The New York Times on the design of Brave's Merida



Matt Nolte's early sketch of Elinor tangling with Merida's unruly mane. c. Disney/Pixar

On June 15th the New York Times ran a very nice piece dealing with the design development of Merida, the heroine of "Brave". See it here.

And not only see, but hear: as is often done at the Times, there's an accompanying slide show of artwork with narration by production dsigner Steve Pilcher and directors Brenda Chapman and Mark Andrews.

I've been looking forward to seeing the finished film for some time, and will finally get my chance this Friday. I saw it three times (most recently in March of 2011), but it's existed for me mainly as the preproduction work and vibrant thoughts of its artists-the material for my book, "The Art of Brave". Tomorrow I'll post a little about writing it.

Actually, every scene DOES get the storyboard treatment

Time magazine's online edition has a "behind the scenes" slideshow featuring Pixar's next release, Brave. Worth a look to see some nice photos of the crew(including one showing directors Brenda Chapman and Mark Andrews on a Scottish hillside covered in heather), but the accompanying captions by Jared Miller include one major error. Alongside a story panel from the sequence "The Prize" Miller writes[emphasis mine]:

Not all scenes get the storyboard treatment, but this one, called "The Prize," closely matches the scene as it appears in the completed film.

It's an odd aside, one that really only makes sense in live action where, as a matter of course, storyboarding is usually reserved only for particular scenes and sequences. As readers of this blog know, animated features are storyboarded from start to finish, top to bottom, left to right and every which way imaginable, over and over and over again. All the scenes in Brave did and do "get the storyboard treatment". Mr. Miller's assertion that it's not done for every scene is a major boner...if you're a story artist at least.

Not incidentally, the sequence as boarded is an impressive one-and the panel above of Merida taking aim is from the Time feature. There'll be much more of the boards in the forthcoming Art of Brave book. Available for pre-order now at a generous discount-a handy link's over there to the right. Yes, I just had to mention that.

Bravery

Although it won't be on shelves for another seven months, last week Amazon put up the cover art and a short description for "The Art Of Brave", which I had the pleasure of authoring. It's going to be quite a beautiful book, one that I only wish could have been twice as long as its 160 pages. I'll write more about it here as publication time draws nearer.

In other Brave-related news, Brenda Chapman began using Twitter and has started a Tumblr blog. There's not much there yet as she only just began it, but it does link to a new, very good two-part interview with Brenda on the site Pixar Portal. Her thoughts on art, work and storytelling are a must-read.