Customer Reviews

Gardner's Guide to Animation Scriptwriting: The Writer's Road Map (Gardner's Guide series)

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Is a shame that a great book like this only have one review until now ( and a wrong one ) hence I'll try to correct this.

NOTE: Be aware that this review is for the GARDNER'S GUIDE TO ANIMATION SCRIPTWRITING ( this review is wrongly appearing TOO in the "Gardner's guide to Multimedia & animation Studios", some kind of problem in Amazon.com I Think, :-( SORRY Chaz )

I bought this book in August 2001, if you are looking for books about scripts there are many ones, some very good, but any is writed exclusively thinking in animation and cartoons. For the animator this is an invaluable reference, here is the summary:

1.- Animation - An Overview
2.- Cartoon Genres
3.- The Moral
4.- Central Idea
5.- Dead End Ahead - The Central question
6.- The Characters and the Character Arc
7.- Introduction to Plot
8.- The Twenty-Two minute Structure
9.- The Eleven Minute Structure
10.- The Seven Minute Structure
11.- Make 'Em Laugh - Levels of Humor
12.- Prose
13.- Dialogue
14.- The Scene
15.- Broadcast Guidelines
16.- The Rewrite
17.- The Writing Process of Animation
Glossary, Cartoonography, Filmography, Road Map Forms, Apendix

The book itself have a good easyreading design, with plenty of quotations and references to well known movies or series, here you have the basics of writing but you can find more profound books about this, the special of the book is that is writed for cartoons specially, have 3 chapters studying the structures of the cartoonscript of 7, 11 and 22 minutes, of course you can apply all the information for an animation of any length, movies or shorts.

Including checklists for Structure, Characters, Scenes, Dialogue, Humor, Prose, 3 Structure guides, 75 Excercises, 37 Rules and an Animated 7 minutes Teleplay in the appendix: You have here a book that will go to occupy an important place near you.

I'm not an acclaimed screenwriter in fact I'm a novice in this area but I'm working with a firm producing some animations and I can asure you that this book can prevent you some rocky mistakes in this special field and even If you are a Pro you'll find some good points here.

I knew that scriptwriting was formulaic, with lots of rules about what should happen at what page and all of the structural details. But this book plots out exactly what a cartoon should do! From the general outline to the set-in-stone types of humor. Who knew that anyone had codified all this stuff! It's all here, from the Flintstones to South Park. This is how it's done.
Far from being confining, I'm finding that reading and re-reading this tome (easy to read tome!) is inspiring beyond belilef. I'm cranking up my DVD player and finding that every detail of every chapter is true down to the last nut and bolt. Professionals have been following these guidelines for decades!
This book must be the textbook for lots of classes about this subject somewhere.
I'm a 3d animator, and it's my goal to make animated shorts a lot more "arty" than Pepper Ann and Rugrats. But this book is such an eye-opener! I've never realized that even the cartoons that I've loved for years - Simpsons, South Park, Ren & Stimpy - all of them! They all follow the same rules.
One funny thing about this book: For a writing manual, it has a phenomenal number of typos. What a hoot. The book is incredibly easy to find your way around. The author is simply a master at her craft, and the insights are invaluable for anyone not employed in Callifornia. Yet you can find 1 or 2 typos or grammatical errors per page. I guess they skimped on the editing.
If you're concerned about developing content for your own animations, or aiming at a job scripting for cartoons, or just want to round out your knowledge about scriptwriting in general, this is an awesome book.

This is a great book for anyone that wants to learn the structure of writing for animated shows. It reveals the formula for creating successful stories, characters, and scripts.

The only drawback was the overuse of the road sign analogies. Don't get me wrong, they work fine to illustrate the points, but I just felt there were too many of them.

In any case, an excellent book if you're starting out your career in animation...like me:)!

The book's central metaphor, comparing animation scriptwriting to a highway, was totally lost on me and therefore I didn't find the book very helpful. I understood the basic idea of the metaphor, but in presentation it felt as if I was being asked to learn a foreign language that I would never use again after finishing the book. I pretty much felt annoyed as I read through the book looking for information of value. "Central Question Avenue," indeed. Sections that listed the key points of animation scriptwriting in plain English would have been greatly appreciated. I consider this book an example of an author trying too hard to be clever. Concepts of narratology can generally be expressed in plain language and I would prefer that they are expressed that way. This book may work for you if you buy into the author's conceit and then follow it chapter by chapter and step by step in producing a script. I consider its value as a reference book next to nil. I had hoped for something more like Syd Field's screenplay books where you can use summaries of the process to prompt you after getting the basic overall concept. Also, I felt that Internet cartoons were ignored as is the case with most books of this type.

This is BY FAR the best, most concise, easy to understand, easy to follow, fun book on the subject of animation screenwriting. It covers 22, 11, and 7 minute formats and I highly recommend it.

This book would have been way better without all the road analogies. It is so confusing to the point where I had to highlight everything that actually made sense which was usually things that didn't have anything to do with the road analogies. You have to dig into this book a little too much in order to understand what the author is trying to say. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone. It did have helpful information, but the format was just too confusing for my tastes. I like things to be clear, not compared to race car drivers and things of that nature.

Gardner's Guide to Animation is really an excellent guide, with good amiunt of information, very well writen and excercises for every chapter.

Gardner's Guide To Multimedia & Animation Studies is the complete, definitive, "user friendly", industry directory for anyone seeking jobs, connections, and services information and contacts. In addition to indices listed by state or province, and company name, Gardner's Guide To Multimedia & Animation Studies is carefully organized in four parts: East Coast, Central; West Coast; Canada. Within each regional section the companies are alphabetically listed and include the number of employees, areas of specialization; a brief description, address, phone, fax, and website address. Gardner's Guide To Multimedia & Animation Studies is a very practical and highly recommended addition to industry professional and library reference collections.