Customer Reviews

Animation in the Home Digital Studio: Creation to Distribution (Focal Press Visual Effects and Animation)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I am an animator who has worked in 16mm film and have been an animation instructor for children and adults for many years. I have been interested in computer animation, but found myself spending most of my time learning new computer programs rather than making animation. Then I would discover that the program I was trying to learn was difficult and not so useful for what I was trying to do.

Finally I have been saved! This book is exactly what I have been waiting for. Steve Subotnick has cut through the unwieldy morass of information to get down to the basics. His book is easy to hold, clearly and simply written, with pleasant, easy to look at drawings of equipment and procedures by Tim Miller, and some exquisite color pages of animaion stills from animators around the world.

This book takes you all the way through the processes of making an animated work and finishing it to a CD or Video which can be viewed by others. Steve saves you a lot of time by suggesting a limited amount of basic hardware and software which is flexible enough to do different types of animation, and inexpensive enough for many independent animators and schools to afford.

The book is inspirational for students and teachers in that Steve has listed outstanding films and videos, considered works of art by the international animation community. The book includes a CD with samples from these films and the end results of the simple exercises in the book. He starts each chapter with a brief quote from different animators.

The book is very enabling. Steve discusses how he and others get ideas and techniques. He encourages originality and creativity. He recommends that you "be yourself" in your animation work. I am using the book myself now and would recommend it to teachers, schools and everyone age 13 and up who is interested in learning to make animation on the computer.

What I noticed immediately, then continued to admire throughout my reading of this book is that this little yellow book is very, very well written. I am impressed. I will use this book to teach my Animation I students, who will benefit from the history of independent animators the book provides, as well as the unbelievably detailed descriptions of the projects this animator completed. Subotnick fully describes what a digital animation studio (at home, or in the classroom) is comprised of, and describes the hardware and software tools animators may need. The book left me without questions! The CD-ROM is creative and of professional quality, and the animation clips on it show a good variety of work. This book was a welcome surprise, and an essential addition to my animation skills library!

As an independent film maker making the switch from 16mm to digital, this book has been indispensable. Not only does it show how to set up your studio, but also gives you estimates of the cost to step into this brave new world.
And what I found truly inspirational was the CD included with the QT movies of other independent animators. Seeing other people's work has always been the best motivation for doing my own. Thank you for putting this together to save us from time wasted trying to figure this out on our own.

This is a reader-friendly book for everyone who's ever wanted to try digital animation but who has been shy of the hi-tech world. Written from the point of view of a very empathetic instructor at Harvard and some of his students, a couple of hours reading this book will have you quickly up and running relatively inexpensive animation software programs. The emphasis is clearly on easy to manage technical solutions that encourage the reader to explore the kind of creative imagination that will produce original well-animated works. And to top it off, the book offers a wonderfully researched set of resources to help the beginning animator take all the steps necessary to stream the work on the web and to prepare and send the work to animation festivals. This is the kind of book that should be required reading in every animation department and it'll be at the top of the list for my Dartmouth students.

This book is truly global in its scope, in both its material and in the lessons it offers. The CD included shows a great variety of styles of animation that mainstream commercial animation neglects. It includes biographies of artists along with some samples of their work.

The book is very user friendly, and offers step-by-step explanations of how to animate and distribute your own film. It includes links and sources of information that are otherwise difficult to obtain, giving the reader the inside scoop on the animation field. I found the resources section of the book particularly helpful.

As an artist working in the animation field, I would recommend this book to any student or veteran of animation, to open their minds to new creative possibilities. This book provides a guide for making animation that anyone with a computer and enough ambition can use to fulfill their dreams of becoming an animator!

I notice all of them only have one review each. Oh well conspiracy theories aside, Overpriced the book doesn't deliver what it promises. Brief superficial over view of animation, more of the book is given to listing past animators, Than any current how-to info.