3D Books

I found this book about a month ago while browsing the animation titles at my local bookstore. What initially drew my attention to it was the extremely familiar dog character on its cover (I believe it's name is Dennis, but don't quote me); I was especially pleased to see that Steve and Raf Anzovin, its creators, listed as the book's authors. Steve, the founder of Anzovin Studios, his son Raf, and the team at Anzovin Studios are extraordinarily talented artists, animators, and programmers, with extensive knowledge in all aspects of commercial 3D animation production. Based on my experience with several of their products (use their last name dot com to find their website), I took it straight to the cashier and purchased it without bothering to look through it first. I don't often get excited about a book, but this one lived up to my expectations, it's excellent. Steve and Raf have done it again! Their writing is accessible, clear, and direct; and the visual examples used in each section are contextually appropriate throughout the book.

NB My personal peeve with far too many writers and publishers of technical manuals and textbooks, where specific tables, figures, or photos referenced within a text don't enhance the reader's understanding of the material (add to, support, or clarify its meaning), and their locations are not immediately apparent (whereby its location is logically correlated both visually and contextually, or hopefully more simply stated, referenced visuals are on or near the same page[s] as, the text that references them!).

3d Toons Creative 3D Design For Cartoonists and Animators is a powerhouse of information that focuses on artistic choices in explaining to its readers how 3D cartoonists reach their goals. As mentioned in the inside flap of the book, "3D cartoons are becoming the hottest thing in Hollywood, and they are also taking over TV."

The book is written by authors who have an enormous and intimate knowledge of 3D cartoons. Steve Anzovin is the CEO of Anzovin Studio, a computer-generated character animation that he co-founded with his son Raf.

Their objective in putting together this book was to deemphasize the teaching of techniques and focus on the "nitty-gritty" inner workings of the creative process.
It is amazing how much effort and talent is required in the making of an animation. Readers are informed how 3D characters and sets are brought to life in cartoons, graphic novels, and computer-animated short films. It thus is more than a "fresh look" at 3D animation but rather a fresh attempt to appreciate the immense creative process that is required.

The examination of this creative process is neatly organized into seven sections that are in turn sub-divided. The authors examine and explore 3DToonstyle, Toon Evolution, Anatomy of a Toon, Animated Toons, Shooting Toons, Toon Media, and 3dToon Gallery.
Each section is prefaced with a succinct overview and thoughtful queries prompting reflection and discussion. For example, when you look at the chapter dealing with toonstyle, readers are asked, what makes a cartoon character? From this point of reference the authors analyze why they look, act, and sound the way they do.

The book does not necessarily have to be read in a particular order and the newcomer to animation as well as the novice can easily open it to any section and garner useful information.
Spectacular and easy to follow illustrations enhance the book's informative as well as its aesthetic appeal. Each image contains sidebar explanations as to how and why they were created in a particular manner. To illustrate, if you refer to the section pertaining to Cartoony Toons, there is an example of three images that are stripped-down cartoon faces without bodies and we are informed that is all a character needs. As explained, these bodiless characters were designed for medical animation aimed at children of cancer patients.

The final chapter exposes the best of 3D Toon Art. It is here where we have a glance at the work of some of the giants in the field such as Jimmy Maidens, Robert J. Tiess, Yves Dalbiez, Sebastian Schoellhammer, Avalanche Software (Video Game Animation), Victor Navone, David Maas & Tatjana Herrmann-Maas, Shaun Freeman, Michael Sormann, Reel FX Creative Studios, and Patrick Beaulieu.

As well as explaining at appropriate points within the various sections' key concepts, the authors provide a glossary of quick definitions of the 3D Toon Terms used in the book, as well as suggestions for further reading. There is also a very helpful index.

Fledgling 3D animators, students, dreamers, and those who want to learn more about this fascinating topic will have a great deal of fun with this accessible book. It will most certainly become part of the required reading of many a course on animation, as it will prove to be quite an asset.

Norm Goldman, Editor Bookpleasures

I've bought a lot of books on 3D animation over the years and most of them are either full of information that I don't need (how to build sky scrapers or how to spin my name in letters) or don't have anywhere near enough information on how to animate (usually only one chapter).
This book has everything I need to learn how to animate!
It starts by showing how to do an exercise using 2D traditional skills and then goes on to do the same exercise in 3D (if you want to skip the 2D bit and just do the 3D, that seems to work fine). Most employers today want to see evidence of traditional animation training and this book gives you all that!
It covers everything; weight and balance, timing, walks, birds, fish, snakes, four legged animals, acting and lip-synch.
I'd rate this book with Richard Williams' The Animator's Survival kit. In other words one of those books that every animator should have.

So if you want to learn how to animate or if you want to improve your 3D skills, buy this book!

The book has all the things i need to know for a beginner.I find this book easy to read, very helpful with lot's of illustrations/examples and the computer models are useful to practice the animation after reading it.

I have a daughter in 5th grade and she is a huge fan of this book series. The step-by-step apprach has her creating masterpieces every time! The drawings are a lot of fun, so she doesn't get bored with drawing mundane objects over an over. The drawing style is also cool and doesn't feel outdated like so many drawing books for kids do. I recommend these books very highly.

My grand-daughter is only 4 years old yet from the time she's been 2 she has loved to draw. She has tried to copy just what she sees and gets frustrated when she can't. So thought I should nurish her intrest in it. And I started learning with her for fun. First I brought books for me thinking I could teach her once I learned to better draw. Ha! I can't tell you how much money I wasted and felt like a failure.Trying to learn more realism in what I was drawing. They go from this to a finished product in 10 seconds and your scratching your head going what did I miss? So, I bought several of these books for her thinking at least they had cute critters in them she'd at least have fun with them. She follows with no instruction from me at all, just from looking at the pictures of what he's doing and can't read a word of it. Her pictures don't look exactly like his but she now draws a better circle than I do and she's have a great time with it. Has not once gotten frustrated because she can't draw just what she sees, as far as she's concerned she has, she drew the first circle that's an accomplishment to her. And from his strange creatures, doesn't matter to her if she's drawing a person with 20 arms and 4 legs she's drawn something and it's beautiful to her which is what's important. So weather your 4 or 43 it's well worth every penny. :-)Christopher Hart another great teacher check out his books as well. He'll teach you to draw 20 different sets of eyes, and several poses so you don't have to draw just what he's teaching you, you can mix it all up and still come out with a great drawing. Very easy to understand and follow.

By way of illustrations and in-depth explanations, this book took me through the process of creating animated characters from hand-drawn sketches -- all the way to adding interactivity to them. The book says "without code" which doesn't exactly mean without programming. One criticism I have is that I needed to go to the companion website to understand the navigation of some of the demos. (Answers were all found there -- just an illustration of page limitations vs. the web.) Definitely worthwhile to get for the amount of information included.

Just a quick note to report that this book is very promising, as we discover new techniques (specially the use of Virtools Dev) that revolutionize the creation of interactivity within 3D contents, for the internet and offline. Definitely worth for all newbees and students who want to have a first introduction to realtime 3D. The only drawback is that the graphical quality of the examples is very poor compared to what can be achieved with the tools. However, the most important is the way the interactivity is developed, which is absolutely stunning. Read it!

I have a daughter in 5th grade and she is a huge fan of this book series. The step-by-step apprach has her creating masterpieces every time! The drawings are a lot of fun, so she doesn't get bored with drawing mundane objects over an over. The drawing style is also cool and doesn't feel outdated like so many drawing books for kids do. I recommend these books very highly.

My daughter loves this book. It has helped her learn to draw - her older sister even enjoys it!

This book is a Kick-butt, take-no-prisoners guide to the internet. Includes sections for every element of the internet, including Security and On-line Gameing. A must for any Vidoe Gamer and Internet Buff.

This book is a Kick-butt, take-no-prisoners guide to the internet. Includes sections for every element of the internet, including Security and On-line Gameing. A must for any Vidoe Gamer and Internet Buff.

got this book as a christmas gift. what a treat! it is in full color with challenging puzzles for those kinds of people that are good with spatial abilities.

It is a close call when trying to decide if the most beautiful aspect of this book is the extent of the detail of the images of the puzzles or the puzzles themselves. The coloration, contrast, orientations and three-dimensional aspects of the images are astonishing and the publishers are to be commended for spending the extra resources to achieve the high quality. Many of them even have realistic looking shadows.
The puzzles fit into many categories, some are putting structures together to make shapes, others are identifying and categorizing the orientations of collections of objects and some require that you move objects to achieve a specific orientation. I was able to solve some within a few seconds, others took a few minutes, where I needed to draw explanatory figures and some I simply got wrong. Solutions to all are included, but only the minimum of explanation is given.
The prettiest set of puzzles that I have ever seen, this is a book that artists can enjoy. It could serve as a textbook in how to correctly create images for books.

Published in the recreational mathematics e-mail newsletter, reprinted with permission.

This was my first book in computer game/graphics programming, and the book from which I simultaneously learned C. Though some things are dated, the basic ideas are fundamental. It is well written, well explained, and really fun. It leaves the careful reader who practices the code with a solid background and ability to proceed.

Although some of the techniques in this book are outdated, it is one of the best books I have found that teaches the foundations of 3D computer graphics. Despite having newer references, such as The Zen of Graphics Programming, by Michael Abrash, I often find myself going back to this book to debug my applications and to develop new techniques for 3D graphics.

This book starts with the most basic methods for 3D graphics, and goes through step by step optimizations, ending with the code for a flight simulator. With the understanding of 3D graphics that this book provides, one can confidently tackle the more advanced 3D techniques used in Quake, Quake 2, and beyond.

Why just read about where people traveled? Make your own map of it! This is such a wonderful product, I wish there was one for World History so my children could visually follow Alexander the Great or Marco Polo on his journeys at younger ages.

This is not a difficult craft book, it is quite easy and well worth it. My 7 year old daughter loves it.

The day after I received this book I used one of the ready made activities in my fifth grade classroom. The kids loved it! I like the fact that it incorporates visual, auditory, tactile and kinesthetics into teaching history. Also a great value - this book was twice the price at a local store.

...with special features, such as an interlock that makes the plane hold together and 3-D fuselages too! The aesthetic beauty of these models are unprecedented in paper airplane design. Being an origami author myself, I truly appreciate the use of Squash Folds and Inside Reverse Folds to achieve their special nature.

I've actually become a collector of books on paper airplanes, and at this stage I must have 20 or 30 of them. So I thought I must have seen pretty much everything that was possible in the way of paper airplane design. I was wrong, though - I hadn't seen anything resembling the designs in Teong Hin Tan's book. He's hit on a couple of new, creative ways of using basic folds, to produce models that are beautiful as paper sculpture but that still fly. These designs tend to be a little more complicated than the 'dart' designs you may be used to, but, if you like paper planes, you'll be repaid by the practice you put in with the models in this book. Recommended!