The Animator's Survival Kit – A Manual of Methods, Principles and Formulas for Classical, Computer, Games, Stop Notion and Internet Animators

By Richard Williams

Faber and Faber, 2001

9½" x 11", 342 pages

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I've read this Book by Richard Williams for the second time. The first time was when I bought the book when it came out. And I have the impression that I will probably reread it again eventually since re-reading it a second time brought me insights that I could not have when I read it the first time, thanks for animating on TWO. Nothing like having to struggle with animating to help relate to what is demonstrated in this book. But for exactly this same reason, I don't think that reading this book in the abstact, meaning without astraining oneself in animating, will brinb any usefull and lasting insights. This is really a book for the animator in the field.

As the subtitle points, this is really a book of methods, principles and formulas. This is really a book for animator. There is not much text in this book but a lot and a lot of animation frames, all broken down into extremes, keys, passing positions, and inbetweens. It was relatively easy to read.

The longest section of the book is about walks. 73 pages of infinite variations on the theme of walking. This is not even touching running. There is another 40 pages section for runs, jumps and skips. Most of the content about the walks is about how far one technique can be pushed, how far rules can be broken. After a few dozens pages of that, this is almost too much, and then he comes back quickly to covering aspects like weight shifts, belt lines, arm movements etc, in just a few pages.

In comparison to the long chapters on walks and runs, I found the chapters about flexibility, weight, anticipation, takes and accent, timing, etc. way too short for my taste. But fortunately, everything that an animator need to know and practive is there. Those aspect are just not declinated into their possible infinite variations like the walks were.

Even though Mr Williams likes to push everything quite far, I found it interesting that he is not a proponent of the Squatch and Stretch style. There are actually like only 3 places in the whole book where he clearly uses the squash and Stretch technique. On the other hand, he likes to use the technique of breaking the joints and covers this technique extensively in the book. I like this approach very much as this helps keep a sense of realism to the characters while still getting possibly wildely exagerated performances.

Of all the books on animation, this one is definitely one of the must have for the practitioners.