The Perspective of Artist and Teacher
I participated in several panels at the 2001 Ottawa Student Animation festival, where groups of earnest educators wrestled with issues such as art versus Commerce in animation education and the cultural place for the independent animator, subjects such as that. A truckload of rich ideas were tossed around that day, which ranged from generous and freewheeling idealism to narrow pedantry, from speakers that came from every stop on the trail from earnest to self-serving. It was in Ottawa that I first heard animation filmmaker and educator Steven Subotnick talk about the book he was preparing on animation production for those who were working primarily the way he was doing it: on desktop digital equipment, primarily in their own homes. I heard Subotnick speak at length at SAFO that year, and I came away impressed by the breadth of his ideas about teaching animation, about the art form itself and the clarity with which he was able to express those ideas.

What a pleasure, therefore, to review Steven Subotnick’s new book, Animation in the Home Digital Studio — Creation to Distribution. Subotnick brings to bear the same breadth of ideas and his normal clarity on a potentially overwhelming subject, wrestles with it lays it out in a manner that manages to be engaging both technically and educationally.

I’d met Steven Subotnick before, in the late ‘90s, when I had organized a show for ASIFA-East in New York City around independent filmmakers who were making independently produced films using computer-based animation, and was able to show two of his films. But I hadn’t had a chance to speak with him in any meaningful or significant way other than to get some background on his production methods at the time. The times have changed since then, in significant ways for such a relatively short period of time, and digital tools of great power and flexibility have become infinitely more available to a much wider range of artists and can be applied to the whole range of animation styles and techniques. The timing for the appearance of a book like the one Subotnick had described preparing when I finally had a chance to speak with him at greater length in Ottawa is opportune, and, with the arrival of Animation in the Home Digital Studio, it’s here now.

The book is misleadingly slim: “how can all that it purports to tell actually be in there?” you might think when first opening it. Subotnick has managed to wedge a wealth of useful practical advice and information between these covers, sometimes with such subtlety that a novice may come away with a deeper and more nuanced grasp of the content than they realize.

Appetizers
Subotnick begins with an introduction that firmly places the reader in the technological present after a brief historical overview of how we got there. Notably, he takes a moment to describe whom he sees as his ideal reader. The Amateur, as he puts it, qualified to mean “anyone who works for love rather than money, whose main motivation is a drive for personal satisfaction and artistic fulfillment… this book is for anyone — the non-artist, the student, as well as the professional artist — who wants to make animation.” This definition flavors all that follows it, and if a reader can embrace this definition without professional or artistic prejudice, Subotnick’s book can be an inspiration.

Given the wealth of books written on animation, any book on the subject is confronted by the troubling chance that enterprising students can surround themselves with any number of those books and get a useful grounding in the craft. Certainly any book that firmly states “This is a book about making animation with the aid of a computer,” as Subotnick’s does, faces that prospect from the sheer metric tonnage alone of software manuals for the programs running on that computer.

Where then, does this book fit? While a book can say a great deal, it is often the presence and perspective of a dynamic and perceptive teacher or mentor than can elevate the efforts of a driven student. Sometimes, that teacher’s motivation can help a motivated student approach art. Those sections of Subotnick’s book that speak clearest with a teaching voice are often most effective. He opens with what he describes as a “personal approach” and begins broad, endeavoring to set a working definition of terms from which his discussions of technique can be grounded. This task is daunting enough for a whole book, let alone the four pages Subotnick devotes to it at the start, and there is unfortunately some of the safety of generality to a few of his introductory definitions. Nevertheless, the definitions are lucid and useful enough for any beginner. He also includes a series of short biographical notes on the artists who’ve contributed to the text and short excerpts of their films are on the CD-ROM that comes with the book.