The Animator’s Survival Kit: Animated

A book I've got on my reading list for all of the games-related units I am teaching at Bournemouth University is Richard Williams’ The Animator’s Survival Kit, widely accepted as a must-have resource for animators.

After its publication in 2001, lecturers quickly added the title to required reading lists for students, while studio professionals began to keep a copy close at hand. So what could be done to improve on this established classic? Simple: add animation.

The book’s content originated from masterclasses that Williams gave to major studios such as Pixar, Dreamworks and ILM. His new 16-DVD box set, The Animator’s Survival Kit: Animated, amalgamates footage from one of these masterclasses, filmed at Blue Sky Studios, with the original content of the book.

The training starts by exploring how animators learn, explaining the importance of life drawing, how to think about animation, how to animate and how not to. Walk cycles, accents, vibrates, anticipation, eases, overlapping action and weight are among the many topics covered. Although the discs can be studied in any order, Williams suggests that “you swallow the whole pill: start from the basics and move on layer by layer through to [more] sophisticated uses”. The more you learn from the basics, the more sophisticated your work can become.

Aimed at both students and professionals, the discs excel in revealing the fundamental principles behind animation, making it suitable for animators working in any field, including classical, digital, games, stop-motion and online animation. During the course of the videos, Williams frequently reaches for a marker pen and illustrates his points with drawings.

In addition to between 30 and 50 minutes of video footage, each DVD includes up to 30 minutes of animation, running to hundreds of individual animated example over the course of the box set. Each can be viewed and analysed frame by frame, making this an invaluable resource.

Check this out at (pricing is steep, but it should be well worth it!) http://www.theanimatorssurvivalkit.com/