Animation Books

I have Sandro's 2nd book, but I'm not a broadcast guy, so I thought this book would be a better match for me. It took me about a month to track it down as its out of print. Although its "old" by computer standards, it is full of classic animation knowledge that is applicable to Flash. I heard Sandro Corsaro speak at Flash Forward this year and he mentioned there might be plans for another release. Lets hope so!!! This is a terrific beginner's book to animation.

I agree with that reviewer from Nashville. This book was quite disappointing. I thought i'd learn in detail how to create animation in Flash. DID NOT HAPPEN. I bought an animation book along with this one as a supplement sort of. Now I'm glad I bought the extra book, so I don't feel like my purchase and weeks of waiting were totally in vain.

Corsaro only comments about well known features of flash and interview some friends. The only valuable thing is the CD-ROM so you can explore the files. If you are a Flash pro look at Flash Cartoon Animation: Learn from the Pros from Friends of Ed (ISBN 1590592077) it's more production centric.

I bought this book based on reviews I found here on Amazon. I expected to receive a relatively complete guide to creating animations in Flash, but I was disappointed with what I received. While unique, this book does not go into either Flash or animation very deeply. It is more a compilation of various tips and techniques than anything, and I found that much of the information in the book covers material that I already have from either animation books or Flash-related books.

Certainly, the book is interesting reading material, and I'm sure that the book is useful to many others, but it appears to be geared towards those who know how to animate well and who also know how to use Flash well, but who don't know how to integrate the two. If you fit that description, you'll probably like this book.

In the two years since this book appeared, Flash's popularity has skyrocketed. Professional studios now use it for broadcast. Numerous independent animators use it to show their work to millions on the web. The term "Flash" has even become an unindelible part of web nomenclature. Not only that, it has liberated countless wannabe animators. It has made the once impossible possible.

To a person just starting out in animation, the immense learning curve involved may not make itself readily apparent. Not only should animators know how to draw (on paper or on a computer) but they should also know some basic animation principles. On outlining these principles, this book does a pretty good, but not indepth, job. When discussing the use of Flash, it's even more sketchy. There's a reason for this. In the introduction the author states: "This book is intended to teach you about animation first and Flash second." So the focus on animation theory shouldn't come as too much of a surprise.

So no, this book won't teach anyone everything they need to make incredible Flash animation. No one book can do that. However, it will give wannabe animators a great basic foundation for continuing on with Flash animation. Consequently, the book's title seems a little vague and could mislead people who don't skim the introduction before buying it. Those who buy the book thinking that THIS IS ALL I NEED!!! will likely end up disappointed.

Still, the book covers a lot of ground. Lots of juicy stuff gets introduced here for newcomers. The most important of which include: some basic animation history up to the time of Flash; Stretch and Squash; basic character design; flexibility and follow-through; staging; exaggeration; arcs; walk and run cycles; dialogue. Also, regardless of the author's "Flash second" claim a lot of Flash topics get discussed: timeline; drawing; tweening; frame rates; symbols; Onion skinning; tips on special effects (fire, water, lightning, glass); file size issues; sound. The final chapter on preparing Flash for broadcast is probably a bit dated by now, but again it includes some useful information.

Also, the book attempts to be version-independent. Flash 5 is mentioned in chapter 10, but apart from that no references to versions appear. This fits with the overall goal of the book: to give a bird's eye view of what it means to use Flash for making animation.

The interviews that scatter the book don't elucidate much. They really only give a cursory view of working in animation. Unfortunately, the audio interview with Iwao Takamoto (on the CD) contains a lot of noise. Parts of it are unlistenable.

In the end, "The Flash Animator" would satisfy a beginner who wants to learn about the various principles underlying animation. Knowing these principles will improve anyone's animation abilities. Readers who have animated in Flash and have already read books on animation may pick up some tips or new ways to go about accomplishing an effect, but no new startling revelations will bop the cortex.

I've been working with Flash for years and I have found this particular book by Kerman to be very complete. I'm surprised by many of the negative reviews this book has received; it is one of the best Flash books I have in my library. Wrt it being verbose, well, it can be. But READ IT and you'll see that Kerman chose his words very carefully. There is a lot to be gleaned from this book if you are patient. I suggest reading it once, fighting with Flash afterwards for a week or two, and then come back to Kerman looking for the answers to your questions...you'll find what you need...I promise. Great book!

This has been a really good buy for me as a novice on flash actionscript programming. Phillip is writing in such a way that it was easy for me to understand, and follow the book.

It's a must have for beginners I think.

I recieved this book for my ActionScript class in college. When I first looked at it, it looked difficult to read. Later, when I did start reading it, it was easier than I thought, but, it's a lecture. The book doesn't talk about this then show you that, it goes on for many chapters before you get to the second part of the book that actually shows you programs to work on. You really should be almost in love with Flash and ActionScript to read this book if you are an expert. This book looks like it would be a fair to above good book to have AFTER you read another easier book (one by Derek Frankiln and Jobe Maker: Flash MX 2004 ActionScript). This book, unlike the claims of other reviewers, is not for the beginner. I find all of these 5 stars unbelievable. Look, if you are really interested in this book because of the 5 stars, instead of buying this, what should be for the more advanced, get yourself a library card and check this book out, then decide if you want to buy it or not. I'm trying to save you some money. It's maybe a 3 out of 5 for experts, I plan to reread it after I'm better with Flash, then maybe I'll give it more stars. Oh, I should point out some of these reviews on this review site are copies(5 stars).

like mr. kerman, i shall fashion my comment into 2 parts, the negative and positive.

NEGATIVES:

I dunno about you people who gave this book a big 5 star "yipee", it just ain't the same for me. I'm a Comsci grad and i've been using flash since version 5. Yeah, i've mastered the basic animation tools like tweening and some basic AS along the way. but it makes me cry whenever i read the book and think that i spent $27 for something that i've already learned. Yes, the book tackles programming basics and the like w/c is very good for the novice flash user who didn't take up a 4 year computer science course w/c is being accustomed to the "foundations" of programming. but it all boils down to LEARNING ACTIONSCRIPT. yeah the book teaches AS but you only get to touch AS after reading 18 chapters of foundation AS. sure there are code snippets for the user to try out...only to find out how the heck are they supposed to implement the code?! an example would be the debugging chapter w/c started to infuriate my learning curve and tested my very looooong patience. the code required me to associate the dynamic string to a variable. how the heck am i supposed to associate the string to var when kerman didn't even show me what a var looks like and where i can find it!!!! HE ONLY TELLS IT 3 CHAPTERS AFTER! if i didn't scour the book for much needed answers to the book, i would've burned the book to motion tweening oblivion.
which draws me to points when buying a book:

- always search for negative reviews before buying a book. negative reviews contain 100% more truth than those 5 star reviews.

- if you're new to some application, find a book w/c suits your learning style, unfortunately for me...i needed more diagrams rather than lengthy text for me to understand what kerman was talkin' bouts.

- always look for a book w/c poses samples and exercises at the end of the chapter. heck, i just wanted to learn the AS syntax, but kerman decides to teach theories on AS and not the actual exercise.

- never buy a book w/c CONSTANTLY REFERS TO OTHER CHAPTERS. trust me, if you need to learn it, it should be taught NOW.

- this book is not for people who wanna read long chapters and try snippets of unclear code to understand what the author's talkin' bout then go back to readin' sum more boring chapters.

in closing, i am giving this book 1 star to alert potential buyers of this book that o'reilly books are the best. even though i haven't read one.

POSITIVE:

there are some cool sample w/c you won't understand, although its still cool though, like the instant replay thingy.

No stars. The text is too verbose, poorly organized and very confusing and downright cryptic. This is more on 'theory of programming' than hands-on work. The examples are non-existant, and the workshops hardly justify the price tag for this book.

The author constantly refers to unintroduced topics and assumes reader knowledge for topics that are not even addressed till later in the book. For example, we have to get to chapter 10 before we actually set text in a text variable. This is advanced?

The method of explaining is very confusing, very boring and very vague. I am up to chapter 12 now and I still cannot make head or tail of where the text is headed.

Save you money. Don't buy this book.
I will return it...

Wonderful for anyone interested in Flash. The pace is never slowed to explain the ins and outs of basic computer use, yet everyone should be able to grasp the concepts explored. It was worth the [money] I payed; get it now for [less]!

Please disregard the previous review I submitted as it contains an error. It should read that the author left out a gotoAndStop action on the rectangular button, not a Stop action on the 1st keyframe.

After looking over the reviews of several Flash books I chose this one because of its high ratings. After using it I find it does indeed deserve the praise given. It's perfect for someone like me just starting out with Flash. I only give four stars because of a few errors, most minor, but one fairly important one which caused some serious grumbling and gnashing of teeth on my part--In Hour 16, radiobuttons, page 351, the author neglects to instruct the reader to put a stop action in the first frame. Still, it's a great book and well worth the money.

The book teaches you the elements of using Flash but the exercises it instructs you to do are many times pointless...most especially the actionscript programming lessons. The "step by step" directions are confusing...at the end of the book, I was left wondering how I am going to build a usable flash site? Well, I know how to animate a bouncing ball...but what the hell is that going to do for my flash site? This is a confusing and worthless book.

i'm just about to start chapter 8, i'm taking a break...Although I plan on finishing this book in 8 days rather than the marketing tool of 24hrs, the book is amazing!
Its easy to read, full of easy to follow and useful tasks in each chapter, and has a summary and quiz at the end of each chapter to make sure you're paying attention.

One thing i like so far is that the author writes like he's talking. He will repeat important things over and over until you yourself have it memorized. LOL!

Great book and defenitly a book that I will finish reading and following to the end.

This book is awesome. Very easy to read & follow and quite informative. I was able to make a really cute flash within 2 chapters and 2 hours. I can't wait to see what I can do when I'm done.

Flash is a complex program with innumerable functions. Phillip Kerman breaks the program down into bite-size chunks and leads you through each one step by step. His explanations are concise and easy to understand and always followed immediately by practical exercises so that right from the outset you get your hands dirty creating things using the program. The absolute beginner will have a solid overview of the basic functions of Flash by the end of the book and be able to begin experimenting with a project. The book's well-organized structure and detailed index would also make it ideal as a reference tool for those who already have some knowledge of the program.

It takes FOREVER to get to the point and many times there is repitition over the instruction. Sometimes in the same paragraph! A good book that gives information yes, but it could easily have been cut to a third the size.

I bought this book last month due to some good feedbacks. But when I read, it seems the book is too much unnecessary words just to make it look thick but the actual content is thin. I would recommend to learn from the help section of the flash program itself. It's much more clear and right to the point not like this book. From there then google up and you will find a lot of more better tutorials than this book and best of all, it's free!

Hi all, first of all, I just want to thank all the people who had written the comments on this book. It had helped me a lot in making a decision in buying this book. Thanks.

As for the book, I just got it. I am in Hour 2 and so far, it has helped me soooo much. I am new to Flash and I think this will be a great book for all the people who are new like me. I gave it a 4 stars rather than 5 since I haven't finished the book yet and can't comment on the whole book. But base on the first 2 hrs, I think once I am done with the book, my rating would be a 5 star.

Not many editions of this book still available so this is a moot point, but save your money. Don't buy this book. Put the money in a fund to purchase better 3D software. I have abandoned Truespace entirely as I believed most serious 3D artists had. It's not the author's fault. It's just outdated software which might explain why no one has written a book about using it in over 4 years even though newer versions keep coming out. The book is ok but from it's description I though it might be more of a user's manual and I was dissapointed to see it wasn't.

Frank Rivera's Inside TrueSpace 4, is an excellent guide for both beginners and experienced users of TrueSpace 4. The book covers virtually all aspects of 3D modeling using TrueSpace including modeling using NURBS, spline modeling, metaballs, creating human and non human characters, shaders, including texture and bump mapping, alpha channel transparencies, animation, lighting, radiosity, volumetrics.

He even includes his own recommendations for those contemplating starting a career in this field.

His book is divided into categories and is well organized and is like an owner's manual. But unlike the TrueSpace owner's manual, this book is a how to book. The manual for the most part only explains the features and tools in the software and has only limited tutorials and explanations and a few examples. Mr. Rivera, and his colleagues in some chapters, actually explain step by step how to do various tasks in TrueSpace. In his book he details in practical step by step guides for example, how to build a star fighter using metaballs, how to create a fish, how to create twisted rope using the sweeping tools, how to create a human superhero using metaballs, how to create a mushroom using deformed spheres, and human figures with deformed spheres and cylinders. He gives practical examples as to how to animate some of these. He explains "bones" in detail and the keyframe editor, spline path animation. He explains in detail how all the tools work in practical very simple English instead of technicalese which some books write their manuals in. Lighting, radiosity, hard and soft shadows are covered in detail as well as dealing with rendering artifacts, light leaks and other issues. He gives tips of how to achieve photorealism even using this relatively old and obsolete piece of software. He even explains how he built the Native American chief on the cover!

It is amazing what can be done with this old software!

The book is an excellent companion to the owner's manaual, and in fact, when I am stuck on a problem, I often turn to Mr. Rivera's book first before going to the manual, partly because my manual is in PDF format on my computer and I like looking through a hard copy book better, but also because, Mr. Rivera explains things so well and with clarity and often gives those insider hints and tips, which may not be mentioned in the manual. He apparently has been doing this a while and he knows what he is talking about.

Great book!

The only criticism that I have is that he doesn't cover plastiforming in TrueSpace, a tool that, as far as I know, is unique to TrueSpace. Maybe Bryce or some landscape modeling software have something like it. But I have 3 different 3D modelers and haven't seen anybody else with anything like it -- not even close.

That would be a cool tool to work with and cover in a tutorial.

This book was published four years ago and still is by far the most comprehensive tome on TS available in the market. A combo with truSpace FX Creations ought to make it a more useful source of advice and information.

Programmers who want to write their own game programs are often stuck developing their own graphics as well. TrueSpace4 allows you to produce complex 3D mesh objects to be loaded directly into DirectX game applications. I am by no means an artist but I was very pleasently surprised with the great job Frank Rivera does at giving the reader clear and easy to follow tutorials allowing even non-pro artists to produce fantastic results. I highly recommend this book to game programmers and computer artists alike.

And I have. Frank used to run a tutorials site which contained a large portion of the content of this book FOR FREE. Many of the techniques for character modeling were outdated years before this book was even published. The section on special effects using spheres is especially disheartening, since trueSpace has had many plugins available for some time that were created for particle effects and other special effects. This is a decent book for a beginner, but to REALLY get to know the program, and if you can get a hold of it, pick up Peter Plantecs' trueSpace2 Bible. Since most of the features in trueSpace2 are in trueSpace 4, you can get that book cheaper and it's written MUCH better, and many of the tutorials in Inside trueSpace4 were written FOR trueSpace 2, you'd be better off

I bought this book hoping to learn more about After Effects but unfortunately, the only good tutorial that really teaches you about the program is the Atomic Cafe because it goes over importing Layered Photoshop Documents, Illustrator files, and Quicktime movies. All the other lessons in the book are a huge disappointment. I don't like saying that because I think Alex Lindsay does an admirable job with going into great detail about Multi-Pass rendering techniques. Check out his tutorials and teachings at Pixel Corps or DV Garage. You won't find much detail here. That is not to say that the book is not without its merits; I love how the Atomic Cafe lessons teaches the fundamentals and techniques of nested compositions, as well as complex effects. If you really want some good After Effects tutorial lessons, then check out Trish and Chris's other books which do a little better at giving you the information.

i needed this book for school, and it did the job i learned tons of effect tricks through this book.

if motion graphics is your thing, this is a fantastic resource. Nobody more clearly explains the basic concepts of layering, nesting, timelines, footage, transformations, masks, precomposing, stencils, track mattes, transfer modes, keyframes, rendering, resolutions, plugins, working with audio, and much more.

The "Creating Motion Graphics with AE", and "After Effects in Production" must be considered the best of the best, even for those who may be using other products such as Apple Motion, or Combustion, etc.

Highly recommended, as is having plenty of time and some decent hardware.
The tutorials are a blast ! Go thru them all (this takes awhile folks) and you begin to get the idea....motion graphics is fun !!!

After I bought after effects the software had little interest for me. I never new that broadcasting and such could be such fun. Did a lot of editing for animation studies with this tool. Looking forward to buy the next book when I'm finish with this. Recommended for advance users.

This is an excellent resource for After Effects. The "Meyers" Have always produced great learning materials and this is another proof positive of that.

I attempted to learn Flash 5 first with a dummies book and then a sam's book. Neither compared to this one. The whole hands-on-training series offers just that, a hands-on approach to development. The included tutorial movies were especially useful and were the individual exercises the author had us follow along with. It doesn't cover many advanced topics, like action scripting, but for a beginner just wanting to learn flash, this is a good read.

The book gives clear step-by step instructions on most Flash 5 functions.

However, the book does not give clear instructions on how to create navigation buttons. I had to spend hours of trial and error.

Nor does the book explain how to make input boxes and provide feedback for an educational program. I am having to purchase a few more Flash 5 manuals and hope that at least one of those manuals will help me.

I've gone through a variety of tutorials, but this one I highly recommend. The lessons are easy and straightforward. People have told me Flash 5 was hard to learn, but with this book I thought otherwise.

This book was written by teachers for learning,and it does it better than any other books I've seen. It doesn't hurt that she really knows her Flash as well.

Some will bypass the book because it isn't a top notch reference guide for the experienced person. My view is "What good is a reference manual if you don't have a good book to teach you?"

You won't do better than this book for learning Flash.

I've tried 3 or 4 other books while trying to learn Flash over the last two years. This is the one that finally got me way up the learning curve.

Overpriced? No, I don't think so. The authors and editors put in a helluva lot of work on this book, breaking the subject matter into digestible lessons and then double-checking the tutorials. I've paid as much for other books that taught me nothing (because they weren't user-friendly and didn't keep my interest) and paid six times as much for one-day courses that were excellent but 50% forgotten a week later.

I see some of the other reviewers complain that the book does a little too much hand-holding and baby-talking. Well, if you haven't got much going on in your life, then I suppose you can teach yourself Flash by trial-and-error and by trying to read the inscrutable Macromedia manuals. The rest of us, with real lives, really need and appreciate the baby-step tutorials and extras on the CD.

The authors are teachers and seem to be warm human beings as well. I would not only recommend this book, I'd look forward to taking real, live classes from them.

lots of sketches on environment, and outfits for the queen, its really cool art book to collect

Sometimes is easy to forget the amout of design works that takes to make a star wars movie, with lots of designers hired trying to get the ship, landscape or character design that fits into the visuals and story of the movie.
This book gathers lots of artwork, focused on the Star Wars Attack of the Clones movie and will satisfy both old and new star wars fans for sure.

The first time I really started Really liking Star Wars was with The Phantom Menace. Personally, I don't go in for the dissecting crtisicm kind of thing. So Yea, there may be a some flaws, but to me there was more right than wrongs.
So about this book; I am crazily into art, and my copy of this one
is starting to look worn out. It is an amazing collection of conceptual art (drawings, paintings, digital designs, ect.) arranged chronologicaly paralleling the script. I believe that when
I started studying the works of Iian McCaig, Dermot Power, and others; my ideas and artwork really took off, and seeing the quality and height of what I wanted to reach laid out inspired me
greatly. Well, in all, this book is brilliantly executed and would be awesome to look at for any Star Wars fan or art fanactic.

Ok, I'm right now too short on words, but I have to say something... the Art of Attack of the Clones book is the best one in the series... probably the best designed one and the most comprehensive, containing images and descriptions, AND in the other section the full movie script. This hasn't been done before, adding several points to the book. The other books in the series only had or the descriptions or the script.

Great, diverse artwork. I just hope that Art from Revenge would be as nice as this one.

I was hyped up for Episode 1 only to be let down by one 3-worded mistake: Jar Jar Binks. Of course, if you've read my review for The Art of Episode 1, the you know that I still thought well of that book, despite certain Gungan monstrosities. The Art of Episode 2 proves that the Stars Wars films are like leftovers from dinner, they just taste better and better. Aside from showing the reader sketches of returning locations (Such as Tatootine, Naboo, and Coruscant), it also expands on these locations by showing us things like Coruscant's lower levels, and new areas of Naboo. Added to this is artwork for two new planets in the Star Wars universe: the dry and desolate Geonosis and the watery and storm-shrouded Kamino. Also there are sketches of a certain army cloned from a certain bounty hunter whose son captured a certain Han Solo. If you're a Star Wars addict then get this book as soon as humanly possible because the only Art of Star Wars book better than this will probably be The Art of Episode 3.

Overall I think this book is pretty good. I bought it to brush up on my flash skills, which had been sitting unused for about 5 years, and this book was perfect for getting me up to speed.
A few bad points:
-If you had little or no knowledge of adobe programs this book might be a little confusing for you. As another reviewer pointed out in the first exercise they say to click on certain objects, but they never indicate you need to use the selection tool or what that tool even is.
-The book asks you to use exercise files, but does not provide a CD with the files or any instructions on where to get them. I finally went to the publishers website and found the files in their download section.

I had no previous experince with Flash. I am about to finish this book and this is a great book.Authors and the design of the book are top quality.Source files are well designed with two folders every chapter Completed and Exercise,this is a convenience for readers.Also inside the book there are many great links to websites of good Flash designers.If you need a flash book from the beginning this is the book to go..

If you are interested in learning Flash, this is definitely a great place to start. I started with no knowledge of Flash, little artistic talent and a desire to create something cool. After going through this book, I now have a good understanding of how Flash works and I have a lot of cool animations and apps that I can show off to my friends.

The book is very well written and has a nice learning curve. Difficult concepts are explained thoroughly, and the authors give plenty of tips that help a lot when you start to move on to doing your own things. The tutorials are very thorough and come with plenty of files to download, which is very helpful if you're like me and aren't very much of an artist. This allowed me to not have to really worry about drawing anything and focus more on learning how to use Flash.

All in all, this is a great buy for anyone wanting to learn Flash, which can definitely be a daunting challenge to most without some sort of guidance, which this book provides plenty.

I bought this book for a Flash course and it helped me out a lot. The book is easy to read, but is full of useful tutorials and tips. It is an awesome book for beginners trying to learn flash.

The thing I liked the most about this book are the pictures and diagrams. The fact that it has a picture/diagram on every single page makes the book more interesting and easier to read. The book is also separated into different sections so you can just flip to the section you want to learn or need help with. The book also had an informative section on Action-Script. I had no problem reading through the tutorials and understanding it.

This is the kind of book that you'll keep on your shelf and keep referring to whenever you're having difficulties with Flash. I would recommend this book to beginners and intermediates.

Foundation Flash CS3 for Designers provides a good overview of both Flash and Action Script 3.0, even for those who may be new to the program. The setup of the chapters was helpful, with the discussion of the topics being covered followed by the exercises that allow the reader to apply the skills taught in the chapter. The class files were relatively easy to find using a search engine. The instruction in the chapters was clear and proceeded in a logical manner. This is good for someone without a strong background in technical language. In addition to instructing the reader on how to use the program, the text also covers some basics of design, such as the possibilities of using fonts in Flash documents. The highly detailed table of contents made finding particular topics in the book easy to find, with clear lists of the chapters and their respective page numbers. Overall, this text proved useful for my Flash class, and it expanded on the basic knowledge that I already had of the program.

Tony Mullen takes the guess work out of long prosaic tutorials that sometimes can confuse a beginner. Anyone who has ever used other expensive animation programs will be amazed at the functional integration that Blender offers the beginner and more advanced user.

This book takes you from step by step toolbox explanations to jumpstarting a project - in an afternoon. All you need is a decent video card, enough hard drive space and this book!!!! For those advanced enough to go beyond the confines of this book, additional podcasts exist on iTunes and websites devoted to this niche.

Unleashing you imagination with Blender is an inexpensive way to explore the world of animation - This book is written for beginner and technical neophyte as long as you have some basic knowledge of Photoshop.

This is an awsome book for the beginning or intermediate Blenderhead. It might even be useful for the advanced user. I think it is the best book for someone who has worked with blender, learned some of the tools but needs to tie the concepts together. Yes you can probably learn the same concepts from online tutorials and the wiki but those tend to be somewhat disjointed. The book is clearly written and easy to follow. How complete it is probably depends on how advanced you are and what you are trying to do. If you are new to modeling it will keep you busy for a while.
What's wrong with this book? This book is defective. As stated by many others the included DVD is destroyed. The DVD has been incorporated into the binding of the book so not only is the DVD useless but removing the DVD may actually destroy the book binding. This book probably should be recalled by the publisher and rebound. The publisher is very good about sending a new DVD, a simple email and they send you a new one,free no questions. Is the DVD important? Maybe. The software is freely available on the net, however the files for the book are useful. Another problem with this book is the screen captures. Most blender books share this problem. The gray blender background does not reproduce well. There are times when the author indictates that vert placement is important but it is hard to tell from the picture where exactly the verts are. The DVD files may help with that.
So, this is a must have book for those trying to get their head around blender, one star off for poor production values.

I never did any character modeling before reading this book,and it got me going on. It was a great introduction to the whole world of modeling and animation and to the world of Blender. The text is easy to follow and understand. It is heavily supported by step-by-step screen shots and very well guided through. At the end of the modeling part, the author gives tips and solutions to common modeling "mistakes", like faces facing in the wrong direction etc. That was great, as there was no need to use Google. So what I'm saying here is that the author was expecting a newbie like me to read the book :).

My only regret is that the author decided to model a cartoon character and not a real human; perhaps he could've got a little more realistic and put a bit more emphasis into human muscles and structure. On the other hand, as the title says, this is an "Introduction to character animation", so that's the reason why he picked a cartoon character and focused more on the animation part.

Conclusion: great book !

I have only made it through the first two chapters (intro and modeling) and have found it to be thorough and informative. I purchased the book to get good at rigging and animating, and it looks like it does a good job of that too. High quality book, good references. good for beginners and intermediates.

Not just the writing is extremely clear. This book has the most awesome DVD I have ever gotten with a book. There is just an incredible amount of clearly-written, helpful information in the book. You will have no regrets whatsoever when you buy this book.
I am a professional freelance 3d artist, and I am switching from LightWave to blender, and have spent 2 months studying Blender. It is probably best if you have spent a similar amount of time before diving into this book, especially if you are new to 3d. Character animation is an advanced tool set and requires a thoroughly grounded understanding of basic 3d skills and concepts. That said, this is the best written tome on the subject I have ever owned.