The Best Books To Learn Animation

The Animator's Survival Kit

What are the key books that animation students  should buy to learn the craft of animation?

Books may be a bit old school these days, but a good book is still a great place to start learning about and exploring the world of character animation.

The best books will teach you, immerse you - and inspire you to do your very best work. So, what are the top five books?

Queen's Counsel - For a Few Guineas More

As well as teaching animation at Bucks I also do a weekly cartoon strip in The Times, a satire on law and lawyers.

I first started drawing Queen's Counsel back in 1993, when newspapers were still pretty much the only way that people got their news. And every self-respecting lawyer read the law pages of The Times on Tuesdays.

This year I published my 10th "Queen's Counsel" book - For a Few Guineas More, a collection of the best cartoons published over the last six years in law pages of The Times.


This new book is the one I'm most proud of - in part because it is the first cartoon collection which is in full colour throughout. Queen's Counsel started being printed in colour in The Times in 2011, for the first time.

Animation Reading List: Animator's Survival Kit

Classes at Bucks start on 30 September, so now is the time to get ready, and start doing some general reading about animation.

We recommend one key textbook - all our students should get a copy of  The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams.

The ASK was first published in 2002 as a book, and a few years later was released as a DVD set, and later as an iPad app.

Today the ASK is the leading resource for students wanting to learn animation.

"Prepare to Board" by Nancy Beiman

There is a good deal of cross-over between animation and storyboarding. In the days of traditional 2D animation, many animators were board artists, and vice versa.

Even today, where most of the work we do is digital, traditional drawing skills are very useful for planning animation, by doing quick thumbnail sketches that set out all the key poses in the shot.

One traditional Disney animator who mastered both animation and storyboarding is Nancy Beiman, whose excellent book Prepare to Board! is the main book we recommend to our students.

It is an excellent book from a master animator, who now teaches at Sheridan College in Canada.

How to Get Ready for September

The best book on animation

What kind of preparation should students do before starting with us as undergraduates at Bucks in September? Or, equally importantly, as post-grad students doing the online MA in 3D animation?  It's always good to do a little preparation and get a bit of a head start.

Below is a brief list of stuff to get you under way. You don't have to do all of it, but tick off a few of the things on this list and you will be a making a great start on your animation career.

First, here is a short reading list to get you started. We've narrowed it down to just two key books that we recommend for all our students.

Book Recommendation - Animation Methods by David Rodriguez

Animation Methods by David Rodriguez is a very, very good book on learning animation in Maya.  It's a book that focuses primarily on 3D Character Animation, a step-by-step guide for learning Maya, and the Maya animation tools. It also has useful sections on how to get into the industry, how to make a great demo reel, and how to get a job in animation. We think this is a very useful companion book to the animation and VFX course at Bucks.

It is also an unusual book in that it makes extensive use of QR codes - meaning you can use your smartphone to scan the codes and then view a 3D animated clip of the lesson. So, not only can you read the lesson, but you can also see and understand it through a video demonstration. 

Project Research - And How To Do It

The Library at Bucks - easy to use!

What is research and why do we do it? For animation students, research has a practical as well as an intellectual purpose. It's about figuring out what you are trying to do, by identifying the brief, taking a look at artists whose work inspires you, reading around the subject - and then setting out what your own creative goals are. In short, it's about defining the project, analysing it, thinking about it, and developing your own ideas.

Animator's Survival Kit Now Available on iBooks.

Animator's Survival Kit - now on iBooks

Faber and Faber has just announced the launch of the Animator's Survival Kit for iBooks.  The new edition brings together the complete 'Expanded Edition' of The Animator's Survival Kit with over 100 animated examples from The Animator's Survival Kit Animated DVD box set. It will be available globally, priced at £19.99/$28.99.  What does this mean for students of animation? It means you can now use the ASK on your Mac laptop - you don't need an iPad.

The Animator's Survival Kit for the iPad

The Animator's Survival Kit

As every student of animation knows, the best book for learning animation is The Animator's Survival Kit. For over a decade it has been the industry standard textbook. The only problem with the book is you can't see the animation - which is where the iPad version comes in. It's like having both the DVD series and the book rolled into one, because it doesn't just tell you how to do stuff - it shows you how to do it as well.

The Illusion of Life - the Original Animation Bible

The original animation bible

The Illusion of Life was first published in the 1970s. It caused a sensation among animators, because it represented for the first time in print the accumulated wisdom of the Disney studio - set out in detail for anyone who cared to learn. The 1970s were a lean time for animation; Walt Disney was dead and the revival that would come with Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and The Little Mermaid was still far in the future.

How Do I Get My Book Published? - Ten Rules to Make a Success of It

So you've got a great idea for a book - now you want to know - how do you get it published? The good news is, it has never been easier to get into print. The bad news is, the economics of publishing have never been worse. Plus, writing a whole book is going to be a major effort, so you don't want to waste your time on something that no-one wants to read. So what is answer? Like so many things in media, what you need is a good pitch. Below is our simple guide to getting it right and ensuring that a good publisher will (hopefully) pick up your first book.

How should you get ready for September?

What kind of preparation should students do before starting with us in September at Bucks? Here's a checklist of stuff to get you started. It's not comprehensive, and you don't have to do all of it, but tick off a few of the things on this list and you will be a making a great start on your animation career here at Bucks.

Tom Sito's new book on the History of Computer Animation

FLIP: Tom Sito's History of Computer Animation: Ivan Sutherland demonstrates Sketchpad, 1963. Being of a generation for which computers represented the future, it is a bit unset...