Cartoon Character Animation with Maya: Mastering the Art of Exaggerated Animation (Required Reading Range)

This book reveals quite a few "secrets" that while commonly known amongst top animators, rarely make their way into courses on animation. The author does a great job of breaking down and explaining every aspect of creating cartoon style animation, but even those animators interested and engaged in creating "realistic" animation will benefit greatly as well.The author writes very well to his intended audience which are animators who have experience with Maya, but aren't master users in the area of character animators. He doesn't get bogged down explaining basic Maya info, but he does cover such info adequately.More importantly, he makes an extraordinarily solid connection between planning and executing this type of over the top animation and does it in a way that is graspable by animators at all levels.Furthermore, the downloadable content is an outstanding addition to the text. It is one thing to see the concept of smears illustrated statically in text (and the author's clear writing style does make it easy to understand), it is quite another to see it applied in the accompanying video!In my opinion, a truly great book!

An excellent and informative book on the art of exaggerated animation. This book greatly demystified the process of creating 3D animation for me, and although the included rig and plug-ins are made for Maya specifically, the techniques taught are actually applicable to many other software and even 2D animation in certain cases, since it is essentially aplying the 12 principles of animation to 3D animation. While I obviously got a lot out of this book, however, I should mention that 1) this book is made for over-the-top, cartoonist animation, and wouldn't be of much use to people who work on more realistic animation; and 2) like any other book or tutorial, you have to practice and follow along to actually improve, but I'm sure you already understand that. Overall, a great book that is already improving my animation work flow at college.

I was looking forward to this book, unfortunately this turned out to be disappointing. Anyone with a couple of semester from IAnimate or animation mentor under their belt will benefit little. This is a very superficial overview of a complex subject. The interviews added between the chapters are a nice filler. Keith Osborn described his workflow from step to spline, but too little for the non initiated and not enough for the somewhat experience animator. Of note the link to the companion files of the kindle edition is non functional. Furthermore, this text is 10$ cheaper if you order it directly from the publisher in a epub format. Oh well, there is no substitute for practice...

Excellent book! I would have loved having this book also while studying animation.Great content, useful tool a pleasure to read very easy to follow thanks to an excellent design and organized subject in addition to the valuable interviews of recognized and experienced animators. A must read for any animator wanting to broaden skills and styles, highly recommended definitely a great contribution to our profession. Thanks to the author!

This is very well written. Easy to read, but plenty of helpful and detailed information. Plenty of explanation for beginners, but even as a pro, you can learn from this book. The included character rig is excellent and fun to animate with.

I really like this book. Fairly good price and was delivered as expected!

Very exceptional book with tons of color photos and useful interviews.A useful reference for those studying animation in Maya.

little dirty

A fantastic book which offers much more than it seems. CG animation has taken a major leap in recent years with the likes of 'Hotel Transylvania', 'Tangled' and others almost eradicating the stiffness associated with with the medium. This book shows you how to get the most out of your poses and the techniques involved.More importantly, and not advertised as much as it should be, this book takes you through a good professional animation workflow. From thumbnails through to final polish, he describes his methods and puts them into practice in a clear manner. The accompanying videos and rig are excellent and I recommend this book to anyone who is not 100% sure of the efficiency of their own workflow.

I really Like the book but It doesn't came with the dvd that in the book says. will be awesome have those videos to see the way that he works. Great book but is incomplete with the extra material !!!

Cool but not the best for lurning

Great book!!

Must read for every animator.