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Preston Blair

Cartoon Animation (Collector's Series) Paperback – January 1, 1994

by Preston Blair (Author)

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In Cartoon Animation, acclaimed cartoon animator Preston Blair shares his vast practical knowledge to explain and demonstrate the many techniques of cartoon animation. By following his lessons, you can make any character—person, animal, or object—come to life through animated movement!

Animation is the process of drawing and photographing a character in successive positions to create lifelike movement. Animators bring life to their drawings, making the viewer believe that the drawings actually think and have feelings. Cartoon Animation was written by an animator to help you learn how to animate. The pioneers of the art of animation learned many lessons, most through trial and error, and it is this body of knowledge that has established the fundamentals of animation. This book will teach you these fundamentals.

Animators must first know how to draw; good drawing is the cornerstone of their success. The animation process, however, involves much more than just good drawing. This book teaches all the other knowledge and skills animators must have. In chapter one, Preston Blair shows how to construct original cartoon characters, developing a character’s shape, personality, features, and mannerisms. The second chapter explains how to create movements such as running, walking, dancing, posing, skipping, strutting, and more. Chapter three discusses the finer points of animating a character, including creating key character poses and in-betweens. Chapter four is all about dialogue, how to create realistic mouth and body movements, and facial expressions while the character is speaking. There are helpful diagrams in this chapter that show mouth positions, along with a thorough explanation of how sounds are made using the throat, tongue, teeth, and lips. Finally, the fifth chapter has clear explanations of a variety of technical topics, including tinting and spacing patterns, background layout drawings, the cartoon storyboard, and the synchronization of camera, background, characters, sound, and music.

Full of expert advice from Preston Blair, as well as helpful drawings and diagrams, Cartoon Animation is a book no animation enthusiast should be without.

Print length

224 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Walter Foster Publishing
Publication date

January 1, 1994
Dimensions

10.5 x 0.5 x 9.25 inches
ISBN-10

1560100842
ISBN-13

978-1560100843
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Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

The Collectors Series books offer a selection of popular projects form best-selling titles in the How to Draw and Paint series. The Collectors Series books cover fundamentals and explore the techniques of featured artists. Each title provides in-depth instruction and numerous illustrations. All are perfect for the coffee table or reference library.

About the Author

Preston Blair (1910–1995) was a native Californian who studied art at the Otis Art Institute, as well as illustration under Pruett Carter at Chouinard Art Institute (now California Institute of the Arts). As a member of the California Watercolor Society and the American Watercolor Society in New York, he exhibited work all over the country. Preston was a fine artist during the early days of full-length feature animation. For the Disney production Fantasia, he designed and animated the hippos in "The Dance of the Hours." He also animated Mickey Mouse in The Sorcerer's Apprentice, portions of the classic film Pinocchio, and the famous scene in Bambi when the owl talks about love in his "twitterpated" speech. At MGM, Preston directed Barney Bear short films, and he was well known as the designer and animator of one of Tex Avery's epic shorts Red Hot Riding Hood. Preston later moved to Connecticut, where he produced television commercials, educational films, and cartoons, including TheFlintstones. Before he passed away, he worked as an inventor of interactive TV programs, such as teaching reading through animation and virtual reality games featuring full-sized animated opponents.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Walter Foster Publishing; Collectors edition (January 1, 1994)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 224 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1560100842
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1560100843
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 10.5 x 0.5 x 9.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #390,756 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #146 in How to Create Anime & Cartoons
- #2,433 in Fiction Satire
- #4,071 in Art History & Criticism (Books)

Customer Reviews:
669 ratings

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Preston Blair

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Preston Blair was a native Californian from Redlands. He attended Pomona College, then studied art at the Otis Art Institute and illustration under Pruett Carter at Chouinard Art Institute (now California Institute of the Arts). He exhibited widely as a member of the California Watercolor Society and the American Watercolor Society in New York.

Blair was one of the fine artists of animation. With the Disney Studio, he designed and animated the hippos in "The Dance of the Hours" and animated Mickey Mouse in the "Sorcerer's Apprentice" (both in Fantasia), parts of Pinocchio, and the segment in Bambi when the owl tell about love in the "tiwitterpatted" speech.

At MGM, Blair directed Barney Bear shorts, and is well known as the animator and designer of Red Hot Riding Hood in the Tex Avery epic shorts. Later, Blair moved to Connecticut and produced television commercials, educational films, and half-hour cartoon episodes (including the Flinstones) for West Coast producers. More recently, he was an inventor of interactive TV systems using animation methods to teach reading or to provide full-figure game action that simulates reality--for example, playing tennis with an animated opponent.

Blair died in April 1995 at the age of 85.

Customer reviews

5 star		87%
4 star		7%
3 star		3%
2 star		1%
1 star		1%

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Barb

Better than I expected.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 16, 2022

Verified Purchase

Better than I expected. Thought the book would have marks because I bought it used, but that was not the case. Came earlier than expected and the book looked almost new.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 12, 2012

Verified Purchase

Some of you searching for a book like this are probably students such as myself. I must say that this book is perfect for people who are interested in trying their hand at animation. When I purchased this book, I was enrolled in an animation/games program at my school but I had never really made any animations aside from some spur of the moment flipbooks and stopmotion videos. Despite this, I wanted to make sure that animation was the career for me and I wanted to build up my skills so that I could be ahead of my classmates.

This book was perfect! It taught me the basics of many different techniques and principles that are the foundations for all animation, not just cartoons! Thanks to me spending one summer and a winter break with this book, I not only learned many skills at a more advanced level than most of my classmates, but more importantly, I learned DISCIPLINE. If you watch any review with animators on Youtube or if you have the opportunity to speak to one in person, do not be surprised if the main advice they give you is to have discipline. By using these exercises, I taught myself drawing stamina and the discipline to keep improving on my work.

A word of caution: many animators and reviewers on this site are probably going to advise that any "serious" animators skip over this book and check out Richard Williams' "Animator's Survival Kit". My opinion: start with Preston Blair's book first, then, if you are sure you are serious about animation, check out Williams book. I recently acquired the "Survival Kit" and while it is an excellent resource for animators in all fields, it will most likely intimidate beginners. If I had read Williams' book before Blair's I probably would have been put off by its encyclopedic size and its pages-upon-pages of massive keyframe breakdowns.

I do take points off for some outdatedness. While some information such as the infamous "ball bounce breakdown" in this book is somewhat outdated (Kahl's method is considered the standard nowadays),other methods, such as cel animations and limited animation for tv is even more outdated! You will be hard-pressed to find a studio that still uses cels and traditional film animation cameras. But even these aren't terrible problems since those chapters are educational and show what the industry used to look like not too long ago (this book was first written in the 80s, and I believe that the most recent edition update is from the early 90s).

If you are studying primarily computer animation such as myself, you will probably find that the basic principles are still relevant to CG, but that the absence of a mention of computers to be strange. Considering that Blair passed away in the mid-90s it is probably inevitable that computer animation would not be touched upon.

Despite this, this book is an important first step into the right direction.

15 people found this helpful

Helpful

Jonhayashi1

Classic cartooning book from an animation master!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 7, 2013

Verified Purchase

In the 1980s, when I was a Pratt student in Brooklin, I was experimenting with a super 8 camera. (Who remembers super 8 now, right?!) But with that I was able to try out the information on movement from veteran animater, Preston Blair! I love the old Disney classics, Pinnochio, Fantasia, etc. as well as the warner Brother cartoons and MGM cartoons and Blair contributed to Golden age of cartoons in the 40s and 50s! His drawings from Fantasia( the dancing hippo) and "Red" the sexy girl from "Red hot riding hood" are so inspiring to any wanna be animater! No one book can have everything you need to be a great animater and it takes a fasination with how people and animals move as well as dedication to finishing the work to improve but Blairs drawings are clear with simple direct communication! I have the original How to animate cartoons vol 1 and 2 and I have worn out the covers so it's great to have this later edition that combines the 2 books with new illustrations from this master animater! Pages 80 to 87 include drawings of a wicked witch, cute kids and a pretty heroine that are not in the earlier volumes. The witch drawings have strong "wicked" attitude with evil poses and hand gestures that say "witch!" while the heroine drawings have that pretty Dorothy damsel quality from the Wizard of Oz! I also think of Wendy from Disney's Peter Pan. Blair made what he did look easy when it certainly wasn't but the pages make the art of animation accessable and understandable and fun to draw! Pages 184 and 185 show his drawings of the Honeymooners and the character and attitude of Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton are clearly there! And we all know that the Flintstones are Hanna and Barbera's stone age version of that classic series. The pages that show run , walk, gallop, sneak cycles etc are drawn so they can be easily adapted to any character you can imagine and draw! I'm so glad to have this mint condition book to go with my earlier Blair vol1 & 2 on animation at a good low price! There is great nostalgia in looking at these techniques today in the midst of all the CGI hype! Thanks Amazon. com!

6 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

N

Industry standard book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 9, 2020

Verified Purchase

As an animator I can say this goes everywhere with me. I choose it over the Richard Williams book any day (personal preference). Its alot less mechanical and more about the re-tinkered character designs Preston Blair used to illustrate these teachings. It has clear drawings which harken back to Golden Age Animation (you can see what characters hes reworked to not look like Tom and Jerry!). Had my copy since 2003 but bought this for my 6yo Nephew as hes started drawing alot more. This book is a treasure...Ill probably be buried with it! XD

3 people found this helpful

Peter

The book I have been looking for all these years...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 23, 2015

Verified Purchase

I have bought so many many books on drawing and how to draw, and have become so knowledgeable on the subject I have considered a career in art teaching! Finally I stumbled upon this book and it's what I wanted. Something of a workbook, entirely practically based, giving the reader plenty of scope to experiment with an ultimate goal of being able to draw from the imagination. I guess it teaches Disney style cartoons and expressions, but that is not an issue with me as I like that style. Once you have got a grounding in that you can always proceed to develop your own style.

2 people found this helpful

Miss P

Dated

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 25, 2022

Verified Purchase

This book is good to understand animation but feels dated. I prefer Richard Williams one.

J. George

Recommend

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 20, 2021

Verified Purchase

Fantastic book for the novice.

vicky#d

Gift

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 1, 2020

Verified Purchase

Bought for my ten year old grandson who wants to learn about animation. He was amazed and excited when he opened it.

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