Thanks to barnesandnoble.com for the cover image of Out of Picture 2

Thanks to Bud Plant and his glorious catalog, I not only rediscovered my joy of animated cartoons, but also began to appreciate the filmmakers and artists who toiled to create so many cool cartoon shorts and features.  I especially have a soft spot for the imaginative production artists who are usually the people that first envision the characters, settings, mood, and visual style of an animated film.

Some of these artists have long harbored the desire to create comics and illustrated stories outside of their film work.  A band of artists who ply their trade at Blue Sky Studios (the Ice Age films, Robots, Horton Hears a Who!) decided to do something about wanting to tell stories outside of computer animated films.  Known as The Artists of OOP, they began a comics/illustrated story anthology entitled, Out of Picture.

Villard recently published Out of Picture Volume 2: Art from the Outside Looking In, and it’s everything a fan of comics and illustrated stories could want.  In each of these 14 short tales, an artist attempts to both tell a story and to also communicate ideas, philosophies, messages, etc. to the reader.  The styles, designs, and techniques of contemporary animation are evident in the artwork.  However, each tale reveals more than just a refined visual aesthetic and a command of color.  These are damn good stories – interesting and unique – no matter how prettily they are drawn, and the artists’ inventiveness and desire to test their boundaries make up for any shortcomings.

Not to short any of the contributors, but a few did stand out to me.  Jeff Parker’s “The Antler Boy,” a fairy tale/bedtime story, seems right out of Grimm’s by way of Disney, and it’s a story worth sharing at bedtime in real life.  Andrea Blasich’s “Are You the Right Color” and Daisuke Tsutsumi’s “A Dream of Kyosuke” are wonderful morality tales, each using different approaches to mood – comedy in the former and moody drama in the latter.  Lizette Vega’s “Crawdaddyo” is a lyrical, action comedy romp that recalls The Rescuers.  Peter Nguyen’s “The Missive” is a beautifully colored noir-ish dystopian tale that would make a good film.

Out of Picture Volume 2: Art from the Outside Looking In closes with a 40+ page section featuring the pre-production sketches, paintings, and drawings The Artist of OOP prepared for these stories.  Like the stories, this sketchbook is wonderful stuff.  This could be the best graphic story anthology of the year.