Cartoon Animation (Collector's Series)

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!

When my brothers and I were boys, long ago, our Mother purchased many Foster publications that guided our efforts to paint and draw, and then to animate. These books were cheap, well laid out and easy to follow. At one count we owned 25 Foster art books. The Preston Blair series on animation were my favorites. I happily purchased Cartoon Animation collector's series on Amazon because it is a valuable reference. In my animation library, this is the book of choice. There are many books designed to show animation beginners the way. Many are pale imitations of this book, replete with characters that look like anyone with little to no experience imagine they can draw. And are authored by people who envision an additional revenue stream. If you were stranded on a tiny island with a heartfelt desire to learn animation, and your only possessions were paper, pencils and this book, and if you applied yourself, in time you would possess all you need to draw animated stories with attention getting movement. Of course there is more to creating animation than line movement. But the principles in this book are timeless and invaluable. Some reviewers here express dissatisfaction with Blair. I liken them to the example of Bart Simpson, who, in an episode of the Simpsons, obtains an electric guitar and within a minute or so, quits the guitar because he cannot wail on it like Otto. You cannot skim through this book and automatically animate images. Animation is labor intensive. It demands an eye, a gift of sorts, to draw forms that move in compelling ways. Everyone cannot be an animator, regardless of what teachers said. The truth is, you cannot always be anything you want to be- and excel. But with application and imagination, you can be animating ably with Cartoon Animation by Blair.

This book rocks if you want to learn cartoon drawing!! Every page guides you, showing you how to start with basic shapes, then how to further define the shapes by adding lines and details, to more shaping and detail, to the finished drawing. There are focus sections on how to do basic faces, how to do cartoon character hands in different poses...and they all show you the starting rough sketch and the finished drawing. And they do it realistically - we've all seen 'how to's' that begin with say, two over lapping circles - and then the next step is a virtually finished drawing - with no guidance of how you got from the beginning to end. This book does NOT do that!! Yes, the pics and the style are a bit dated, he was active in the 1930s thru '70s, so you're not going to get Anime or Manga here!! Because he worked for Disney Studios, the focus is very much on animal characters. But he does include drawing cartoon kids and cartoon character adults. Thanks to this book I'm finally able to take the 'circle head, bean body' as a starting point and develop it into virtually any character! No other how to's got me there consistently!! Preston Blair...you are (were) a god among men!!

I will just start by saying that I love this book! I have a professional background in live action filmmaking, but I've always had an interest in animation as well. This book is fantastic for learning the intricacies of the process. It even has some how-to drawings inside. Preston Blair is one of the original Disney animators, working on projects such as Bambi, Pinocchio, and Fantastia. So, it makes sense that he would be very knowledgeable on the subject, but this book proves that he is also a great teacher. The layout is very simple, yet effective. With this book, anyone can learn the ins and outs of traditional cartoon animation. A must have for animators and highly-recommended for anyone interested in learning more about the process.

Great images and directions. It helps you think about the motion of your characters.

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.

It's nice how it shows the structure in space (drawn 3D), of the basic shapes of the characters for a more solid drawing. This is esential.

How could any real animator give this book a one star and nasty review. This guy is one of the steps all animators should take to get to a career filled with knowledge of the principles! This book is treasure! No it’s not anime and no it’s not CGI, but what the heck man! This explains the basics of all animation! It’s not Salad Fingers. It’s classical Animation at its best!

Regalo a mi nieto, estudiante de Grado Universitario en diseño, imágen y animación en universidad internacional

I hear its the FIRST (or one of the first) animation book written. Covers a great overview of basic animation techniques. It is one of the better how-to draw books. other draw books show HOW this disects characters and fearures that make: Goofy, Cute, Bully, etc. characters. Other concepts are timing, squash and stretch, spacing, staging (drawing so the eye can make out what is shown easier by not overlapping elements). A concept I carry in all professional design. Even though this book is about 2D traditional animation, the concepts carry over to 3D. For those starting out learning or interested in animation and how it is done, I recommend this book as a great starting point.

Fantastico, un must have per chi vuole imparare i trucchi dell'animazione. I concetti si applicano non solo nel mondo 2D ma anche in 3D. Se siete animatori o volete diventarlo questo libro non può mancare nella vostra collezione. La qualità (e quantità) delle illustrazioni vale appieno il prezzo del libro. Consigliatissimo

Ich mache überhaupt keine Animationen, habe aber ein Buch gesucht, in dem man Cartoon-Figuren in verschiedenen Posen finden kann. Ganz wichtig war mir dabei zu sehen, ob z. B. der Fuß bei einer bestimmten Stellung der Figur nach links oder nach rechts zeigen muss. Neben der Gestik war mir auch die Mimik sehr wichtig. All das und noch einiges mehr habe ich hier gefunden. Die Figuren sind nicht nur sehr süß, sie sind, dank der guten Anleitungen, auch sehr einfach nachzuzeichnen, bzw. kann man schnell und einfach eigene Figuren damit entwickeln. Anhand von einigen Beispielen wird auch gezeigt, was man falsch machen könnte. Für mich ist dieses Buch eine wertvolle Hilfe mit der ich meine Skizzen schnell und einfach erstellen und dann in Illustrator als Grafik umsetzen kann. Daher kann ich das Buch auch Leuten empfehlen, die keine Animationen machen sondern wie ich einfach nur zeichnen möchten.

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