Publisher: Faber and Faber Limited
Author: Richard Williams
Year of Publication: 2009
The Animator’s Survival Kit: Expanded Edition is a guidebook that teaches their reader on how to animate cartoon drawings properly by its principles. The book was authored by the person that’s well-known for designing and directing the animation for the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit; Richard Williams.
The book covered every aspect of animation, from the basic principles of objects and characters animation to understanding expression, behaviour, and movement of a certain character based on its anatomy and action. And the author managed to explain it in a very detailed way, making it easy to understand even for people who’s new to animation.
The book, not only that it contains guides on animating, it also contains other parts such as the story of the author himself when he studied animation, the history of the animation back in the 1940’s, and some of the author’s animation pictured in ‘frame by frame’.
The Animator’s Survival Kit: Expanded Edition is a large and heavy 382-paged book filled with the details, make sure you’re not a lazy reader before you buy it. The book also referencing on the 1940’s cartoon art style, which is unfit with the nowadays varieties of art styles. But despite that, the animating guides that the book contained are very crucial even until now. By my own opinion, it is very important to have this book as a guide whether you’re a beginner or an expert in animation. After all, it IS an animator’s survival kit.
