In the afterword of The Art of Meet the Robinsons, the film's director Steve Anderson says in an acknowledgement to his team of artists, "We could fill ten more books of your beautiful work but unfortunately we only have one." But perhaps the most unfortunate thing about the one book that was produced is that it is sort of a "lite" version entry into "The Art of ..." series. At 62 pages, there is certainly quite a bit of "art" that wasn't included in this book. Compare this to the 160 pages of last year's The Art of Cars and it feels a tad skimpy. Fortunately, the price is much less, with Robinsons costing $17.99 versus Cars $40.

Because of the concise nature of the book, one key element that I found missing was that we never really meet the Robinsons. The image on the book's cover shows about 15 characters but few are mentioned with any real background as to who they are and why we would be interested in meeting them. An example on page 39 quotes storyman Nathan Greno saying, "So now Tallulah and Laszlo are the children of a man and a puppet. I don't know how that works, but as a kid, I would have loved to think about that weird backstory." Offspring of a human and a puppet? Yeah, we readers might have liked a little more backstory to that one as well. But unfortunately there's not much offered here.

Still the book is a neat peek into the process of animation and the level of detail that goes into every character, every object and every background that makes it to the screen. From color and light used to convey feelings and emotions to the angular, forelorn look of the present in contrast to the bright rounded shapes of the future, The Art of Meet the Robinsons does offer a look at the whys of the decisions made by the editorial team. It is always cool to watch a film like this and feel a certain way about what is being presented to you then read the filmmakers' thought process on creating that emotion. There is an amazing amount of detail that is put into a project like this.

The writing itself, by Tracey Miller-Zarneke, is a pretty quick read, and if nothing else, leaves you wanting more. However, the illustrations throughout are the real stars of the book. As an animated film in CGI, it is always fascinating to see how much drawing with pencil and painting in various media are required to get the computer to do the artist's bidding. Also interesting to see is how much of the style developed by the source story's author and illustrator, William Joyce, is incorporated into the final film.

Having collected all of the "Art of ..." books about the various Disney animated features, I am glad that one was produced for Meet the Robinsons. You might need to do a little searching for it yourself as it doesn't appear to be included in online bookstore's, such as Amazon.com, product offerings yet. I stumbled upon it at a Barnes & Noble though I also saw it for sale in the Disneyana shop at Disneyland this past weekend.

Perhaps the modest scale of The Art of Meet the Robinsons is keeping in line with the expectations that the company has for the film. The book indicates that the lesson of the film is to "Keep moving forward," which means to look to the future and not to dwell in the past. But with such a rich history, I'm hopeful that success for Meet the Robinsons is a good omen for the future of the Disney Feature Animation. In that case, maybe we can look forward to more fleshed out versions of future "Art of ..." books as well.

-Story by Matthew Walker; Cover Art ©Disney.
Posted February 26, 2007

E-mail Matt at matt@startedbyamouse.com, discuss this article in the StartedByAMouse.com Disney Discussion Forums or use the Talkback feature below.

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