DIRECTING, DIALOGUE AND ACTING From Richard Williams' The Animator's Survival Kit comes key chapters in mini form. The Animator's Survival Kit is the essential tool for animators. However, sometimes you don't want to carry the hefty expanded edition around with you to your college or studio if you're working on just one aspect of it that day. The Animation Minis take some of the most essential chapters and make them available in smaller, lightweight, hand-bag/backpack size versions. Easy to carry. Easy to study. This Mini focuses on Directing, Dialogue and Acting. As a director, whatever your idea is, you want to put it over, so the main thing with directing is to be clear - very clear. The Director's job is to hold everything together so that the animator can give the performance. Richard Williams shows how that performance can be achieved with flexibility and contrast. With Acting and Dialogue, the temptation is to try to do everything at once - Williams' advice: do one thing at a time.

"A manual of methods, principles and formulas for classical, computer, games, stop motion and internet animators"--Cover.

Animation is one of the hottest areas of filmmaking today—and the master animator who bridges the old generation and the new is Richard Williams. During his nearly fifty years in the business, Williams has been one of the true innovators, winning three Academy Awards and serving as the link between Disney's golden age of animation by hand and the new computer animation exemplified by the films from Pixar. Perhaps even more important, though, has been his dedication in passing along his knowledge to a new generation of animators. In this book, based on his sold-out master classes in the United States and across Europe, Williams provides the underlying principles of animation that every animator—from beginner to expert, classic animator to computer-animation whiz—needs. He illustrates his points with hundreds of drawings, distilling the secrets of the masters into a working system. In this revised edition, he expands upon and illuminates more difficult areas of animation, such as animal action and gaits and the correct use of live action, to help animators push the medium in new directions.

FLEXIBILITY AND WEIGHT From Richard Williams' The Animator's Survival Kit comes key chapters in mini form. The Animator's Survival Kit is the essential tool for animators. However, sometimes you don't want to carry the hefty expanded edition around with you to your college or studio if you're working on just one aspect of it that day. The Animation Minis take some of the most essential chapters and make them available in smaller, lightweight, hand-bag/backpack size versions. Easy to carry. Easy to study. This Mini focuses on Flexibility and Weight. How do we loosen things up and get snap and vitality into our performance at the same time as keeping the figure stable and solid? The answer: successive breaking of joints to give flexibility. In this mini, Williams stresses the importance of knowing where the weight is on every drawing. He demonstrates that the best way to show weight is to be aware of it, conscious of it, and think about it all the time - knowing where the weight is coming from, where it's traveling over and where it's transferring to.

RUNS, JUMPS AND SKIPS From Richard Williams' The Animator's Survival Kit comes key chapters in mini form. The Animator's Survival Kit is the essential tool for animators. However, sometimes you don't want to carry the hefty expanded edition around with you to your college or studio if you're working on just one aspect of it that day. The Animation Minis take some of the most essential chapters and make them available in smaller, lightweight, hand-bag/backpack size versions. Easy to carry. Easy to study. This Mini focuses on Runs, Jumps and Skips. As with Walks, the way we run shows our character and personality. A lazy, heavy person is going to run very differently to an athletic ten-year-old girl. Richard Williams demonstrates how - when you're doing a walk and you take both legs off the ground, at the same time and for just one frame - a walk becomes a run. So, all the things we do with walks, we can do with runs. This Mini presents a collection of Williams' runs, jumps and skips inspired by some of the cleverest artists from the Golden Age of Animation

The Cartooning titles in the How to Draw and Paint Series are packed with fundamental cartooning and animation techniques, along with practical information and helpful tips to get beginners started quickly and easily. Each book covers a variety of cartooning styles and teaches readers how to render residents of the cartoon world with simple step-by-step instructions.

There’s no class in art school that can teach you this. Believe it or not, there’s a lot more to directing a great animated film than beautiful illustrations and cool characters. You need to bring out your inner creative visionary and take your savvy leadership skills to the front lines - being great with a pencil, brush, or stylus is not enough. Tony Bancroft released his inner creative visionary when creating Mulan. In Directing for Animation he shows you exactly how. Pull the right strings to bring your characters to life and center your story by developing the visual cues that lend to your audiences understanding of the plot, place, and purpose. Tony walks you through the process, bringing you behind the scenes of real, well-known projects - with a little help from some famous friends. Learn from the directors of Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, Ice Age, Chicken Run, and Kung Fu Panda, and see how they developed stories and created characters that have endured for generations. Get the inside scoop behind these major features...pitfalls and all.