Animation Books

I have most of the 'Art of' books and, though this is a little more pricey than the others, it is worth every cent. It is refreshingly reassuring to finally have a Disney art book NOT written by a Disney staffer, but by a film academic. It was great to read about the men who worked alongside Walt and knew him for all his faults as well rather than the godhead he has become to the company. This book, while showing page after page of behind-the-scenes miniature masterpieces that went into making the classic early features, also describes the not-so-happy endings that such chemistry produced among Disney and his storymen sometimes. It also covers the latter-day storyboard masters like Chris Sanders and the Brizzi twins. I have ambitions of being a Disney storyboard artist someday and this book is perfect inspiration. More than worth it.

Too often in animation titles, the storyboard element is relegated to a minor footnote. This book presents a wonderful insight to the creative process of animation film making. Many animators and students collect resource material from feature films, and storyboard examples are rare and treasured items. As a storyboarder myself, I was in awe of the beauty and clarity of these works, many I was seeing for the first time. However, anybody with an interest in art or animation will enjoy this book. It is an amazing and definitive collection.

This book shows off the (oddly enough) unsung heros of the Disney Animation Department, the Story Artists. Like his previous book on Disney Inspirational artists, John Canemaker piles on the rarely seen outside of Disney pre-production sketches that form the basis of all to follow. GREAT reproductions--and great to see the subject and the studio treated not only with great respect, but a healthy amount of constructive criticism, too. Beautiful job. I'm waiting for a companion volume featuring unedited complete storyboards for ALL the features(!).

If the Disney American Animated Film has one stigma, is the belief that it is made for childern. Mr.Canemaker's book disproves that notion by recounting stories by those lucky few that got to meet Walt,work with him and put his "Dreams" on "Paper" before they were made a reality on film. We are privy in the world of Walt Disney and the people who put his ideas on paper only to have Walt think that they could be better than that.The book is filled with instances of Walt cursing-four letter words and all,when his Soryman ideas did not cut the mustard. Why should they since Walt "was his own best storyman." We get to meet the men that were up to par with Walt-T.Hee and Bill Peet. But these man could be considered Lucifer to Walt's Christian God-those who wish to be better than him or take his place would end in Hell, which in a sense they did. Finally, lets not forget the geniuses Walt himself dealt with-Salvador Dali and Orson Welles. If there was anyone that could top Disney himself ,it was Orson,as described by Walt Himself.

The chapters build upon each other to create a comprehensive reference. I was impressed with the advanced subjects, especially those in the deformation and morphing chapters. There are more tutorials than any other 3d book I have read, and the multi-pass tutorial was especially thorough.

The section on the modeler application had tons of tips and works the reader through many different types of projects.

Lance Evans writes this book as if he were speaking directly to you. With wit, he covers topics thoroughly and in a manner easy to understand. I already had some EIU working knowledge, but no where enough to even create some of his examples. Through this book, Lance Evans has answered so many questions and provided excellent insight into so many issues not resolved by reading the manuals. Actually, it would have been great if he had been the EIU manuals writer. Furthermore, the care to detail is just simply superb! Thanks!!!

I am one of the minority of people in the industry that actually went to school for animation. Mr. Evans book gives us an understanding of how things work better than any professor I ever had in school. I am amazed at how he has taken subjects that ramble on for 50 pages in other books, and made them crystal clear in 10 pages. And even given more information!

This book treats the reader as an intelligent and capable person. It does not try to teach you basic things like how to use a Bezier pen the way some other material we purchased has done. There is so much in this book that as diligent as we have been by working on it every day, there is still so much we have not done yet. I think this book will take us 6 months to carefully make our way through. Mr. Evans has included literally hundreds of tutorial projects on the disk, I have never seen a book like this before. This is why I say it is like a graduate class in animation.

The other two things that I feel should be mentioned is the sheer number of topics that were covered in this tome, and how many of them are techniques I have never seen anywhere else. And I have a at least 40 other 3d books on my shelf. He tells you how to set up your render farm computers with extra TCP/IP addresses, how to manually add extra tessellation to ACIS models (I asked the developer this question and they told me it could not be done!), explains all the mouth positions for lip sync animation, teaches how to create UV data on models that don't have any, and even how to feather deformations. I could go on and on. The book even has a trailer online...I can't recommend this book enough. My company bought a book for our 3d graphics department, but each of the 5 people in it has since gone out and bought their own copy. Even though 2 of the people use other programs.

This is a terrific book. Lance Evans has upped my knowlege of Electric Image Universe at least 10 fold. We all know that Universe is powerful software, being used on television and feature films. The folks at Electric Image and dvGarage are doing their best to make it available to animators from hobbiest to professional, but getting into the meat of the program hasn't always been easy. Lance is a teacher, and he has created a well written, well structured book that brings you along in an easy going fashion. Each topic is introduced, explained, and potential pit falls discussed. You get the feeling that Lance knows where beginners make wrong assumptions and need assistance. The only criticism I could offer would be the title. This book is a great introduction to the program, but doesn't really get into advanced topics. So is it Professional grade? You bet! You could make a sweet living using just the techniques in this book, and try your hand at more advanced animations once you've got this material under your belt.

I read this book to my two daughters and then we watched the video. Understand that my olderst daughter is one who is very slow to release her anger and takes this out on me (Her father). To my amazement 2 minutes after she was angered by something she came up to me and wanted a big huh and say sorry. I said wow what's going on? She said " Look Daddy, I,m like "Rindin"... Anger is not who I am! I could barley contain my joy and tears. Rodger Anthony (Author and motivational speaker) of this book is amazing.

This book is darling and I'm amazed at how all children respond to the film. It's fun and has beautiful animation! Exceptionally done! It also has a good message for children, something sorely lacking in most media today.

What a fish story!! But not like those that fishermen tell.

Rindin the Puffer should be in your animation library, right next to the best animation offered by Disney, Fos, Warner PBrothers, Pixar, and the rest. The quality of the art work rivals the best 2D art in the business, and thw story is right up there with A Shark's Tale and Finding Nemo.

Buy the Book -- Buy the movie. In either case, you will be pleasantly surprised at what a small animation studio, didicated to the art of animated story telling can do. FatCat Animation is a force to be reconed with in the animation world.

If your kids love the "Land Before Time" series, they will love RINDIN. My 3 year-old nephew loves the book and watches the DVD over and over again. Now that he is starting pre-school the book/dvd combo is a great vehicle to talk about how important it is to respect individual differences.

Highly recommended!

This is a lovely book with wonderful photographs of Hollywood fashion icons. Another thing that is great about this book is that it features those who are not as popularly remebered, such as Delores Del Rio, along with more popular icons such as Audrey Hepburn. Great book! Highly recommended!

This book is so pleasing I made sure I bought two copies. Very
Beautiful fashion summaries for some very beautiful Hollywood leading ladies. My favorite fashion icons are Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, and
Dolores Del Rio. I wish the author would do another book that highlight current fashion icons such as Jennifer Lopez, Nicole Kidman, Halle Berry etc.

I think this is the best Hollywood fashion book there is! The photos are great and the stories are fun.

I bought the hardcover edition -- it was my favorite fashion book. But now, the revised edition with the introduction that involves new stars and their photos (Gwyneth Paltrow, Whoopi Goldberg, Drew Barrymore and Cher) adds a new dimension to the story. I'm really happy and for a paper back, the quality is EXCELLENT. Thanks Patty Fox!

It's such a sweet story, and the illustrations on this book are particularly lovely. I recommend it for you or a young friend.

These books are are so beautifully written and create an imaginative world for your child. I have wonderful memories of these tales from my childhood and love introducing them to my children. They are timeless!

It would be almost impossible to pick a favorite of the Beatrix Potter books, but if I had to, this would be it. The story and the artwork combine to make a perfect children's (or adult's)book.

This is my favorite of the Beatrix Potter books, and I probably read all of them as a child. It's ideal for a slightly older child. A very sweet story of a tailor, his cat, and a group of mice who save his business when he is too ill to work.

To view individual cels from a Tex Avery cartoon is like a brief stop into an insane asylum. Fortunately, this book is chock full of film stills from vintage MGM cartoons such as Screwy Squirrel, Red Hot Riding Hood and lesser known but just as noteworthy cartoon shorts from the Golden Age of American Animation. The text by John Canemaker is just as light as it needs to be with some helpful intros. Avery changed how directors think about pacing, sight gags, and characterization while knocking off layers of the sugar-sweet Disney-stigma and this book does a fitting job paying tribute to that.

Tex Avery was and probably will be the king of the most wackiest animation the world has ever seen. Being the inspiration for future generations of cartoonists, Avery brought us such funny characters as Droopy, Spike the bulldog, Screwy Squirrel, and several Looney Tunes characters.

This book, originally published by the now defunct publishing branch of Turner Enterprises (now part of AOL-Time Warner) is an excellent tribute to the man who gave the cartoon world new ways to express comedy and feelings. From exploding cigars to eyeballs that pop out of their sockets, Avery gave many comedians and animators inspiration (the film "The Mask," with Jim Carrey and his facial expressions are a great example of this).

Most of the cartoons in this book are now owned by Ted Turner (president and CEO of Turner Enterprises, and now one of the executives at AOL-Time Warner) and Turner's preservation of Avery's works will give future generations access to some of the most wackiest cartoons ever made. Overall, an excellent book with beautiful animation cels and a wonderful history of Avery's life and contributions.

Tex Avery was and probably will be the king of the most wackiest animation the world has ever seen. Being the inspiration for future generations of cartoonists, Avery brought us such funny characters as Droopy, Spike the bulldog, Screwy Squirrel, and several Looney Tunes characters.

This book, originally published by the now defunct publishing branch of Turner Enterprises (now part of AOL-Time Warner) is an excellent tribute to the man who gave the cartoon world new ways to express comedy and feelings. From exploding cigars to eyeballs that pop out of their sockets, Avery gave many comedians and animators inspiration (the film "The Mask," with Jim Carrey and his facial expressions are a great example of this).

Most of the cartoons in this book are now owned by Ted Turner (president and CEO of Turner Enterprises, and now one of the executives at AOL-Time Warner) and Turner's preservation of Avery's works will give future generations access to some of the most wackiest cartoons ever made. Overall, an excellent book with beautiful animation cels and a wonderful history of Avery's life and contributions.

For us long-time fans of legendary cartoon director Tex Avery, we enjoyed the earlier Joe Adamson tribute, but were disappointed at the poor quality black and white photos included in it. Now at last the famous Avery shorts get the treatment they deserve, in this full-color, oversized coffee table edition straight from their proprietor Turner/MGM. Loads of famous scenes, model sheets and background designs are reproduced here, capturing the vivid color and style that we remember these cartoons for. Canemaker covers his subject mostly from a historical perspective, so you won't find any of the amusing anecdotal references here as in the Adamson book. Nonetheless, Canemaker covers Avery's cartoons with appropriate insight and reverence. If you haven't yet discovered the inimitatable style and hilarity of Tex Avery cartoons, you simply don't know what you're missing. And if you already know and appreciate the genius of Avery, your home shouldn't be without this book. It's a treasure.

It's too bad that this book isn't available new anymore. It's easy to gauge its value by the price it's holding as a used book. I'm the moderator of the yahoo motioncapture group, and this book was the stepping stone for me to begin developing my own motion capture system. This book is so useful, that I've got two copies. That way I can lend one to a friend, and keep one handy to solve the hard problems that come up as I develop my system. There are a couple of newer books that cover the basics, but if you want to get into the technical details of how it's done, this is still the reference to use. If you are a provider or consumer of mocap, this book covers both points of view and details project and cost considerations too. There really is no other mocap book that covers everything this one does.

Our department is working on Motion Capture research. This book helps us to direct a practical approach on not only academic perspective but also entertainment applicaiton.

The historical overview in the first half gave an excellent and entertaining background. It tells the stories of various well known motion capture projects so readers can immediately relate to the real world applications of motion capture and understand what sorts of applications will not work. The technical information was well organized and clearly written. This is a must have for anyone considering motion capture as a part of their project! ---Scott Whitney

At last a no-nonsense book for both users of the technology and those considering using it in their future productions.

The first half deals with the checkered history of motion capture and it's use and misuse to date. Unfortunately most of the stories fall into the negative vein and concentrate on the cases where the use of motion capture turned out to be a costly mistake, but this is all to the benefit of the reader lest he/she should be aligning themselves to make the same mistakes!

There is good practical advice on how to come out of a motion capture session with useable data and some extremely useful math to allow you to transfer it to your character. If you are using off the shelf software some of this may be superfluous, but if you have the opportunity to supplement it with your own proprietary code it could save you months of work. Either way it is genuinely useful in understanding how raw data can be used to drive a computer generated character.

It is hard to find fault with this book. If there is one it is just that the reader is left wanting more of the invaluable 'war-stories' from those who have used the process in the past, and possibly more recently on projects like 'Titanic' and 'The Mummy', if those studios are willing to divulge the detils. Mr Menache warns that facial motion capture is beyond the range of this text but hints that there may be another one to follow to make up for this. It is comforting to see that he himself ran a motion capture studio for many years, and you can be sure that the sum of his experience is inside the pages.

Just buy it BEFORE you start your production!

I recently purchased a copy of "Extensible 3D Graphics for Web Authors" and found the book to be a wonderful guide to this new field. The text is comprehensible and the material is laid out in a way that makes the book a delight to read. The authors are to be congratulated for producing this welcome contribution to web authoring.

Before reading this book, I was playing about with Flux Studio - going through examples and trying stuff out while trying to make sense of some of the terms used in the IDE. The Wiki helped somewhat but still left a lot of stuff un-explained. Since reading the book, which is written in a very accessible, matter-of-fact style, I am now aware what the capabilities of X3D are and how best to use it for my purposes. There are also many more examples available which illustrate usages and techniques. My particular purposes for exploring X3D are firstly to provide interactive demonstrations to better illustrate particular product concepts, and also to present software architectures in a more meaningful way that people can navigate through to discover the information they need. I am a Software Engineer rather than a graphic artist but I'm coming to grips with the whole 3D modelling thing as well as learning the X3D stuff. Anyway, overall I have found this book very good and it will continue to be a reference source for me.

Finally, a useful book on X3D. Up until now I had to rely upon the technical ISO spec documentation which is, by its nature, a bit obtuse. This book, in contrast, explains in plain language how to put X3D to use in a tangible way. It breaks the format down into the base components, and explains each in an understandable way with straight forward examples. All the technical information is here, but laid out in an approachable manner, and with plenty of context. Most of the visual examples in the book are a bit simplistic, which is just fine for explaining core concepts. However, they are not indicative of what is truly possible with this 3D format. With the knowledge presented in this book, what can be done is limited only by one's time and creativity. I keep this one within arm's reach.

For as long as there has been a World Wide Web, 3D has been the 'next big thing', but because of many factors, it never really took off. But behind the browser wars, the dot com boom and bust, and all the hype around competing 3D graphics formats, Extensible 3D Graphics (X3D) matured as the stable standard for 3D on the web. And it finally becomes accessible to everyone with this book. Following the simple and instructive examples, even a novice can create 3D models and virtual worlds for the web. The book and accompanying website provide both introductory and intermediate material, and it's useful across a wide range of skill levels.

From an educator's perspective, this book is long overdue. Often texts in 3D graphics focus on learning applications such as Maya or 3DS Max. While these tools are powerful and widely used, they do not teach the basics of 3D Graphics. This book takes a tool-agnostic approach, and focuses on the fundamentals of the scene graph, rendering, lighting, spatialized sound, and interactivity.

This book is the culmination of many years of work in 3D graphics and reflects the expertise of the authors' many years in the 3D graphics industry as both educators and practitioners. It's an excellent resource for the classroom and beyond.

this is a comprehensive book whihc doesnt waste time with obvious stuff...very good if your already familar with other 3d software...true it didnt have the cd of scene files which is strange but i never use those anyway and the info is very strong without them - highly recommended...the other xsi illuminated book is [not very good] ;)

The scene files that accompany this book only crashed the free XSI "Experience" demo version, due to a backwards-compatibility issue in the software (not a bug in the scene files from Mesmer). Softimage was kind enough to release a patch to the XSI Experience CD that fixes the problem, just for this book series. The patch is available from the same place you get the scene files (due to the review guidelines I can't include the URL, but it's in the book).

This book was an absolute surprise. As a new XSI 4.0 user, I had been disappointed with other books. The author focuses on character animation, but in discussing this objective, he takes the reader through an overview of XSI, its features, distinctive elements, and tools "how to." For example, he discusses sub-division, NURBS, and polygon modeling, explaining the differences, benefits, and disadvantages.

I would strongly recommend a visit to the Mesmer.com website (publisher), for additional details on this and other training materials.

This BOOK is amazing! From the basics of animation to the more advanced practices, this book is for any animator that wants to animate in XSI. Every animation feature is covered with this book. Unfortunately, since this book does not come with a CD that contains the scene files necessary, you must download them from Mesmer's web site. That's not the bad part. First, the contents were not uploaded. Then, when they were uploaded, they were a temporary version to make downloaders happy. Unfortuantely, when you finish downloading the 43.9MB file, you find that this "temporary" version of the scene files CRASH XSI. I'm sure that the scenes will be nice and relate well with this book WHEN THEY ARE UPLOADED IN THEIR COMPLETE FORM. Until then, this book is a great fundamental resource, but a poor learning tool. 4 stars = Good Book + Bad Content. 5 stars = Good Book + Good Content.

Don has a terrific ability to teach. I had the good fortune of having him show me the essentials of 3d, while he was working on this book. He was working at News in Motion at the time, which had such a tight schedule that he not only was able to knock out the daily animation, but was also able to explain to me the basics of 3d modelling and animation in the few minutes between processing. He is a true expert in the field, and from his thorough understanding of the subject, is able to simplify some very complicated and confusing concepts. Thanks again, Don, you've been a big help.

This is a great book to get you familiar with the concepts behind 3D modeling and animation for the Macintosh. 3D modeling and animation is growing on the Macintosh because the machines are getting faster and the OS is getting more robust. Now is a great time to start learning the art of creating 3D worlds and animations.

For the complete dummy to concepts in 3D, the full-color illustrations and explanations are top notch. If you're looking to get your feet wet on how 3D is handled by computers this IS the book for you. PC owners can benefit from it also (just disregard the Mac specific concepts located near the end of the book). It covers most of the big concepts found in virtually all 3D applications such as modeling, textures, shadows, lighting, and animation. Seasoned animators will want to look elsewhere unless unless you're in need of filling "holes" in your knowledge of the basics.