Have been looking at the various books on 2d animation available on Amazon - esp. Animator’s Workbook, and the book by Preston White.
Wanted to ask which books everyone prefers…ones that are good for beginning animators, laying out the nuts and bolts of the animation process. (Not TOO easy, but still thorough and readable.)
Thanks in advance!
No matter what area of animation you specialize in …Richard Williams …“The Animator’s Survival Kit” …is the bible. I’ve even recently read a book on Flash animation and the author recommeded this book when trying to explain a ‘walk’ cycle.
A second book is Preston Blair …Cartoon Animation .
My only issue with some of these older books is that describe the process when there was no paperless software like TBS. Despite this they can help create a solid base from which to grow. The Flash author I referred to above was Chris Georgenes …a guru on the animation side of Flash who wrote a book on the latest version CS3. Just trying to highlight that this book from Richard Williams is age-less!
I have more …but if you havn’t gotten the first book already …get it … that should keep you busy for a few weeks.
I’ll definitely second the Richard Williams book. It is fantastic and complete. It took me a while to get around to buying it, but I’m glad I finally did. Working my way through it now in fact.
There are an infinite # of books out there, but ASK is pretty much considered the standard. I don’t think you can go wrong with that.
Richard Williams - definitely my favourite.
Also learned a lot from "Whitaker and Halas, Timing For Animation"
Greetings,
Peter
P.S: Just reading “Animation - From Pencils To Pixels” by Tony White. Like that one too. Seems to cover almost every aspect of making animated films, which makes is usable from a completely different viewpoint than William’s does…