Customer Reviews

Stop Motion: Craft Skills for Model Animation, Second Edition (Focal Press Visual Effects and Animation)

5 star:		(5)
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I knew nothing about stop motion before I read this book so I did learn a lot but there is no way I could make a stop motion film yet. The book leaves too many holes. For example, while the book mentions dope sheets and story boards (and show small, difficult-to-read examples), it doesn't tell how to do them. The book also wastes a lot of time and space with extended quotes from people in the industry. For the most part, they are "funny day at the office" stories and not terribly helpful to a beginner. Overall, I think this book is trying to be everything to everybody so although many, many topics are touched upon, nothing is covered in enough detail. Also note that most everything is British, from prices of equipment to supplier and studio resources. So, if you're curious about the world of stop motion but don't care about doing it, this would be a good book. If you want to actually do stop motion, you'll need something better than this.

Stop motion animation, by it's very nature is a multi skill endeavor. You need to know about timing, how bodies move, the effects of gravity, how to shoot video, how to take pictures, how to tell a story, and how to make movie sets and miniature figures! Wow, that seems like a lot and I hope I didn't scare you off.

My point is that stop motion entails a lot of different kinds of things --- And this book touches on all of these things. And it does it very nicely. You get a little bit of the history of stop motion and learn about some of the seminal works in the genre. And you get good information about how to make things move in a way that looks natural. And you get some good information about lighting, building sets and building figures.

This is simply an excellent introduction to actually doing stop motion animation. I used this book to make a short animation.

You can't go wrong and if you don't know much about how to do animation but want to learn this is a great place to start.
Highly recommended. It covers a lot of technical stuff in an easy to understand and not so technical way which is just terrific. Whether you are a amateur or aspiring professional you will benefit from this book.

This book was very informative, easy to use and had tactics that were helpful. This is definitely a book that should be a part of your on-hand arsenol resources for doing stop motion and having an impact through your creativity on all your future audiences.

This is a very thorough manual for doing stop motion animation...recommended for those who are serious about learning this skill.

Essential book if you want to be an animator, fast delivery great book, I love amazon!

This book was bought as a gift, but the recipient was very pleased with it and excited to start using it.