Product Description

The adventures of Wallace, a Lancashire inventor with a fondness for cheese, and Gromit, his long-suffering canine companion, have enjoyed incredible success. Cracking Animation reveals their creators and provides a unique guide to making your own 3-D animated films. The first part of the book sets Aardman's achievements and the history of the studio into the tradition of 3-D animation. The main component of the book is a guide by Peter Lord, co-founder of Aardman, to the process of 3-D animation, culminating in a practical, fully illustrated step-by-step description of how to create effective characters, a storyboard, sets, and eventually make an entire film. There is no other book that provides the same information in such detail, making it possible for everyone to create their own 3-D animated classic. For fans and enthusiasts of all ages, as well as for serious students of animation, this book is not only a lot of fun - it is essential reading.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7872 in Books
• Published on: 2004-11-22
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

Review
"'Like animation? You'll love this!' - The Times; 'A book that all animators will marvel at' - Computer Arts Special"

About the Author
Peter Lord is the founder of Aardman Animations. Nick Park has received three Academy Awards for The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave. Brian Sibley is the author of numerous books, including The Disney Studio Story and Shadowlands: The Story of C.S. Lewis and Joy Davidman.

Customer Reviews

Great for an overall introduction
I bought this because I was having difficulty knowing where to start in stop-motion animation, and also because I really like the movies that Aardman have produced.

The book has a great background and introduction to stop-motion, and goes on to explain some areas of how a stop-motion film is produced. Areas covered included how certain effects are achieved, how the sound is added and lighting set-ups. Things that are not covered include frame-grabbing using a computer, and as most amateur animators start off with webcams and free/cheap frame-grabbing software this should be taken into account if you are a beginner. Hoever, information on frame-grabbing software etc is widely available for free on the internet at sites such as stopmotionanimation.com and animateclay.com.

I found the book very useful, especially the basic exercises using clay to do some simple motions. I also enjoyed reading about how parts of the Wallace and Gromit movies were achieved.

Altogether a very good book for people just getting into stop-mition animation, or anyone interested in how it is done, although if you plan to go into animating on computers you will need to either spend some time on the internet or find another book to cover this aspect of it.

What you need to know
This Book is an ideal introduction to the world of 3-D animation from the acknowledged experts. The introduction and The Medium sections give an interesting background to the history animation with specific references to the Aardman history.
The section entitled Simple Techniques is the bit I found the most useful as it gives a series of exercises to try out for real. There is good advice about building simple sets and getting the lighting right.
I was however a little disappointed about the content in the book about how to use computers to assist with simple animations. Perhaps there is another book out there.
If you are interested in getting the right start with animation and want to save yourself making the simple but frustrating mistakes that others have made read this book.

Animated Passion!
A suprisingly informative, enthusiastic and fun introduction to the world of animation. I have used this book to great effect teaching animation to people from three yrs. old to thirty three!
Each chapter is clearly articulated and lavished with large colour illustrations from the films we all know and love. The deatil of lip-synching, model making, story-boadrding and set building as well as the fundamentals of animating are communicated in such a clear and enthusiastic way, it is hard not to catch the animating bug! Great all round book, highly recommended.