It looks like Pixar, that takes 2D's squash and stretch and applies it to 3D like no other studio, is back with another spectacular film. How can you beat expressions like this? © Disney/Pixar.

The volume is a great way to preserve this rarely seen production art, and the book's layout lets the visuals tell the story. Anyone trying to match what Pixar accomplishes on a regular basis should study this book to understand the artistic effort, trial and error, and just plain fun, that goes into creating an animated classic. It's a huge team effort — and this studio has assembled a winning team.

Those of us who study animation's history have envied the stories we've heard and read of Disney's golden age — that period between the mid-1930s and early '40s — when it was a dream studio filled with incredible talents pushing the envelope, creating classic films that were as artistically true as they were popular and entertaining.

That studio and era live again at Pixar.

Need further proof? Pick up this book.

The Art Of Finding Nemo by Mark Cotta Vaz. Forwards by John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton. San Francisco, California: Chronicle Books LLC, 2003. 160 pages. ISBN: 0-8118-3975-3 (US$40.00)

Jerry Beck is an animation producer and cartoon historian with a nifty Website at www.cartoonresearch.com and a new book, Outlaw Animation, due out this spring from Harry N. Abrams.