Category: Books

Award-winning 3D animator TJ Galda announces the publication of ADVANCED CHARACTER RIGGING, the first of a new series of books on the subject. The initial book explains how to create muscles and tendons using computer graphics software such as Autodesk's Maya, and is designed to make the techniques as accessible as possible, so that even beginners can create and animate lifelike muscles for their animated characters. ADVANCED CHARACTER RIGGING is available through digital publishing site Lulu.com and major outlets such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

A new coffee-table book chronicling the animated hstory of Nickolodeon's Nicktoons will hit the shelves of major retailers this month. NOT JUST CARTOONS: NICKTOONS (Melcher Media, $40.00), edited by Jerry Beck, is the first book to cover the entire Nicktoons story that began on Sunday, Aug. 11, 1991, when Nickelodeon first unleashed REN & STIMPY, DOUG and RUGRATS on an unsuspecting nation.

Dark Horse has acquired the enormously popular seinen manga series, GANTZ. Hiroya Oku, creator of GANTZ, has put together a cast of characters that are both sympathetic and strong in a hardboiled universe of ultra-stylish violence, pathos and sexiness. The wildly renowned anime, also entitled GANTZ from ADV, primarily follows the same story and has been translated in several different languages.

The typical progression in the movie industry these days has been comicbook or graphic novel to film and TV, but Exodus Film Group has secured a comicbook deal for its upcoming CG-animated feature, IGOR, with IDW Publishing. The publishing program includes a series of full color prequel titles leading up to another series of books taking fans through the film and beyond, to then be followed by a full-color paperback, collecting each miniseries.