The time when I was ordering Surf's Up : The Art and Making of a true story, I was trying to add one more book in the order merely to complete it. I was skeptical about the impression it would make as compared to the highly anticipated Pixar Art Books I ordered at the same time. But I was proved wrong after it was in my hand and I was done with flipping just first few pages. This book is full of concept art, sketches, 3d WIP imagery and movie stills.

Insight Editions, the publisher has included some great collectibles along with the artworks within the book. They come as postcards, stickers, a poster, supplementary thin booklets and a DVD which exclusively speaks about the process and journey experienced while creating waves for the animation. So not just art students and mature audience, but even little kids will go crazy as they notice those colorful goodies.


There is ample amount of character designs of Penguin, along with environmental concepts of the island and color keys of various sequences from the film. We also get to see extracts from the screenplay here and there, which makes the book travel along with the film. They have covered art of almost every visual element from the competition beach. The color spreads on each page is as fresh as a holiday on a similar island, as they illustrate the layouts of the beach. There is also a sneak at the character creation phase where we get to see phases from concept sketches to 3d models. I have become a big fan of Sylvain Deboissy, the Character Designer of the film after I was hugely impressed by his art found in the book. While Cody our surfer penguin covers the text from the book, there are also comments from Director, Producer and Animation Supervisors sharing their experiences.






At the ending pages there are a bunch of photographs of the crew's time at beach and VO recording sessions. On an whole, a must have book for everyone be it into or outside animation.