Character Animation Fundamentals

PREFACE

This book is the culmination of nearly 20 years of teaching drawn animation techniques to 3D computer animators.

You may think, ‘why on earth does a 3D computer animator need to learn how to do drawn animation?’ The answer to this question is that the basics of animation are the same regardless of the medium and often you can get an idea of the movement far more quickly using pencil and paper. A computer can take a lot of the drudgery out of animating, but you can end up doing a piece of animation without quite understanding how it happened and whether it works or not.

One of the most valuable things I have learnt over the past 25 years of animating is to keep things simple. The main value of an animation teacher is to cut to the chase ...