is a true inspiration for any illustrator or animator. The character development sketches are really good too, though not as experimenting as the book "Art of Monsters Inc." (Pete Doctor, John Lasseter).
Overall, if you are a fan of Disney art, or animator, or even just an animation student like myself. GET THIS BOOK! Worth the decent cost. You wouldn't want to miss it!

Rating:
Summary: Disney take on Greek Art!
Review: As an animation student, I just LOVE this book. It is full of colorful concept sketches, drawings, color thumbnails, and awesome storyboards. A really special part of the book is a collection of caricature sketches for the movie by Gerald Scarfe, an ink master of the century! If you like Hirshfeld, this is like Hirshfeld meets Disney.
There are few pages of storyboard, especially the beautiful color storyboard for the song "Zero to Hero". It is a true inspiration for any illustrator or animator. The character development sketches are really good too, though not as experimenting as the book "Art of Monsters Inc." (Pete Doctor, John Lasseter).
Overall, if you are a fan of Disney art, or animator, or even just an animation student like myself. GET THIS BOOK! Worth the decent cost. You wouldn't want to miss it!

Rating:
Summary: better than the movie (but that's not saying much)
Review: From first glance, the bold cover stands out against recent Disney ART OF... books. It is sleeker, smaller, and more easily read without the sometimes highbrow dialogue of overpretentious directors or producers wanting to make the next Bambi. Characters from the film guide you through and speed up the pace when the book tends to lag being very consistent with the pop-culture hipness that the movie drips with. Foregoing an anthology of the animation process, they emphasize the evolution of the film from cliche muscleman to sleekly designed post-adolescent. In fact, after seeing how strictly they emphasized Grecian motifs and the Scarfe line, its no wonder how story and appeal got lost in the picture. Lots of color photos especially pre-production art by Scarfe and others under his influence. The text follows the tradition of past Disney art books with plenty of pats on their backs. It differs slightly from the mold by being less biographical about animators and more on the directors, Musker and Clements (also directors of Little Mermaid and Aladdin) and their creative process. While the text makes them out to be Toontown's Kirosawa, the candid notes and quips from animators show a glimpse of their creative process. As a book on film animation, a 3. As a book on the creative evolution of a film, a 5. But the underlying Disney fluff makes this a 4.

Rating:
Summary: Buy it for the art.
Review: I had wanted to get this book for a long time. I actually enjoyed 'Hercules' a lot. It isn't *meant* to be an accurate telling of the Hercules legend any more than 'Aladdin' is faithful to the Arabian Knights tale, but that did not detract from its entertainment for me. However, the book sadly falls into the trap of being one long back-patting session for Disney, as some of the artbooks had tended to do. At least by this stage they'd stopped 'dumbing down' the process of animation for people who really shouldn't be buying these books if they don't know how animation works. Unfortunately, I had to grade the book VERY low for the endless obsequious praise for directors Clements and Musker. I swear, there is a whole CHAPTER dedicated to nothing but grovelling from the staff. I also did not appreciate the 'narration' comments given by drawings of Phil, Herc and the Muses. Animation connoisseurs do not like being patronized, thank you, Disney. To their credit, 'The Art of Mulan' and 'Tarzan Chronicles' were excellent and intelligently written, so maybe they learned their lesson ;p However, this book does fulfil its purpose of showing exquisite production artwork, especially the contributions of Mr Scarfe.

Rating:
Summary: The Behind-the-Scene Book for the Whole Family
Review: Though I work on Wall Street, I still hold on to my childhood dream of being a Disney animation artist. This book on Hercules (which BTW is my all-time favorite) is lighter on technical details than the similar books on Aladdin and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, but still lots of fun.