California Adventure Postcards

When the billion dollar addition / remodel was announced for Disney's California Adventure, I thought I better get on the ball and start grabbing up postcards before the landscape changed dramatically.

Recently, I picked-up three very unique postcards. Each of the cards is designed to look like the label of a fruit crate and features the sections of DCA. There's also some not-so subtle hidden mickey's in the images. Also, these postcards are stickers so that you can create your own fruit box.

I thought this was a clever bit of marketing to link the new Park with California's history in agriculture.

Disney Princess Art

I picked up another book from the "Art Of" series - well, I don't know if these can be called a series, as the titles seem to come out in a very randomly. Anyway, it's "The Art Of The Disney Princess" (hardback: 176 pages). These books usually follow the same format. Artists focus on a single subject while at the same time reinterpreting the subject in a manner very different from its original form.

I thoroughly enjoyed the first book in this series - The Art Of Mickey Mouse from 1991. This book is the standard of this series in that it contains a wide variety of artists, including Andy Warhol, and artistic styles.

The second book, The Art Of Winnie The Book 2006, was a bit of a dud. I think the subject matter was too limited to get a wide variety. After all, you can't get a lot of facial and body variations from a stuffed animal.

Which now brings us to the Princess book. I have to admit that I bought this book because I collect books. I really wasn't driven to it by the subject matter. But, I was surprised by the content. While some of the artwork looks like it came directly from Disney products, the remaining artwork really pushed these Disney woman into a different light.

Birthday Double Dip Book Update

One of the nice things about having a birthday so close to Christmas, is that I get to capitalize on all the Fall book releases. One of the bad things, is that I get behind in my reading. Well, I guess that's really not a bad thing.

Two new books have arrived. First up, is "The Art of The Princess and the Frog". Disney has been producing these books for years, and they're a joy for anyone who is a fan of concept art or who really enjoys the process behind creating an animated film.

The second book is "The Archive Series: Animation" (the sequel to the 2008 "The Archive Series: Story"). The Archive series books are very thin on text, but are just jam-packed with drawings.