Animation Books

I bought this first when my daughter was about eighteen months old. She has loved it well. She just turned six and has only now noticed the stickers in the book that can be used! I can't say this has been read every day for four years, but I can say she loved it while she was little and still enjoys reading it every once in a while.

I do love how Mommy deals with Caillou running off in the store. I think it's a blessing to have the example of a firm and honest parent who deals with the issue at hand!

Wow! This is really complete. It covers commands for drawing and editing, as well as plotting, 3D and customziing menus. Real drawings too - not boxes and circles and lines. I highly recommend this CD for new AutoCAD users.

I was really impressed with this how-to program book. I highly recommend it to anyone learning Autodesk 3Ds Max. It is thick, but it shows you pictures as well as text, so for those visual learners, it is a nice reference.

This visual instruction CD is a great idea, especially for people that get distracted easily while reading, like myself.
The instructor speaks very clearly and precise while the video is moving along WITHOUT missing a step. Unlike a text book, I don't find myself having to go back read what I thought I read because I could have taken it two different ways or I got distracted in some way. This visual concept actually makes it exiciting and fun to learn because you can visually see exactly what to do and you don't miss a step, and if you do miss something just run the advance bar back a little and watch and listen again. This CD seems to cover all aspects of sheet metal in depth and different ways to accomplish a given task if there is more than one way. I called support because I had a question and they were more than helpful, and in no way intimidating. Needless to say I bought the rest of there CD's. A GREAT CONCEPT!!

I like the step by step tutorials.
My one complante would be that they didn't seem to update the book completely to match the 2006 edition of the program.

Not finished with this book but so far a witty and insightful book which focuses on graphic design beyond printed matter. This book explores the world of digital graphics and looks at new dimensions of graphic design and how designers will become part of a dialogue with the public. A scenario in which they receive feedback from an audience and perfect there design solutions based on feedback from viewers reactions etc.
And of course Heller has become an authority on Design Culture so this book is informed and up to date.

John Canemaker is the best animation author in the business, and I own all of his books to date. Before the Animation Begins is beautifully illustrated and so informative--it is a book I pick up again and again. It is a must have for all Disney animation fans.

I was looking for such a book for a long time. They are hard to get here in Europe. This book gives an overview what one can expect from today's computer art. Some of the examples are a bit older, but nevertheless you'll get a nice impression of various styles and techniques. A brief comment on each published work tells you the method and tools the artist used to create this work.

An exceptional tabletop book highlighting some of the most exciting and up-and-coming CG companies and schools in the industry. The wide variety of content illustrated is methodically broken up in well designed chapters covering commercials, films, television, games, and student work. Descriptions of how images are created demonstrates matter of factly that its not the meat of the machinery or the software tool but the artist in motion that makes an exceptional animation.

The title BLUE SKY is from the name of the company. Company director Chris Wedge says that they started out in 1987 with blue-sky ideas. They had big, seemingly impractical plans. But they believed that dreams could come true. They also believed that we're only limited by our imaginations.

Blue Sky studios began in advertising. Their reputation for high quality computer animation and effects drew in big clients, such as Bell Atlantic, Gillette, and Rayovac. In 1992, their TV commercial for Braun had a computer-generated image of an electric razor. It was so well done that even experts didn't know it wasn't the real thing.

The company then got into films. They went on to win an academy award for "Bunny," as the best animated short film in 1998. The film ended up with 25 international awards for excellence in animation. With all this attention, the company, in 1999, became part of 20th Century Fox feature animation. With this kind of money, power and reputation behind them, in 2002 the company released a computer-generated-image feature film, Ice Age.

The book is about animating Ice Age. Peter Weishar starts from building a scene by watercolor sketches, all the way through lighting and live-action. In between, there's modeling of characters and props, for scanning into the computer. There's storyboard drawings of who, where, what for each scene. There's rigging of skeletons inside characters for movement. There's lip syncing speech. There's 3-dimensional layout of all physical sets and movements of camera and characters. There's texture mapping of objects and surfaces. There's special effects, such as geysers and lava. There's making convincing fur for a mammoth, a sabertoothed tiger, and a sloth, as well as self-shadowing hair for a human baby and parents. Whew!

All along the way there are clear explanations, good examples, and telling illustrations. There are also interesting anecdotes about the business, the company, and the film. So it's a fascinating read. It's also a pleasantly easy learning experience, along with the author's DIGITAL SPACE.