Disney Animation has released five new concept art photos for their 2010 animated film Rapunzel. As with most concept art, the pieces are absolutely beautiful. Hopefully the new non-photorealistic rendering technique employed on this production will help capture some of the painting-like beauty of these pieces. Four more images after the jump.

Directed by Byron Howard & Nathan Greno (the co-director and head of story on Bolt respectively), this new telling of the classic fairy tale, will transport audiences “to a stunning CG fantasy world complete with the iconic tower, an evil witch, a gallant hero and, of course, the mysterious girl with the long golden tresses. Expect adventure, heart, humor, and hair, lots of hair.” The voice cast is rumored to include David Schwimmer, Matthew Gary Gubler, Kristin Chenoweth, Dan Fogler, and Grey DeLisle. Rapunzel is scheduled to hit theaters in Christmas 2010.

Previous director Glen Keane developed a new look for this computer animated film, which is said to look and feel more like a traditional hand-drawn Disney Classic, but in 3D. Apparently the film uses a non-photorealistic rendering technique which will make the surface look like it is painted but still containing depth and dimensions. The movie’s visual style is being based on French Rococo artist Jean-Honore Fragonard’s painting “The Swing”. You can definitely see the look they’re going for in the image above.

There are a couple more very small concept drawings over on the Animations message board, but you really can’t see much of anything. A short clip of test footage was shown at Siggraph 2005, where is gained a lot of attention. Earlier concept images had been previously posted online from when the project was titled Rapunzel Unbraided. But the project has since been completely revamped. See more concept art here. And some might recall we posted a scanned magazine photo from the film a few weeks back.

via: Ropesofsilicon