Our latest Geek Pick of the Week offers up another stellar art book/resource for movie lovers with Creating Worlds: The Disney and 20th Century Studios Cinematic Art of Dylan Cole.
As the Holiday season approaches, we’re bringing back our Geek Pick of the Week. Each week leading up to Christmas, we’ll be highlighting a cool product we’ve found that we feel would be the perfect gift for geeks of all kinds. Use these to help fill in your own wish list or find the perfect gift for the nerds in your life. Click HERE to read more about previous Picks of the Week!
This year’s Geek Picks of the Week have been a bit book heavy, I’ll admit. Honestly, though, it’s hard not to. This year, particularly this Fall, has seen a deluge of great resource/reference books that are uniquely suited for geeks and movie lovers. One of the more recent releases arrives just in time to not only work for the holiday season, but for the upcoming release of Avatar: Fire and Ash.
Creating Worlds: The Disney and 20th Century Studios Cinematic Art of Dylan Cole is a massive new tome from Insight Editions. It puts the spotlight on Dylan Cole, a film industry vet who started his career working on matte paintings for major blockbusters before he moved onto concept work, and overall production design. These days, he oversees the design work for the entirety of James Cameron’s Avatar series. Cameron himself chimes in for the intro of the book, offering a touching tribute before we dive into the man’s life and career.
By and large, Creating Worlds is told by Cole himself as he walks us through his early work and how he ultimately landed his first jobs in the film industry. The book is then broken down over some of the major films Cole has been a part of. From Disney’s Maleficent, TRON: Legacy, Alita: Battle Angel, and of course Avatar, there’s a whole lot of great art packed in here.
Beyond the art, Cole provides readers with insight into the designs he crafted, from early concepts to how he settled on final images for the various creatures and fantastical worlds he helped create. With a primary background in matte painting/background, there are obviously a bunch of art related to landscapes…and they’re so fun to look at.
Looking at these images and seeing the origins of the iconic worlds we’ve come to know, and love, on the big screen is a treat. They’re beautifully rendered and really help transport you into these fantasy realms. Just a quick flip through the book to look at random art makes it immediately clear why Cole has been entrusted with crafting worlds for the biggest films.
To that end, the book itself is formatted in a way to really highlight his work. The large pages (some of which even fold out) and thick paper allow for a wealth of detail in each image, along with the ability to pack in multiple smaller ones around the big chunks of text. Like so many of Insight’s art books, it’s perfectly suited for the “coffee table” style of reading. Where you can just pick it up, lazily flip through it, and always find something engaging and neat. Yet it also works for those who want to read it cover to cover and garner the behind the scenes filmmaking insight it offers.
With Fire and Ash on the near horizon, and Creating Worlds dedicating to large chapters to the Avatar franchise, this is definitely something fans will be excited to find under the tree this year. Hell, I was stoked to get all the neat information on Alita (and only made me more excited for that franchise to return), which means any movie fan will find plenty to enjoy.
Creating Worlds: The Disney and 20th Century Studios Cinematic Art of Dylan Cole is out now both online and in stores.
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