Really finding its stride in the late 90s when it became a subsidiary of 20th Century Fox, Blue Sky was responsible for such memorable CGI sequences as the swimming xenomorphs in Alien: Resurrection (1997) and the talking penguin in David Fincher’s Fight Club (1999). Introducing the world to a hapless, acorn-obsessed rodent named Scrat, Ice Age was a huge hit, paving the way for a string of sequels and establishing Blue Sky as a major creative force in animated filmmaking. The Art Of Blue Sky Studios covers the company’s output to date, with writer Jake S Friedman leading us, film by film, through such films as Robots, Horton Hears A Who, Rio and Epic, as well as the Ice Age series, with contributions from the artists involved in bringing them to the screen. If the slick production and digital sheen of a CG film suggests that there’s some kind of automated process behind animating a film like Rio, The Art Of Blue Sky is a reminder of the thought, manual effort and skill that’s really involved. You get a real sense of the thought and research that went into the carnival scene in Rio, for example, or the level of detail put into the armour worn by the tiny characters in 2013’s Epic. Admittedly, the book’s prose doesn’t go into the kind of geeky levels of detail an animation student might like; a few more in-depth pages devoted to the process of turning these 2D images into polygons would have been a welcome addition, as would a more extensive look at the wonderful clay sculptures made for each character. Really, though, the artwork speaks for itself. Some of the concept illustrations, such as a painting of Nim’s Apothecary from Epic, or a monochrome rendering of Nim’s tree, are breathtakingly beautiful – perhaps even more so than the imagery we saw in the finished film. This is but one example of the thousands of lovingly-crafted images that go into each of Blue Sky’s films, and it’s those images that make this book a worthy addition to any animation geek’s shelf. The Art Of Blue Sky Studios is out on the 3rd October, published by Titan Books. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.
