Cartoon Animation (Collector's Series)

In the 1980s, when I was a Pratt student in Brooklin, I was experimenting with a super 8 camera. (Who remembers super 8 now, right?!) But with that I was able to try out the information on movement from veteran animater, Preston Blair! I love the old Disney classics, Pinnochio, Fantasia, etc. as well as the warner Brother cartoons and MGM cartoons and Blair contributed to Golden age of cartoons in the 40s and 50s! His drawings from Fantasia( the dancing hippo) and "Red" the sexy girl from "Red hot riding hood" are so inspiring to any wanna be animater! No one book can have everything you need to be a great animater and it takes a fasination with how people and animals move as well as dedication to finishing the work to improve but Blairs drawings are clear with simple direct communication! I have the original How to animate cartoons vol 1 and 2 and I have worn out the covers so it's great to have this later edition that combines the 2 books with new illustrations from this master animater! Pages 80 to 87 include drawings of a wicked witch, cute kids and a pretty heroine that are not in the earlier volumes. The witch drawings have strong "wicked" attitude with evil poses and hand gestures that say "witch!" while the heroine drawings have that pretty Dorothy damsel quality from the Wizard of Oz! I also think of Wendy from Disney's Peter Pan. Blair made what he did look easy when it certainly wasn't but the pages make the art of animation accessable and understandable and fun to draw! Pages 184 and 185 show his drawings of the Honeymooners and the character and attitude of Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton are clearly there! And we all know that the Flintstones are Hanna and Barbera's stone age version of that classic series. The pages that show run , walk, gallop, sneak cycles etc are drawn so they can be easily adapted to any character you can imagine and draw! I'm so glad to have this mint condition book to go with my earlier Blair vol1 & 2 on animation at a good low price! There is great nostalgia in looking at these techniques today in the midst of all the CGI hype! Thanks Amazon. com!

When my brothers and I were boys, long ago, our Mother purchased many Foster publicationsthat guided our efforts to paint and draw, and then to animate. These books were cheap,well laid out and easy to follow. At one count we owned 25 Foster art books.The Preston Blair series on animation were my favorites.I happily purchased Cartoon Animation collector's series on Amazon because itis a valuable reference. In my animation library, this is the book of choice.There are many books designed to show animation beginners the way.Many are pale imitations of this book, replete with characters thatlook like anyone with little to no experience imagine they can draw.And are authored by people who envision an additional revenue stream.If you were stranded on a tiny island with a heartfelt desire to learnanimation, and your only possessions were paper, pencils and this book, and if youapplied yourself, in time you would possess all you need to draw animated storieswith attention getting movement. Of course there is more to creating animation thanline movement. But the principles in this book are timeless and invaluable.Some reviewers here express dissatisfaction with Blair. I liken them tothe example of Bart Simpson, who, in an episode of the Simpsons, obtains an electricguitar and within a minute or so, quits the guitar because he cannot wail on it like Otto.You cannot skim through this book and automatically animate images.Animation is labor intensive. It demands an eye, a gift of sorts, to draw forms thatmove in compelling ways. Everyone cannot be an animator, regardless of what teachers said.The truth is, you cannot always be anything you want to be- and excel.But with application and imagination, you can be animating ably with Cartoon Animation by Blair.

This book rocks if you want to learn cartoon drawing!! Every page guides you, showing you how to start with basic shapes, then how to further define the shapes by adding lines and details, to more shaping and detail, to the finished drawing. There are focus sections on how to do basic faces, how to do cartoon character hands in different poses...and they all show you the starting rough sketch and the finished drawing. And they do it realistically - we've all seen 'how to's' that begin with say, two over lapping circles - and then the next step is a virtually finished drawing - with no guidance of how you got from the beginning to end. This book does NOT do that!!Yes, the pics and the style are a bit dated, he was active in the 1930s thru '70s, so you're not going to get Anime or Manga here!! Because he worked for Disney Studios, the focus is very much on animal characters. But he does include drawing cartoon kids and cartoon character adults. Thanks to this book I'm finally able to take the 'circle head, bean body' as a starting point and develop it into virtually any character! No other how to's got me there consistently!! Preston Blair...you are (were) a god among men!!

A VERY Nicely Done Book

Great images and directions. It helps you think about the motion of your characters.

It's nice how it shows the structure in space (drawn 3D), of the basic shapes of the characters for a more solid drawing. This is esential.