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Don Bluth Books?

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Don Bluth Books?

I have heard Preston Blair's book and Illusion of life being praised as great books to learn from by many of you here on these boards.

So I was wondering how do Don Bluth's books The Art of Storyboarding and The Art of Animation Drawing rate in quality compared to the two former titles.

thanks

Storyboad and Animation Drawing are both two very good, well written, books. But they don't go into as much detail as Preston Blair and Illusion.

So they are good for some on the side reading but not as a book to learn how to animate.

James :cool:

What Spooze said.
The Storyboard one is presently out of print.

If you had to have only one animation book: Preston Blair How to Draw Animated Cartoons # 26 in the Walter T. Foster series.
Was practically the only book for years.

The Bluth Books

I guess I am a little biased since my comments appear on the storyboard book.

For me the Bluth books are great because the artwork is so amazing! You can learn a huge amount just from studying the boards and other visuals. Don's character designs have always been top notch.

Thanks.

I own both books and my take on them is that Art of Storyboard is a great resource for people wanting to board for animation but don't have a lot of real experience. In school, we were taught storyboards by a live-action storyboard artist but it wasn't before I read Don Bluth's book that I really got into the subject.
Art of Animation works best as a companion book to more detailed works like Preston Blair or Richard Williams because it focuses largely on the acting aspect of animation and, as I see it, requires an understanding of the technical stuff - there isn't really a lot on clean-up and inbetweening techniques in Bluth's book, for example, and stuff like squash & stretch, follow-thru, secondary animation etc. gets touched upon in word and image but isn't as thoroughly discussed as in, say, Tony White's Animator's Workbook. I think Art of Animation is a more personal work, though, because readers can learn a thing or two about Don Bluth as a person and his approach to the art.

thanks everyone I really appreciate the help.