The Art of Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted

by Barbara Robertson

The Art of Madagascar 3 provides a fascinating look at the character design, development art, and special effects that make up this stunning CG movie from the artists at DreamWorks Animation. In the third installment of the Madagascar series, Alex the lion, Marty the zebra, Gloria the hippopotamus, and Melman the giraffe set out to return to New York. Dependent on the mechanical know-how of the notorious Penguins, their plan inevitably goes awry, and they find themselves stranded in Monte Carlo, where they join up with a traveling circus by chance. Led by the venerable tiger Vitaly, the animal-centered circus has seen better days. During the course of a tour through Europe that ends in a fabulous big top in the heart of London, Alex, Marty, Gloria, and Melman help Vitaly, Gia the jaguar, and Stefano the sea lion rediscover their passion for show business and reinvent the circus while being chased by the notorius animal control officer, Madame Dubois. A treat for fans of all ages, The Art of Madagascar 3 is a joyous celebration of these lovable characters and the artistry that brought them to life.

Genres: Art

156 pages, Hardcover

First published May 8, 2012

About the author

Barbara Robertson is co-author (with her husband, Craig Robertson) of The Kids’ Building Workshop. She is the director of education at the Williams College Museum of Art and founding director of Kidspace @ MASS MoCA, a child-centered contemporary art studio and gallery. Robertson lives with her family in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

Reviews

[Abraham Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

nice book about the movie!

[Hở · Rating 1 out of 5]

The book basically retold the whole movie in text.

[Parka · Rating 5 out of 5]

(More pictures on my blog)

This is another good art book from Dreamworks and Insight Editions. I like this more than the first book, which is pretty good as well.

Designs for the main characters are already in the first book so they aren't repeated here. What's included are designs for new animals they meet from the circus, the villains and the miscellaneous crowd. The character designs from Craig Kellman are quite funny. For the villains, they look like cartoons, as with their 3D models.

Character designs are about one third of the book. The rest are concept art for locations, storyboards and props like trains, planes, automobiles, banana shooting machine guns, etc.

The Zoosters are now trying to find their way back to New York, and they are traveling with the circus to places like Monte Carlo, Monaco, Rome, The Alps and finally back to New York. It's feels very different from the wilderness art of forest in Africa. Beautiful art from Ken Pak, Lindsey Olivares, Erwin Madrid, Goro Fujita, and other artists.

I like that most of the art are printed quite big. Those printed across two pages are fantastic.

Towards the end, there's an interesting section on the more technical aspects of making the film. It covers stuff like rigging, modeling, visual effects and matte painting.

It's a great art book for the movie.