Jake Friedman is a writer and animation artist whose art can be seen on the Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, and Saturday Night Live. His writing has been featured in Animation Magazine, the Huffington Post, the Philadelphia Daily News, and Animation World Network. He currently teaches animation art and history at Mercy College. He lives in New York City.
Filled with working conceptual art...character development sketches and models...studies on the shape language. And light. And so many images of how the colors of light play in movement, setting of mood, and layout of drama....I've been motivated to think of light and color in a new way, and I'm confident that my hands will reach for [these] wonderful pages again for further inspiration. -- VizWorld Impressive new coffee table art book. -- AWN .. .is the most impressive movie-related art book I've ever seen... the full color paintings [are] done mostly to visualize the environments for the films and the characters' place in them, and they're striking. I can't compliment them enough...Best of all, the book doesn't try to cram them all into a smaller format. They're allowed to breathe. Some stretch across two page spreads. You can really see these paintings, and that's what an art book should do. -- Comic Book Resources This book encompasses everything up to and including Rio 2. You and your kids will love flipping through and looking at all the fantastic images and learning more about this company that has been creating computer graphics since before the general public knew that was a thing. -- GeekDad It's hard to believe it's been just over a decade since Fox helped launch Blue Sky into the world of theatrical feature animation with the global hit franchise starter Ice Age back in 2002 -- the fifth installment of which is planned for 2016. Since then, the studio has continually upped the CG animation bar with film adaptations and lushly designed original stories, from Robots to Rio. For the first time, you can leaf through a hefty coffee-table hardcover and live the studio's journey from live-action visual effects company to a driving force in CG animation. Thanks to exclusive access to Blue Sky's archives (and the talented artists who have built it), this edition boasts never-before-seen concept art, early sketches, stunning film stills and more eye candy to tide you over until their next ambitious project: the first-ever CG Peanuts movie coming next year. -- Animation Magazine .. .a worthy addition to any animation geek's shelf. -- Den of Geek