Animation Books

This book is exactly what I was looking for. I am going to do a program in my Computer User Group on Windows Media Player 10. I am not an expert, so I needed to learn as much as I can as quickly as possible about this subject. This book is thorough and written in a way that makes this material interesting and entertaining. As Paul says in his book: "Windows XP makes its treasure-trove of functionality easy to discover, but a lot of the really dazzling stuff is still buried and unobvious." This book makes it obvious. Thank-you for writing this book.

Generally speaking, the one thing that anger's most software owners is the manual. User documentation, in many cases, is written by the same people who write the underlying code of the program. Rarely do these highly intelligent people understand what it is like to really use the product. That means, while your documentation may be technically accurate, it's organization, context, appearance and overall utility pretty much sucks. While the 1000 page manual that ships with Liquid Edition is not quite as bad as I just portrayed, I can say its utility is "less than stellar."

Now, for those of us who still like to rummage through the printed page, I am so glad to see a book that is written by a film maker (who by the way) works for Pinnacle and knows this product probably better than he knows himself.

If you are reading this review, you are most likely an (avid) user of Pinnacle Liquid Edition. . This book is an absolute must. In fact, this book should replace your official Pinnacle manual because it just makes more sense.

This book is not a tutorial, but Paul Ekert uses graphics and text to communicate almost as if he were snooping over your shoulder and giving you direct instructions on how to accomplish your task.

Kudos to Paul for writing the book. It needs to be part of your Liquid Library.

The graceful drawings by Glen Keane, one of Disney's finest animators, are brought to life in this beautiful flip book from Disney's 33rd full-length animated film, Pocahontas. Flip one way to see a full-colour scene from the film of Pocahontas and Meeko in the forest, then turn the book over and flip again to see an action scene with John Smith! One of the best in a series of flip books from Disney's most recently animated films, this book is ideal for Pocahontas fans and Disney collectors alike. For more of Glen Keane's animation, see `Disney's Tarzan: An Animated Flip Book.'

This nice calendar features the first 150 Pokemon on the left edge and has more enlarged pictures in the center. Like most wall calendars, however, to the end of the month, it gets a bit dull. Maybe when there are over 350 Pokemon, they can make a desk top day by day calendar, and that day will probavly be soon, at the rate they're rolling these new guys hot off of the presses.

Every thing you ever wanted to know about women coagulating in living monochrome is in this book. The book goes thru 100 years and many genres of what would be considered "Girl Gangs" on film.
Naturally these are the finer films such as "Chopper Chicks in Zombietown". Then when you think it can sing no lower there are films as "Westside Story" (1961) and "Grease (1978)."

There is a table of contents as they try to separate the films into such groups as "Women in Prison" and "Girl's Schools." There is a comprehensive bibliography for those intrigued by this book. And despite the hundreds of film titles in the index there is still sufficient room between the stills to describe the finer points on what is the essence of girl gangs.

This book is part of a great series "Creation Cinema Collection" be sure to find the others such as "Fragments of Fear: an illustrated History of British Horror Films."

Grease (Rockin' Rydell Edition)
West Side Story
Chopper Chicks in Zombietown

This 200 page book might not look like much when you first open it up. But...

If you want to understand concepts like: Spatial Kinematics; Spatial Dynamics; Inverse Dynamics; Forward Dynamics - The Composite-Rigid-Body Method; Extending the Dynamics Algorithms; Coordinate Systems and Efficiency; Contact, Impact, and Kinematic Loops, this book is for you!

If you want to learn how to computate efficient algorithms for calculating the dynamics of robot mechanisms represented as systems of rigid bodies, then this book is for you!

The efficiency of these calculations are acchieved by the use of recursive formulations of the equations of motion. The use of recursive formulations in dynamics is fairly new, so the priciples of their operation and reason for their efficiency are explained.

These algorithms are initially described in terms of an un-branhed, open-loop Kinematic chain - atypical serial robot mechanism. This is done to keep the descriptions of the algorithms simple, and is in line with descriptions appearing in the literature. Once the basic algorithms have been introduced, the restrictions on the mechanism are lifted and the algorithms are extended to cope with kinematic trees and loops, and general constraints at the joints. The problem of simulating the effect of contact between a robot and its environment is also considered. Some consideration is given to the details and practical problems of implementing these algorithms on a computer.

The reader is asumed to have a knowledge of vectorial mechanics. No prior knowledge of robot dynamics, or the dynamics of any other kind of rigid-body system, is required.

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I've been a follower of Mr. Morse's work for several years now and I general prefer his art when it is combined with his storytelling. They are usually mutually exclusive. The story and the art lean heavily on each other to form a more filled-out body of work. Scrap Mettle is a different animal. Mr. Morse provides us with a glimpse into his work before the words have come along. This book consists of a collection of art work that either escaped the story-telling final cut or that possessed a life of it's own. The images are simple, the colors are vibrant, and the book is impressive. Its a glimpse into the life of an artist when he is perhaps without a externally impossed deadline. Check it out, you won't be disappointed.

This great historical overview of different animated shorts has now been translated from the french original and is a wonderful in depth look at very unique animated films. Full of insights.

Fantastic. Inspiring. All the motivation you need to kickstart you career. From getting your first job to starting your own business.
To break things up, every second chapter has tutorial on using XSI.

A wonderful story that tells about space, with humerous pictures of folks from each place. With the planets in trouble (the sun's on the move) they need a solution that all can approve. But working together you know that they'll find the solution's at hand if they just use their mind. You will learn about planets, you'll learn about heat, you'll learn that this marvelous book can't be beat. The author has written with humor and zest, of all that he's written, I can't say which one's best. But one thing's for certain, and this I can tell, you should go buy this book, cause my brother is swell.