The Animator`s Woorkbook – Step by Step Techniques of Drawn Animation

By Tony White

Watson Guptill, 1988

8¼" x 11", 160 pages

This is a small book with a lot of illustrations that covers every aspect of animation. from tools to animation techniques. It can complement "Cartoon Animation" because it basically covers the same material but puts emphasis on different details and different aspects.

The Toolkit and the Technical Information sections cover the tools used in traditional 2D animation such as the pegs and the lightbox, the graticule, etc. Not much use for 3D animators here.

For instance, the Inbetween section covers the details of how the inbetween charts are encoded and how slow-ins and slow-outs are indicated. Then the author demonstrates tricks of the trade for doing the actual inbetween drawings. Those are nice tricks to know for traditional 2D animation but is useless for 3D animation techniques.

Then the Head Turns section shows trade tricks for making head turn less mechanical by following downward or upward arcs. Good ways of making eye blinks are also shown. Those are tricks that may be used for 2D animation as well as for 3D animation.

The Walks, the Runs and the Realistic Touches sections are relatively large. In some way, it made me think of Animator's Survival Kit in that it covers much more than the standard walk and run cycles. It is not as extensive as the Survival Kit though. It covers timing in walks and run cycles to make a walk or run look lighter or heavier. There are usefull informations in there that I did not see covered as well in the Survival Kit. Another aspect that is covered is how the body tilts further forward from a walk to a run. How the body adjust to weight and carying weight is also explained. All that is very usefull information for 3D animation just as as well as for 2D animation.

The Exagerated Action section covers techniques such as the Take and the Double-Take, the Sneek and the Stagger. There again, usefull for 3D as well as for 2D animation.

The Animal Kingdom is really way too short to be usefull and the Dialogue section covers the use of the bar sheet and the exposure sheet and offers no example of actual lip-sync. It goes directly into animating laughters. This is not a very usefull section, especially for 3D animators.

The section Animated Effects contains interesting observations about what makes wind, water and fire look convincing. Nice for 2D animation but apart from the observations themselve, I,m not sure how this translate to 3D animation.

So as the title says, this book is really for Drawn Animation. Only about half of it's content can translate to 3D but those sections are well done and covers aspects that are not covered elsewhere. I'm not sure this is worth the buy though. If I had to keep only one "How-To" style book, it would definitely not be this one.