Anime Studio: The Official Guide [Paperback]

Kelly L. Murdock (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1598634321 | ISBN-13: 978-1598634327 | Publication Date: January 18, 2008 | Edition: 1

Discover all of the unique capabilities of Anime Studio, a 2D animation software program with some amazing advanced features such as the ability to move the camera in 3D, a bone-based rigging system for manipulating 2D images and vectors, particle systems, dynamic bones, and the ability to import and view 3D models with textures. "Anime Studio™: The Official Guide" shows first-time animators, hobbyists, and digital enthusiasts how to create, render, and animate characters and even entire scenes that can be exported to various video, TV, and web formats for viewing and sharing. Using clear examples and step-by-step tutorials to help you conquer each feature and new skill, the book includes instruction on managing and configuring the workspace, working with layers, using drawing tools, editing curves, working with bones, and adding sound. You'll even learn how to render a final scene and export it, import and integrate 3D models and textures, video, and Photoshop files, and add special effects. "Anime Studio: The Official Guide" will help you master all of the essential features of the software as well as give you creative inspiration for your own projects when you are ready to go beyond the basics with this innovative animation program.

Product Details

• Paperback: 487 pages
• Publisher: Course Technology PTR; 1 edition (January 18, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1598634321
• ISBN-13: 978-1598634327
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #774,736 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Extensive resource for both the novice and advanced user, February 29, 2008

By 

Diane Cipollo (Editor at BellaOnline.com) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Anime Studio: The Official Guide (Paperback)

This book by Kelly L Murdock is an extensive resource for both the novice and advanced Anime Studio user. The short, single-topic chapters are organized to make it easy for the reader to find information throughout the project workflow. Murdock uses simplified example files, included on the book's CD, to demonstrate each step of the production process.

Murdock begins with something that I haven't seen included in computer software books of late which is a history of Anime Studio. Next, he jumps right in to a discussion of the layout of the user interface, keyboard shortcuts and customizing the workspace. With that out of the way, he walks the reader through starting a new project, and opening and saving existing projects.

As with most animation and graphics programs, layers are used for structuring and organizing your project. Murdock thoroughly covers the basics of vector layers as well as blend modes and masking. Now you are ready to create the objects that you will eventually animate. He discusses aspects of vector drawing including freehand drawing, points, curves, regular shapes and built-in drawing scripts, a very nice feature of Anime Studio. Text is next on the agenda and Murdock covers adding text to your project and how to work with the text once it has been converted to curves and points.

In the next few chapters, Murdock reduces Anime Studio objects down to their primary elements which are points, curves, fills and outlines. He covers the basics such as selecting, deleting, editing and transforming each of these individual parts. Most of the color and effects applied to these primary elements are controlled through the Styles palette. You will learn how to apply color to outlines and fills as well as use brushes and special effects.

Now that Murdock has covered all the basics for creating objects or content in Anime Studio, its time to introduce animation. He starts with a discussion of camera motion and 3D space and moves on to cover bones and skeletal hierarchy which you will bind to your characters to control their movements. Once you can move your characters like a puppeteer, you will build a sequence of movements into an animation using keyframes, graphs and scripts within the Timeline palette.

Next, Murdock switches gears to discuss the Content Library and several ways to import content into your project such as movies, 3D objects, vector images from Illustrator and non-vector images from Photoshop. Finally, he discusses the Actions palette, the LUA scripting language and creating reuseable scripts.

You have several options for publishing your animation and Murdock discusses how to preview a render of your scene and how to export your animation in the Flash, AVI and QuickTime formats.

Kelly L Murdock has worked on several large-scale 3D projects and is the author of many computer graphics books.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Useful, but mainly due to lack of competition, January 10, 2009

By 

MartinP "MartinP" (Nijmegen, The Netherlands) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Anime Studio: The Official Guide (Paperback)

Anime Studio Pro is an amazing software package that seems to linger in the shadows of its more well-known competition, Flash and Toon Boom. While it costs less than half the price of either of these, feature wise it defeats them in many areas when it comes to creating vector-based animation. While the Adobe community is all agog over Flash's new `armature' feature, it is almost laughably limited compared to the extensive bone-controls offered in ASP. It is therefore a good thing to have a serious-looking guide that delves beneath the deceptively simple surface of the program and offers a complete insight into its many possibilities. Users of the non-Pro version should be warned that this book extensively describes many features that will not be available to them.

The book is well-produced, on thick, slightly glossy paper and is in full color throughout. It will deliver what it promises, discovery of all the features of the program. Subjects are arranged so that they more or less follow the animation work-flow. Many features are explained tutorial-wise, for which you can use the files included on the accompanying CD-ROM (which, by the way, does not contain the promised trial version of ASP; not that anyone is likely to buy this book without owning the software). You may or may not like this; personally, I find that using functions by being guided through them step by step is the quickest way to master them.

That said, the book does leave a few things to be desired. For one, the writing can hardly be called inspirational. It doesn't venture much beyond a bone dry summing up of functions. This can be annoying especially when an effect can be achieved in different ways, and you want to know when to use which approach. For instance, what is the advantage of using animation graphs over simply manipulating layers in the scene view when conforming the movement of an object to a landscape? While both options are described, there is no answer to the question when you would want to use which. Nor are there pointers for imaginative ways of using functions for less immediately obvious purposes (such a the example included in the ASP help files, of using a particle system to cover an area with grass).

Wholly in tune with this, the artwork featured in the examples is pretty dismal. If ASP wants to appeal to professionals and wants to look like a serious alternative to Flash or Toon Boom, this book won't be much of a help. Also, clearly some things went wrong in the final editing: some titlepages of the parts that separate themes within the book are in the wrong place (e.g., Part VI, which is dedicated to working with layers, opens with a chapter on exporting video which obviously belongs to the previous part; it is also unclear why Part III, which deals with bones, opens with a chapter on camera movements). Throughout the text typo's can be found (e.g., `affect' instead of `effect'), and sometimes a stray sentence will have landed in the wrong place.

However, as this is the only reference book of its kind for this software and it does offer a complete overview of its features, it will be useful to many ASP users.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I would have given this book five stars,.. but..., January 3, 2009

By 

Manuel C. Hernandez "fromthewoods" (Deer River, MN USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Anime Studio: The Official Guide (Paperback)

Kelly Murdock has given a great deal of consideration to this book in the outreach to a lot of questions most folks will generate in the use and exploration of Anime Studio Pro (currently at version 5.6). Since the change over from e-Frontier to SmithMicro ownership, Anime Studio, both in Debut and Pro offerings have undergone a 'hiccup' since this book was originally conceived. There is no free 30 day trial of Anime Studio Pro 5.0 on the disc. And even with the App. fully installed (I have the full legal version of Pro 5.6) I cannot get some of the examples on the disc to function properly. And for the most part the examples that are laid out in the book are for function exploration and experimentation... The reason this book doesn't receive a 5-star rating from me is that the examples are overly simplistic!.. Let's face it the artwork projects don't do much to sell the product!..
However IF one overlooks the lack of quality artwork in the examples one will get just what the book promises... A COMPLETE GUIDE to Anime Studio Pro (and Debut if you apply it to that). The book is straightforward and easy to read and use for instruction. I intend to use it with kids who want to learn basic animation, and to use it as a class manual for Anime Studio instruction. The REALLY nice thing about this book is that it is multi-layered in its purpose: It can be used for basic, intermediate and advanced instruction. It includes in the chapter on 3D work information on using rather sophisticated softwares such as AutoDesk's MAYA and 3ds MAX, Adobe's PhotoShop and Illustrator as well as apps like Anima8or and Poser with Anime Studio.
Overall from beginning to end this book will get you up and running with Anime Studio (Pro or Debut) and in a lot less time than trying to just use the examples from the software's 'lessons'. Concise, compact and all in one book... SO if you have either of the Anime Studio offerings at your disposal, have THIS BOOK close at hand! (Do make sure you visit the online forum at 'lostmarble' though... updates are always just around the corner and new references too!) Happy animating!!!