Animation Books

pictures, stories, and histories of more mickey mouse watches and disney collectables than you can imagine

This is a great book on motion capture process and is a must read for producers wanting to use motion capture and tech artists and animators that want to understand how to get usable data from a shoot and on to their final characters. Any project that plans on useing or is currently useing mocap should have a copy of this book and make it required reading for all project leads.

The parts of the book that deal with MotionBuilder and the tutorials that take readers through re-targeting and editing of skeleton data are unfortunately out of date and in some places give the reader a workflow that is not practical in production; most of what is show has been replaced completely with tool updates or better editing techniques over last few years.

That said, The ideas for how to pick a blend point and the hows and whys of doing the editing and re-targeting are very valuable. Also the optical cleaning chapter is good with regards to the tools and issues both in and out of MotionBuilder and the rest of the book is well written.

More good stuff from Josh Howard. Litho quality far superior than previous comic book quality materials. It's only getting better.

Jon's done a terrific job with this stunning new book, which is packed with a wide variety of examples from network station idents, movie graphics design and much more.

What I liked best about this book is:

+ packed with tons of color photos, the most photo-packed, professional, slick and well illustrated book I've seen on the topic
+ wide variety of examples discussed and annotated, from broadcast station logo work to movies and much more
+ features examples and discussions of works from top design shops, like Blur and others
+ concise, accurate, insightful treatment of content: he's on target with his comments and I learned a lot about how the artistry plus creative design process works, with cutting edge examples
+ current and professional content; not dated, very topical and timely

In short, his book is to "how to do motion graphic design right" what the Meyer's books on how to use AE are, for the industry. Exceptionally well done book and one of my top 2-3 favorites, of dozens I have on the topic.

Well done, Jon - thanks for putting this together, and for producing such a professional, well thought out and illustrated resource. A "must have" for any of us who are learning and refining our craft in motion graphics design work. A+++! Get this book now.

-Ken

Naked Lens is a stunning piece of scholarship that gives some focus to some of the lesser lights of 'underground film making'. The sections on Harry Smith are particularly enlightening, going a long way in giving some due to this criminally neglected artist/anthroplogist/filmaker. The same can be said for the sections on the visionary artists Brion Gysin and Anthony Balch who along with William.S. Burroughs made some of the most unsettling and groundbreaking films of the 1960's. The book is both educational and entertaining and that in itself is a testament to Sargeants skill both as a critic and writer. In short, buy this book you won't be dissapointed.

Andy Black's NecronomicoN 2 carries on where NecronomicoN 1 left off. I guess it's fair to say that if you loved the 1st one (and what's not to love? almost every page is graced with stills showing sex and horror.) you'll be glad there's more, and if you thought the 1st was pretentious there's nothing here to change your mind. Personally I agree with most of the contributors (as with such film-makers as John Waters) that there's more to discover in the movies of H.G. Lewis, Russ Meyer, or Jesus Franco, than in any fancy-pants auteur that the beautiful people might be fawning over at Sundance or Cannes. All of the articles are excellent, but the stand-out is undoubtably the incomparable Mikita Brottman's piece on Polanski's Macbeth and its relation to the Manson murders. (The article is an excerpt from Ms. Brottman's Hollywood Hex--another great book from England's splendid Creation Books.) All in all a fun read, and sometimes (but just sometimes) reading about a Euro-sleaze movie is more fun than watching one.

All i can say about this book is my son loves it and he makes me read it a thousand times. It also expands his vocabulary.

This book is beautiful! The anime characters featured are all girls- a cute style with big eyes (with the exception of 1 picture at the end of 2 boys). What attracted me most was the colors. If you are an artist like me, I always look for pictures that have very vibrant colors. I like blending 2 or more colors to the eyes, hair, and clothing of a character to give a picture a very professional look. This book does that. You can see how the colors blend together and fade into each other. Some of the pictures have color, fantasy, or modern lifestyle themes. If there is anything I am not too thrilled with, I suppose it may be some of the clothing. In some pictures it is very skimpy- but do not get me wrong, there is nothing inappropriate in this book. The pictures are all very beautiful. There are 64 color pictures followed by 12 pages of the black and white sketches of some of the pictures and the artist's comments on them. (All the pictures are by the same artist.) This book is well worth buying if you are an anime fan.

This is a funny, well-written book with a great companion CD-ROM... for once, you get all the tools demonstrated in the text (and more). I found the chapters on morphing and 3D animation particularly interesting. Even built a 3D logo for my web page in 10 minutes, using the software on the CD-ROM. If you're looking for a comprehensive book that covers every angle of Web animation, buy this one!

This is the most complete reference of openGL. If you are a programmer of 3D aplications with opengl, this books are for you.