Animation Books

Though this book series was written for After effects 6.5, I used it as a supplement to CS3. I am very glad that I did, the authors answered the question - Why do you use an effect or tool? The other "teach" books demonstrated what After Effects can do, but not how other than enter the number required in the exercise. A must read for anyone new to After Effects. I hope I can find such in depth books on the other Adobe Suite software. Kudos to the authors - thanks, thanks, thanks.

There are a billion ways you can go when you start up After Effects. It's wonderful to know that once I generate the ideas of what I want to do but don't know how to pull them off, all I have to do is find the tutorial for it and "Genius!" I've learned them and am able to modify them in any direction I want to go. Trish and Chris Meyer have a good handle on teaching, sometimes complex VFX maneuvers, in such easy to follow and understand terms. I highly recommend any of their books on this subject.

los Meyer ya saben como darnos la informacion, afortunadamente son libros muy faciles de leer aun si tu nivel de ingles es limitado.
Este libro en especial tiene una serie de ejercicios que refuerzan lo basico y nos expican lo avanzado.
Si ya has comprado libros de ellos, puede que te parezcan repetitivos, pero no te dejes llevar por eso. hay ajustes pequeños que te hacen ver diferente el proceso.
Adobe After effects es un programa en crecimiento, por ello, no subestimes en la informacion de estos libros.

This is another excellent After Effects guide that deserves to be in the library of any AE professional. However I was a little dissapointed with the contents. Being titled: Advanced Techniques, I expected to learn a lot of new techniques, but found most of the content was already well known by myself. I also found quite a lot of content was repeated in the other two After Effects books by the Meyers.

This is still an excellent book to have as a reference, and there are some great topics covered. It's very well written like the other books, and I don't regret the purchase at all. My complaints are probably mostly due to the fact I have learnt quite a bit since finishing the first book, for people who have finished the first book and want to learn more this would be perfect. But advanced users should perhaps look at After Effects 7 Studio Techniques which has more advanced content.

This book only to find out it's for version 5.5... Not a cheap book, as I already have purchased it.

I have been looking for quite some time for an artist who can explain his works in words that are understandable. This is harder than it seems. After researching Don Seegmiller's art work from his website I decided to give this book a go. I have to say this is a must buy for anyone who is serious about digital painting. The first half of the book goes over all the basics you learn in your first year of art school, as well as some very interesting ideas to help you with character design. After learning the basic the book takes a turn for the better, and offers numerous walkthrough tutorials on how to create texture as well as convincing painting techniques. I cannot explain how helpful this book has been. BUY IT NOW!!! www.seegmillerart.com

This book is not bad but, The lessons seem to have a lot of steps left out of almost every lesson. I found it hard to follow a long. One minute the page has a sort of ugly sketch to follow a long with. Tun the page and that sketch has been turned into a very realistic painting with no real explanation as to how it got that way. I think this book is better if you already know what your doing when it comes to painting realistic characters and designing them, but then one could argue whats the point in getting this book also seeing as it cost a bit munch.

This book is totally out of this world on the topic of character design. Very detailed and well thought out. I will definatly recommend it to designers and artists.

Not only is this book excellent because of what you will learn from a master, but the physical book itself is of the highest quality, which of course is very important because you will no doubt turn to it repeatedly for guidance and inspiration. A beautifuly crafted book. The cd is most helpful. Enjoy!

Dear Mr. Seegmiller:

I've long been an admirer of your fantastic creations. You kinda became who I wanted to grow up to be ;-), so when I found you had published a book, I ran to get a copy.

Just wanted to let you know that this is the first of hundreds of art books in my library that is everything I'd hoped, and much more. I've had some
art training (mostly with folks who were better artists than teachers) and have learned a lot from books, as well as lots of drawing and painting on my own. I've participated in numerous exhibitions and group shows. Never have I had the pleasure of "sitting" in the company of such a fine, generous, exacting and specific educator, who is also one of my most admired artists.

The quicktime movies, so unselfishly revealing of your methods and creative processes, would have been worth twice the cost of the book. I'm studying them on a frame-by-frame basis, and gaining so much insight into what was heretofore theory alone. A weekend seminar could easily be developed from any one of these.

So thanks mightily from a very enthusiastic student at a distance.

Regards,
Bob Goldberg

www.bobbogoldberg.com

I agree with many of the reviews already posted here. I found the CD-ROM to be especially thorough, with Bonus Chapters, Hands on examples, and lots of software demo and eval copies. In a working situation I had a question about curve editing, and I looked in the index of this book and found my answer explained step by step. A rival book did not have a "curve editing" entry in their index, and when I tracked down their explanation, it was not as clearly described or illustrated. Hats off to the Savvy guys, Watrall and Herber.

This is one of the best Flash study books I have ever used and I have bought many. I have to echo all the praise previous reviewers have written. I have tried to grasp ActionScript by diligently studying several tedious Flash books and never quite "got it" until I bought this one. This book is very well written and it intelligently guides you through Flash. I agree that it is written so that you can jump from topic to topic, but if you work though the chapters in a linear way, the book helps you build skills & knowledge of Flash from start to finish. Good for beginners or more experienced Flash users. The hands-on lessons after each chapter help you apply what you have learned and the inspiration design modules make it FUN! I LOVE this book and recommend it to anyone!

I learned some good stuff and the bonus chapters are good resources. However the teaching style is not a step by step proceedure. The author explains without demonstation then after 4 chapters of explaining, you do a hands on tutorial in which you do what you were supposed to learn. If you know Flash and are familiar with its processes this may be your book, if you want to see the steps in action, forget it. Over and over the author instructs you to create a file without letting you know what to create. Terms like "open a flash document and create an animation" appear far to often. The book is great for a reference but I thought there was to much explanation without demonstation. One further note, there were missing files on my CD, in trying to get the files downloaded i ran into a lot of hassle. Proof of purchase, broken links, and redirection to downloads that were not there. I believe a great teaching book on something like flash requires a support site that is equally great. I learned some neat things, and I use the book for reference, but for those first learning flash, buy the Macromedia Design Profesional series Flash.

Book: Flash MC 2004 Savvy
Author: Evan Watrall and Norbert Herber
Publisher: Sybex
(...)
Web: www.sybex.com
Phone: 510-523-8233
Pro: Easy to understand direct instruction, content progresses quickly
Con: None noted
Rating: 5
Reviewer: Rob LeFebvre

COMPLEX AND FULFILLING
This is the second book I've read by Ethan Watrall, and I have to say I continue to be impressed. Flash MX 2004 (the most unfortunate product name, ever) is a complex, mature program. As the authors state, Flash MX 2004 can be "used to create amazingly complex, interactive products, dynamic and data driven websites and online applications, cartoon serials, online (and offline) games, music videos, music players, instant messengers...the list goes on and on." This book, Flash MX 2004 Savvy, then, takes the reader through the basics of using Flash MX and MX Professional, the new interface, visual techniques for drawing and animation, symbols and text, and runs right on through to more advanced topics, like ActionScript, Audio, Video, and integration with other programs.

MAC-CENTRIC
Now, Ethan Watrall isn't the only author. His co-author, Norbert Herber, is the "mac guy" for the book. Both authors are faculty members at Indiana University. Their writing style is both easy to understand and thorough. As a Mac user, I appreciated the cross platform approach of the text, with key-commands spelled out for both Windows and Macintosh users, along with a variety of Mac screen shots throughout the book.

GET YOUR HANDS DIRTY
Each section of the book (2 - 3 Chapters) ends with a "Hands On" section, where the authors walk the reader through a project that includes the techniques discussed within the content portion of the chapters. (...) Based on scenes and reused graphic symbols, it looks fairly accomplished, I think. The book is full of these kinds of projects, which really helped me feel like I was learning something. Many times, books that are references on a given software application don't impart this same feeling of "getting somewhere."

NOVICE LEVEL
This book is a beginner to novice level guide to Flash MX 2004. It doesn't cover form-based applications, publishing in multiple languages, data binding and web services, nor ActionScript 2.0. As you can see, these are very advanced topics. So, basically,. this book covers anything you really need to know about starting out and actually using Flash. The authors don't spend a lot of time on how to open and save files, or how to manage your computer directory structure. The book progresses fairly swiftly through the first 3 chapters on interface and usage of the basic drawing tools, a topic that I feel gets too much space in many "beginner" books.

MORE THAN JUST A BOOK
An added value to the book is, of course, the CD full of files for use in the Hands On sections, as well as demos of Flash MX 2004 and other Macromedia products. In addition, it has several Bonus chapters, to take your learning further. What surprised me, however, was that the authors ALSO include a web site to go to that enhances learning as well. (...). Finally, the authors provide their personal email addresses, which I find refreshing.

BUY THIS BOOK
I look forward to finishing this book. It's not one I'm going to leave on the shelf for reference; rather, I plan on delving into each content and Hands On section in my own learning of this powerful multimedia tool. I'd recommend this book for anyone starting out their journey towards Flash mastery. It's well written, easy to understand, yet thorough and full of information. It has evenly distributed Macintosh savvy advice, as well as screenshots that look familiar to those that use computers "for the rest of us." Buy this book now!

Getting started with Flash MX 2004? Get this book!

As a new Flash user but an experienced programmer / Web developer, I had been looking for a good reference to get up and running quickly with Flash MX 2004 Pro. I started with one book that had tedious step-by-step examples and little background into why things are done a certain way. I then bought this book and on almost every page I found myself saying "Oh, THAT'S why!". I gave the other book away.

This book is very well written. It gets to the point quickly and doesn't linger too long on any one subject. The writing style is clear, easy to follow. and even fun to read. The exmaples are practical in that the authors don't assume that you need to see every mouse click and keypress listed as a "step". Each chapter ends with an online site that exemplifies the subject of that chapter - good for inspiration.

This is not an expert book and only covers ActionScript in passing (fine for most beginners). The CD-ROM includes bonus chapters (useful) and "essential" ActionScript examples and references. Since it is not a complete ActionScript reference it's unlikely to make my collection of essential CD-ROMs, however.

If you are getting started with Flash MX 2004 / Pro I highly recommend buying this book first.

The most fully illustrated book on every Looney Tunes cartoon to date.Every single Warner Bros. cartoon from 1930 to 1989.

Highly recommended!

This book is a great resource to read about these classic Warner Brothers cartoons. It would have been nice if the book had included more groupings by characters in the index. The book is 390 pages long, so it seems that they could have included a few extra pages to list all of the appearances of Elmer Fudd or Yosemite Sam.

Here is an illustated guide to the Warner Bros. cartoons commonly known as LOONEY TUNES AND MERRIE MELODIES. Every cartoon was either a Looney Tune or Merrie Melodie. These include both the short subjects and feature films. One of WB's biggest cartoon stars,Bugs Bunny appeared in tens of cartoons in a 25 year period,1940 to 1964. Bugs' first official appearance was in 1940's A WILD HARE. A few earlier cartoons such as PRESTO CHANGE-O,HARE-UM SCARE-UM and ELMER'S CANDID CAMERA(featuring Elmer Fudd) featured a similar-looking prototype. WB's other big stars include Daffy Duck who debuted in or around 1938. The star's name appeared in some titles of his cartoons such as DAFFY DUCK & EGGHEAD,DAFFY DUCK IN HOLLYWOOD and DAFFY DUCK AND THE DINOSAUR. Same thing with Bugs Bunny(BUGS BUNNY AND THE THREE BEARS,BASEBALL BUGS,BUGS BUNNY RIDES AGAIN and BUGS BUNNY GETS THE BOID). Also Elmer Fudd(ELMER'S CANDID CAMERA,ELMER'S PET RABBIT and GOODNIGHT ELMER). Other big stars are Sylvester,a mean-spirited cat always wanting to kill sweet little canary Tweety. Later stars include Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote,Speedy Gonzales and Foghorn Leghorn(Foghorn first appeared in the 40's). There's also Porky Pig who first appeared in the 1935 Merrie Melodie I HAVEN'T GOT A HAT. Porky starred in many black and white Looney Tunes since that cartoon. This book lists synopses for every cartoon produced by WB. It also gives release dates and production credits with directors. I like the awesome concept of the variously colored rings bordering the beginning and end title cards. Over the years,they changed colors. The sizes changed also as did the studio logo(the original light blue changed to red). Some cartoons made between 1937 and 1940 featured multi-colored rings. WB still produces short subject cartoons occasionally but does more feature films today. This book went to press before the 1996 release of SPACE JAM,a semi-animated film starring basketball great Michael Jordan and featuring WB's cartoon stars. I dedicate the book to the memories of longtime director Chuck Jones,actor-director tex Avery(Jones and Avery later went to MGM),Mel Blanc(voice of Bugs Bunny) and actress Bea Benaderet who later appeared on TV's The Beverly Hillbillies and starred on Petticoat Junction.

I have had a quest to see(and act out)all of the cartoons of Wile E. Coyote and Sylvester. But some episodes appeared on cable networks more than others, and others I saw, but missed the episode name. So I purchased this book to find out which cartoons I've actually seen. It describes the episodes with details such as the ACME products in each episode, the methods the villain uses, and other interesting facts. Buy it if you wish to see all the Warner Bros. cartoons of all or one of the characters!

It's easy to sit back and watch the re-runs of Warner Brothers cartoons and just let them wash over us, but that would ignore all of the work that went into them. We would not get an appreciation of the sheer number of cartoons produced. Luckily Beck and Friedwald were obsessed enough to pull them all together in one volume. Going on a year by year basis, from Bosko cartoons of 1930 to the last gasps of 1969 (and the reawakening in the 80's) the authors provide a landmark reference showing the premiere date, the credits given in the openings, and a thorough synopsis of the action. But of course any reference like this would be an oddity if it was just a listing. But we are provided with two ways to find information - a title index showing the entry (all purpose for grabbing when watching that cartoon), and an index based upon appearances of 15 of the most popular characters. Want to find out when did Marvin the Martian appear? It's here. (1948 - Haredeveil Hare). Wonder how many cartoons starred Daffy Duck - count 'em up. (a whole lot) Just sitting back and reading synopses shows the breadth of jokes and settings that the artists were able to take advantage of. You can also see the repetition that occured when the writers fell into a rut. Just a great book to have on the shelf to pull down when you want and a great guilty pleasure!

A few months ago when my brother presented me with a Mac G4 as a birthday present, he told me the best Mac book writers he'd come across were Robin Williams and David Poath (with which I now heartily concur).
Now I can add Jim Heid to that list.I found his book and dvd very helpful, and I can't thank him enough for taking the time to write such an informative and easy to follow book.
I look forward to the next one Mr Heid, as I'm about to purchase a Classic ipod.....
The book is well illustrated, and thorough in detail - I'd recommend it to anyone.

In reviewing iLife '05, I must say I've never seen a more thorough presentation. I would recommend this book to any Mac user. The included 90 minute CD is reason enough to purchase this great CD. What you read is supplemented by pictures to further explain each topic. A valuable investment.

I am a new Mac user and this book is a great introduction and tutorial to the iLife 05 programs. The book is well written, easy to read and has lots of helpful photos and graphics. THe DVD is a great supplement as well. I would recommend this book to anyone new to Mac or iLife 05.

Very user friendly, covering all the basics and some advanced technics.

This book is incredibly helpful for people just beginning on the Mac. It sets up each program seperately and also shows you how to get the best use of all of them together. The DVD is also a wonderful suppliment to the book, they follow along with each other.

The lesson files really did come very helpful except for the instructions on the book - I find it somewhat confusing.

This is a really excellent book for learning dreaweaver software the main software for web design

I'll keep this short and sweet:
This book taught me all I needed to know about Dreamweaver in order to create a couple nice websites. If you're a beginner with no previous Dreamweaver (or any other website builder software) like I was then you'll have no problem reading this well written book. After a few chapters and following along with the tutorial you really will be able to create simple websites. Keep reading and you'll master all the aspects of modern day website building. Hands down this is one of the best learning books I've read in a long time and the tutorial is great.

As a newbie in web publishing (I've been in print for 16 years) I have yet to find a book or forum that is 100% beneficial. The forums are mediated by experienced web designers who speak their language and not the language of the beginner. Somewhere, someone (and I'd be glad to do it with proper backing) needs to write a book that says, 'Want to do (one simple function)? Use these commands. NEXT...' That would have saved me months of grief.

So I bought books and slogged through tutorials until I gleaned enough of what I wanted in order to design my pages. Tutorials NEVER cover exactly what YOU want to learn, so they can drag on forever.

As for this book, I thumbed through it at my local Borders and saw that it had a few interesting tips that I might employ in future pages. I buy books such as this even if there is only ONE tip I need, and it's worth it, even at the price some of these titles command (this also justifies Amazon Prime, by the way).

The book is from Macromedia which is a plus because you are learning the program from the company that created it. The bottom line is this: When learning this stuff, you need a reference library to depend on, and this book is a key player. Forums are great as long as the mediators are online late on a Sunday night when you're struggling to learn a new technique. Buy this book, buy lots of books and EXPERIMENT as you go...that's the best way to learn.

This book is a great intro the basics of Dreamweaver, It will get you up and running quickly.

This book is well done and is good at simplifying the complexities of more advanced Flash concepts. However, I have found some typos in the book - one in particular that really threw me off while learning about absolute and relative paths (they had two diagram examples switched around so that they were saying one thing and showing another - my instructor even verified this). I have not read through the whole book and am hoping that there won't be any more problems like that.

It is also hard to find the exercises on the CD that match with the book because they are not organized on the CD in a manner that corresponds with the book. You have to sort of go digging for the exercises on the CD and open the files based on what you're looking at in the book. Not the best way to put so much info on a CD that goes with a book, if you ask me.

This is a good book to learn more advanced Flash concepts but it is probably not the best out there, in my opinion. I really like the books sold on lynda.com and I would recommend those if you are looking for self-paced learning tools.

I bought this book along with the basics version because I am new to using Flash and web design in general. I know when first learned programs with the help of books like this it sometimes feels as though they are talking about a completely different program because you can get so confused, however, with this book I am pretty sure they actually have written about a different version of the program. I definately have version MX 2004, which is definately what it says on the cover of this book, yet even when I copy their code exactly letter for letter, space for space, it will not produce the outcome they describe. For example the book repeatedly states to, "select the first frame of the root timeline, and open the actions panel," and from there it will instruct you to apply actions to a frame. Unfortunately in MX 2004 in no situation are you ever able to apply any action to a frame, actions are only usable for movie and button instances.

When the code in this book isn't completely not working, it kind of works if you trial and error long enough to figure out how it is really suppose to be entered, for example:

I am quoting this code directly from the book, on how to create a movable movie clip

instancename.onPress = function(){
this.startDrag();
}

MX 2004 will always let you know, however, that this is or contains a syntax error. After spending many hours playing the trail and error game, trying to figure out something that should be very simple with the help of an instruction book, I found the correct code was very similar to this

on (press) {
this.startDrag();
}

So more less I am saying this book is worthless unless you have an absorbant amount of time to waste trying to figure out why what they say in this book isnt working.

If you have some programming knowledge already, this book is a good way to learn how to apply your knowledge in the Flash environment. It has a good index and hundreds of pages of useful features explained so you may get on with whatever you are trying to create. I have found it so useful for user interface prototyping that I take it back and forth to/from the office whenever I am building prototypes.

I found this Visual QuickPro Guide very informative, extremely helpful and an excellent learning tool. If you want to learn ANYTHING, these Visual QuickPro Guides are the way to go!

This book has helped tremendously. Before I looked into this book, I was afraid of true actionscripting. This book has helped me to understand what others made confusing and hard. I don't think it is the final say so... as Flash is truly a vast application with many capabilities, but it's a terrific start for those who are familiar to designing in flash, but not superb at scripting. It will "Demistify" the actionscripting fear for sure. Now I can open other more in-depth programming books and actually make sense of code. I recommend this for any web professional that has actually worked with, not just dabbled in Flash.

This book come with a cd in which you can find all chapter in window media video files,is like the instructor is rigth there with you teching a lesson to you,great simple idea,the video clips are for each chapter of the book,so what I do is complete a chapter,then I play the video and BINGO,very good book to help anyone with zero experience or someone with some experience in 3d software,I never use a 3D software before,now I can said,I LOVE THIS BOOK,and Maya is not hard to learn,compared with other
3D softwares.

Thanks Mister Lammer and company.

Manuel.
ps.
All the tutorials are easy to fallow
Even for me,with a english as a second lenguage,ji ji..
Manuel.

I wanted a book to help me thoroughly familiarise myself with Maya basics when i moved to Maya 4.5 from lightwave, and not only does this book deliver excellent video tutorials and well written entertaining information, but it actually has a chapter dedicated to familiarising lightwave and 3dsmax users with Maya. This book has been in my bag ever since i got it, and i am truly grateful to the authors. My productivity with Maya skyrocketed after the first 10 chapters. However, it should be noted that this book does not cover subdivision modelling. It does have a tutorial involving smooth proxy modelling, but a subd tutorial would have been nice.

Haven't finished all of it yet, but it is really really good. I like it a lot more than the Learning Maya beginners book.

I would definately recommend this book to anyone that is on the intermediate or beginner skill level.

I used this book in my first Maya modeling class. I believe that the book is good because it takes you step by step on very basic concepts. On the other hand, the CD files for modeling polygons is weak, not well explained. The approach is pretty general for the topics discussed. I should say that the book is good to have an overview of the software and some of the tools, but not to have a strong base to start building advanced skills.

This book is excellent. The book was written so well that the book itself should teach you maya alone. AND the CD was done so well that the CD itself should teach you maya alone. Basically the first 4 chapters teach you all of maya and if you have some experiance you don't really need to go on. But the rest of the chapters are great also because they go into extreme details over all the different parts of maya. The authors did an excellent job with this book and the cd that comes with it. A lot of parts of the book can be used for future reference also. This book is worth a million dollars (in my mind).

The main problem with this book is that the author isn't very good at what he does. He details lovingly how to make the artwork but he simply lacks the talent to create 3D art that's very good. The model he creates, Slogre is in the end, a lumbering snow man like mess of a creature poorly set up for animation.

The author spends a lot of time talking about concept art and why its important only to ditch it in production of the model, ditching all of its charisma to create an ugly mess that looks like it was created by someone completely inexperienced.

Most of the textures he creates end up looking very flat and ugly. The black and white printing causes a lot of his points to be lost. The best examples of this are on pages 225 and 226. He shows a demonstration of poorly tiling textures with noticeable seams. However, due to the cheap printing, the wall is just a solid block of grey making the visual aid wholly useless.

If you're completely new to 3D art, there are far worse places you could start. This book has some decent primers initiating readers with certain aspects of various art programs including Photoshop. There's a lot of information here and it's not all useless.

However, if you are planning on getting into 3D art, I would recommend you start out with Milkshape 3D and Psionic3D tutorials. (Google those. Amazon doesn't allow linking last time I checked.) For texturing, 3D Game Textures by Luke Ahearn is a much better resource than this.

If you have any experience in 3D art though, then you can probably skip this book without a second thought. There is likely nothing you couldn't have figured out on your own. The things that are worthwhile for the experienced here are already available in Internet tutorials.

The only thing that would make this book of any value to an experienced artist is the collection of nearly 500 royalty free photos intended for use in your own textures. To some, these are probably worth the price on their own, but they're photos that would be easy for someone to take on their own. Think twice about buying this book.

This book covers everything, from character creation, bones rigging, texturing of the character (and hundreds of general textures using Photoshop). The book uses 3DS Max 7 and Photoshop 7, expensive, but I've found that game companies use those avidly (or Maya, but not as much). Price is high for those but get a demo or hacked copy. The author covers character creation almost entirely, including export to the Torque game engine. The only down side is he doesn't include animation, but I guess that's a subject for another book. I hear he's writing a character book that will include this as well. Very cool book, A+.

totally cool book i got lots out of it. texturing was great too. got me totally into making models and using teh torque game engine. i think this book is killer so far

I was really excited when I got this book and could tell it was exactly what I needed since all aspects of making art for games was a mystery to me. However, I was disappointed that to go along with the tutorials, you had to use a TrueSpace demo or lay out the hundreds of dollars for the full program. The demo doesn't let you save anything, so that makes it very difficult when you're a complete newbie.

Every time you make a mistake, especially in undoable operations like Boolean operations, you have to start ALL the way over. :(

I would've preferred that the author used one of the more prevalent programs like Max or Maya - it made the learning curve even tougher, having to first learn TrueSpace before being able to do the tutorials in this book.

As I say - I'm glad I bought it, but it would've been MUCH more helpful to have been able to use a program/demo where I could save what I'm working on.

I agree with the majority of other reviewers on the content of this book, especially the sections of texturing. Very in depth and covers a whole lot of topics on inorganic and organic textures and how to use them. He also takes you step by step through the modeling process of a gun and a big ugly monster.

But instead of spending too much time repeating what everyone else is saying good about the book, I am going to tell you what I think isn't so good about the book because there are a few not-so-good things about the book you should know before spending half-a-hundred dollars on it. Though, I still give the book 4 stars because it has many more good points than bad.

The most depressing thing is that you really need full versions of all the software programs used to be able to follow along with the book the way you need to in order to learn what your reading. Sure, you get some experience working with a bunch of programs like 3d studio max 5 (very heavily used in 3d game model production) but you don't even do 3d modeling it. Instead, you follow along with the modeling process in TrueSpace 4 or 6. What you'll find REALLY frustrating about that is, unless you have $595.00 to spend on the full, legal copy of version 6.6, you won't be able to save any of your work using the DEMO version that comes with the book! So, you may spend an hour or more modeling your gun, and then have to close the program down and load the model that the author made on the book's CD in order to continue to the UV mapping, texture painting, optimizing and triangulating which is done in 3ds max 5 (of which the demo version is also included on the book's cd-rom). The modeling process could have been done just as easily in 3ds max 5 which is much more powerful than TrueSpace anyways. Why switch between the two programs when one can do both tasks? 3ds max 5 costs an arm and a leg (around $3,105.00), but can do EVERYTHING that TrueSpace & DeepUV combined can do. The full, retail (useable) version of DeepUV costs $795.00.

If you don't believe me about UV mapping for characters in video games using 3ds max, then check out the book "Mastering 3DS MAX 4" which has a section on modeling a character then UV mapping it just like it is done in DeepUV. DeepUV is a complete waist of money if you own a copy of 3ds max 4 or higher.

Now when texturing you use two different programs, Deep Paint 3D 2.0 and Adobe Photoshop 6. Both programs are equally good and equally powerful, though Photoshop is much more popular. I do not understand why he spreads tasks out across the two programs when he could have done just about everything in one program or another without using both programs. Deep Paint 3D 2.1 costs $995.00! Adobe Photoshop 7 costs you about $609.00!

See what I'm getting at? You gotta have a fortune to spend on graphics production software in order to fully and completely follow along with this book and to be able to do ANYTHING productive with the information you've learned after reading the book, especially if you are a game programmer like me who has to make 3d models, then texture them and plug them into a 3d rendering engine.

You can do anything and everything this book covers by having a full version of just two peices of software, Adobe Photoshop 7 and 3ds max 4 or higher. That's it...that's all you need. Buying two 3D modelers, a program for UV mapping, and two texture paint programs is a waist of a whole lotta money. I understand the good it can do because one program can essentially be better at one task than a similar program can, but how many of us hobbiests have over $6099.00 to spend on software to follow in the footsteps of the book author? Not me, certainly.

If the book was designed with the hobbiest or budding superstar in mind then it would have focused all it's attention on production software that doesn't require you to be a zillionare. In fact another software program out there, Jasc Paint Shop Pro 8 can also be used for making game quality textures and 2D sprite art very much like Photoshop 7 or Deep Paint 3D 2.1 but it only costs about $100.00 for the full retail version. And then there's 3D modeling software like Milkshape 3D which is also VERY cheap in comparison to 3ds max, Maya, Lightwave, TrueSpace, Cinema 4DL, etc. And the best thing about Milkshape 3D is that it was made specifically for making game-only 3D models (originally made for the game Half-Life).

Don't get me wrong, I do like a lot of things about this book. The book does a good job of showing you how to use an array of different programs and how to effectively use them for making game art such as 2D textures and 3D models and how to prepare those models for use in a game engine, and it even includes a demo game engine to plug your models into. But just be warned that owning those programs isn't necessary to make quality 2D and 3D artwork for games, but IS required to follow along with the book completely. You can "work around" with the book using the demos that comes with the CD, but don't get too excited because you can't even save your TrueSpace 3D models anyways, so how are you going to get the models into 3ds max 5 for further manipulation and game prep?

Concise and to the point. Lessons well laid out, will give you a good working knowledge of FCP.

Would give this book a 5 except that I am unable to do the last 4 chapters -- titles, motio and filters -- as some of the media refuses to reconnect due to inaccurate start/end points on the clips.

So, the 2/3 of the book I WAS able to do were excellent.

There is no better book for beginning editors. I recommend it to all those trying to learn the basics (and some moderately advanced workflow things) of Final Cut Pro 6.

The book is actually really awesome even when you take the FCP class. The book walks your through a lot of things that may not be straight forward.


Sound examples and good tutorials.

Final Cut Pro 6 is the latest update to Diana Weynand's comprehensive text on editing with Final Cut Pro.

In its latest incarnation, Final Cut Pro 6 has been updated with new features and workflows, as well as a great deal of hands-on practice in every aspect of using FCP, including editing scenes from the USA TV Series "Monk".

This is the third version of this title that I have owned, and keep upgrading as I find it a valuable reference and key to unlocking new features with every Final Cut upgrade.

Sure beats the manual. The DVD footage that accompanies the tutorial is woth its weight in gold.