Don Hahn's The Alchemy of Animation deserves a spot on the shelf next to other classic reference books for the aspiring animator.

Nearly every dedicated practitioner of animation has read Preston Blair's Animation from cover to cover, and has probably owned multiple copies of the quintessential "how-to" guide. Old school animators have it on their bookshelves not far from Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas' The Illusion of Life, which is probably sharing shelf space with Richard Williams' The Animator's Survival Kit. Those are all indispensable reference books for the aspiring animator, and just about everything that a person could ever want to know about traditional 2D animation is covered by those three volumes. Accessible to novices but loaded with enough useful advice that even the most seasoned animator can turn to them time and time again, and will be able to for generations to come (Blair's book has been in print consistently for 60 years and is still part of every Animation 101 course reading list).

But what about the up-and-coming computer animators? Or the would-be stop-motion animators? Or, so help us, the wannabe sales and marketing execs? Although I can't say for sure that it will turn up on syllabi in 2068, Disney Editions' latest book, The Alchemy of Animation by Don Hahn, animators are already making space for it on their bookshelves, somewhere between Eric Goldberg's Character Animation Crash Course and their next replacement copy of Preston Blair's Animation.

Hahn is well known to modern animation fans as a producer for some of the most financially successful and popular Disney films of "http://mag.awn.com/index.php?article_no=2786 ">The Second Golden Age of Animation," including The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. His animation career started more than 30 years ago when he worked as an assistant animator to Don Bluth on the Disney feature Pete's Dragon, and has witnessed radical changes in the animation industry throughout the past three decades, most notably and obviously with the rise and current dominance of computer animation.

Hahn opens the book with a succinct two-page history of animation, giving readers an understanding of just how the development of the zoetrope leads to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which leads to Tron, which leads to WALL·E. His unabashed enthusiasm for animation history is evident in the introduction, and throughout the book, as well. Hahn offers advice from such major figures as Ollie Johnston, Frank Thomas, John Lasseter and Glen Keane, providing readers a bit of a "greatest hits" package with his animation tutorial.

From that foundation, Hahn explores the process of feature animation in a three-act format: The Idea, The Creation and Finishing Touches and Post Production.