Animation From Pencils to Pixels – Classical Techniques for Digital Animators

By Tony White

Focal Press, 2006

7¼" x 10¼" , 500 pages

Things I find a plus with this book is that Tony White covers about every aspect of animation including the financing, project management, story, animation techniques, etc. Everything really. For example, there is a section of the book that explains and shows how to properly do page flipping to preview a set of frames. The technique is different when working with top pegs vs bottom pegs and he explains both ot them. This is an example of the breadth of the book.

The section titled "Digital Desktop Production" enumerates describes about every conceivable job titles in the animation industry for both 2D and 3D animation. This is interesting not only for learning who does what but, in the context of "one artist, one studio" for figuring all that will have to be done and thus all the different skills that the loner animator will likely need to develop.

This is not an "how to draw and animate" book though. It is really more about the process of making an animation, the tools, the supporting documents, the preparations, the markups, etc. The principles of animations are also reviewed but not more than in his previous book "The animator's Workbook". For someone looking for how to proceed for an animation project, this book covers it all from start to finish.

The principles of animation are covered with examples and just enough details to give a good idea about the meaning of each concepts but not enough details to show the differences between do's and don'ts. The "principles" section have several sub topics that are usually not covered byt other "principles" coverages because they are taken for granted. Topics such as walking and running with personality, takes, eyes and expressions are detailed. The elusive concepts of "arc" and "path of action" are also described.

The very important concept of timing is well explained and demonstrated with tricks to draw inbetweens including tricks for figuring the arcs. This is not directly applicable to a 3D animator but the timing principles are still valid and important in 3D as well as in 2D. The concept of "arc" is also very important in 3D animation but while getting a nice arc can be done relatively easily in 2D because the animator controls every aspects of the drawings, a nice arc with nice slow-in and slow-out can be difficult to get right in 3D especially when animating a character's member at the end of a long forward kinematic (FK) chain.

I like that Mr White debunks some of the accepted "rules" of animation that were devised for when everything had to be done manually and mechanically but have no good reasons to still be used now that we work with computers. He also debunks some more fundamental rules too. I did like his passage about Squash and Stretch where he recommends staying with squashes and stretches that stay anatomically plausible. He writes :

"Today, where most animated characters possess a solid anatomy and the notion of a structured skeletal foundation beneath their skin, the old idea of rubbery extremes are obsolete. Nevertheless, the principles of squash and stretch remain valid, although today they are implemented within the limits of the anatomy"

Tony White

And he continues on by showing how squash and stretch should be done. Still very exagerated but still anatomically plausible. I found this little section particularly interesting because I oftentime observed that the "Squash and Stretch" principle is probably the least understood principles and the most misused by beginning animators which results in character motions the looks like inflatable soft rubber that lack consistence and morphology integrity. This is probably dues to the bouncing ball exercise where the basic principle is demonstrated but very seldom do the same demonstration gets transposed to characters comprising both hard structures and soft tissues. In this context, Mr White advise is very welcome but there again, more examples would have been welcome (See "Cartoon Animation" by Preston blair for an illustrated explanation of the principle).

A lot of the animation principles and techniques can be transposed directly from 2D animation to 3D animation but there are a few techniques that requires a step of imagination to transpose. And even though the book covers both 2D and 3D animations, a lot of animation techniques are only presented from a 2D animation point of view. For insance, techniques like staggers and repeated pans are doable in 3D but the details on how to do the same effect in 3D would be dramatically different than in 2D but this is not explained. Other techniques, like shadow effects would require good technical knowledge to go past the default shadow behavior of 3D packages.

The book also covers more modern technologies such as Vector and Flash for web and non-web animations and 3D animation. The section on 3D modeling and animation just skims through the topic.

Mr White wrote this book to try to supplement the lack of mentoring in the animation industry. He really wanted this book to accompany a newbee animator and be a printed mentor. There is even a section about job hunting and showcasing the artist work.

If I have a critique about this book, though, it is that it is heavy with text for an "animation" book. Yes, everything is covered in its tiny details. Even the most obvious. It is everything you always wanted to know about doing animation. But I wonder how many people will actually read it. Fortunately, there are enough illustrations and photos to be informative even without reading it from cover to cover.