Eric Goldberg's 'Character Animation Crash Course'

Master animator Eric Goldberg's long-awaited book has finally been released.  



Character Animation Crash Course  is now available at your local bookstores (check Barnes & Noble or Borders , or online at Amazon.com) 

I have treasured my xeroxed copies of Eric's lecture notes from animation lectures he gave us at Disney several years back and now I am so glad to have all of this material , plus some new material that Eric has added to expand his notes, all bound together in neat little package , including a CD which has Quicktime movies of many of the animation examples he shows in the book. 

Eric is one of the best animators working today . This book will perfectly compliment the Richard Williams book . Some of the material will overlap , but Eric's approach to the material has a different flavor than Richard Williams' approach , so you'll get something new from Eric's book , even if you have the Williams book .

At Academy of Art we're not yet using this as a Required Textbook for any of our animation classes since it was just published over the summer,  but I can say without any hesitation to all of my students: This is a must-have book for any animator, student or pro.

The website Animated News and Views has a recent interview with Eric where he discusses the book:

Interview with Eric Goldberg on "Character Animation Crash Course"

More Dan Haskett

I consider Dan Haskett to be one of the finest animators/designers working in animation. One of the things that is a mark of a Haskett design is the immense appeal that he brings to his designs; his character designs are constructed of streamlined and animate-able shapes. Here are a couple of his designs as examples. I'll try to scan more of Haskett's drawings that I have in my collection and post them here.


[click on the images to see larger]