Out of Picture, Art From The Outside Looking In, Volume 2,is the anthology series companion to, you guessed it, Art From The Outside Looking In, Volume I. The title is explained on the clever inside flap that tells you that the “Out of Picture” expression is a film term meaning literally on the cutting room floor. Now, I know we want to see the origins of everything these days thanks in part to good documentaries, History Detectives, and The Criterion Collection’s classic foreign film preservation kick, but as demonstrated by the Apocalypse Redux fiasco (sorry Frances) sometimes painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa’s cool for about the first five minutes-but that’s it. That’s kind of what you got here: page after beautiful page of vibrant, flowing, dazzling, in-your-face art with… mustaches illustrating middle-of-the-road tales. The kind of work that’s first placed on a project meeting table and then managed by scores of others into something great and wonderful on the shelf.
From the same folks at Academy Award® winning Blue Sky Studios (Ice Age, Robots, Horton Hears A Who) Out of Picture 2 just falls a tad short of their overall vision: “to pioneer creatively superior photo-realistic, high-resolution, computer-generated character animation for the feature film, television and entertainment industries.” This is an anthology series, with lots of pretty pictures and light on the text and plot. C’mon already. Who wants to compete with Frank Miller (The Dark Knight) Brian Azzarello & Eduardo Risso (100 Bullets) and Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith (30 Days of Night) forgeddaboudit. Right? So it’s really an art book perfect for, um, each one of the talents to, um, show-off to their friends and family.
Don’t get wrong, it really is lovely cover t’cover, fun to look at, but nothing can survive the missing copy. There’s just too much going on out there that you better serve-up a big hefty helpin' of groundbreaking. And it’s not all that. And that’s just too damn bad. Because there certainly are a lot of great ideas here. Solid beginnings, some righteous middles, and no ends in sight. I mean, I kept turning the pages saying, wow, this would’ve made a great film or a nifty graphic novel or anything but a big fat book full of unfinished themes and plot fluffer-ru. God, I’m going t’hate myself in the morning for that… but I really wanted to fall in love with Out of Picture, Art From The Outside Looking In, Volume 2. But alas I must decline. But keep the box of candy and the flowers too. No, no, really. I’m flattered that you asked.
One saving grace of Out of Picture 2, however, is the Development Gallery in the back of the book. It’s hot. Seeing the sketches and all the rest of the illustrated innards was a lot more fun then sifting through the ton of glossy tree bark. I dug it the most. And the freakin’ weighty thing is almost worth it for that alone. Um…gulp…almost.
Posts
