Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, illustrated by Ron Barrett, was one of my all time favorite books as a kid. I loved the concept of food falling from the sky and giant ice cream sundaes. Even more significant for me was, I also loved the style of illustration used in the book. It’s kind of a line drawing woodcut feel with subtle color. The line work creating fantastic depth and texture to every image. It left so much to the imagination yet filled with details.
My own art style was inspired by this technique of illustration. I love the sketchy pencil lines and have enjoyed playing with line shape combined texture.
The movie, on the other hand was great on it’s own but didn’t meet the expectations I had built up in my head. I have no idea what I expected. The original story itself didn’t have any kind of indepth plot or extraordinary action, so the movie had to compensate – and did a great job indeed. There was action and dynamic characters and loads of fun food… but the illustration was so much different than how I knew the story to be, I felt a big disconnect.
Although the movie was vibrant with fantastic visuals, I found myself wishing I hadn’t remembered anything particular about the book ahead of time.
