Whether you’re creating animation for television, advertising, games, or multimedia, [digital] Character Animation 3 can help you bring your imagination to life. In this updated classic, both newcomers to digital animation and old hands looking to hone existing skills will find essential techniques for creating lively, professional-quality animation that are applicable to any software application. Combining the fundamentals of modeling, rigging, and animation with advanced-level information on characterization, directing, and production management, author George Maestri has created an essential resource for digital animators. [digital] Character Animation 3 is packed with beautiful new artwork and Maestri’s invaluable expert tips. Along with clear instruction on the theory and practice of foundation techniques such as rigging, walk-cycles, and lip-synch–the tutorials and exercises in this book let you practice what you’ve learned. Maestri also offers in-depth information on creating nuanced characters that feel “alive” and win audience empathy and attention. The book’s final chapter guides you through the entire filmmaking process, from story development through voice casting and animation directing.

Detailed text and drawings illuminate how to conceive animated characters.

Improve your 3D animation by understanding the key traditional 2D skills. Learn the basics for producing original and exciting animation.

Improve your character animation with a mastery of traditional principles and processes including weight and balance, timing, walks, birds, fish, snakes, four legged animals, acting and lip-synch. Traditional animation skills and techniques are presented in both 2D and 3D space. The companion CD features demonstration animations and exercises conducted in each of the major animation packages including 3ds Max, LightWave, Maya, and XSI Softimage.

3D Studio MAX 3 Professional Animation is the only book that take you extensively through the 3D Studio MAX 3 animation process, showing you the techniques that professional animators use to create everything from simple animated particle effects to complex character animation for Web sites, video, film, and other multimedia formats. Written by a group of top-flight 3D animation professionals, this book features the real deal--real-world applications and advanced tutorials: make bipedal, quadra-pedal, and multipedal characters walk; use Cstudio's Biped and Physique; build and animate a realistic human skeleton using MAX Bones IK; create complex scripting with MAXscript to enhance MAX's capabilities; produce muscle-based, multi-layered facial expressions and lip syncs; create deformable objects and fine-tune them with space warps; display and edit trajectories; and animate cameras, lights, and atmosphere.

Let this in-depth professional book be your guide to Blender, the powerful open-source 3D modeling and animation software that will bring your ideas to life. Using clear step-by-step instruction and pages of real-world examples, expert animator Tony Mullen walks you through the complexities of modeling and animating, with a special focus on characters. From Blender basics to creating facial expressions and emotion to rendering, you’ll jump right into the process and learn valuable techniques that will transform your movies. Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.

The essential fundamentals of 3D animation for aspiring 3D artists 3D is everywhere--video games, movie and television special effects, mobile devices, etc. Many aspiring artists and animators have grown up with 3D and computers, and naturally gravitate to this field as their area of interest. Bringing a blend of studio and classroom experience to offer you thorough coverage of the 3D animation industry, this must-have book shows you what it takes to create compelling and realistic 3D imagery. Serves as the first step to understanding the language of 3D and computer graphics (CG) Covers 3D animation basics: pre-production, modeling, animation, rendering, and post-production Dissects core 3D concepts including design, film, video, and games Examines what artistic and technical skills are needed to succeed in the industry Offers helpful real-world scenarios and informative interviews with key educators and studio and industry professionals Whether you're considering a career in as a 3D artist or simply wish to expand your understanding of general CG principles, this book will give you a great overview and knowledge of core 3D Animation concepts and the industry.

Animation has a lot to do with acting. That is, character animation, not the standardized, mechanical process of animation. Acting and animation are highly creative processes. This book is divided into two parts: From film history we learn about the importance of actors and the variety of acting that goes into animation; then, we will turn to the actor's point of view to describe the various techniques involved. Through exhaustive research and interviews with people ranging from the late Ray Harryhausen, Jim Danforth, Joe Letteri, and Bruno Bozzetto, this book will be the primary source for animators and animation actors. Key Features Interviews with industry legends are found throughout this exhaustive work on animation From film history we learn about the importance of actors and the variety of acting that goes into animation, then turn to the actor's point of view to describe the various techniques involved Coverage of acting from Vaudeville to Rotoscoping to Performance Capture Case studies throughout bring the content to life while providing actionable tools and techniques that can be used immediately

Annotation Blender is an open source 3D graphics application that can be used for modeling, rigging, animating, rendering and thousands of other things. While modeling characters isn't the biggest of your worries, animating them to make them feel as-good-as alive is what differentiates a professional from an amateur. This book offers clear, illustrative, and easy-to-follow recipes to create character rigs and animations for common situations. Bring your characters to life by understanding the principles, techniques and approaches involved in creating rigs and animations, you'll be able to adapt them to your own characters and films. The book offers clear step-by-step tutorials, with detailed explanations, screenshots and support files to help you understand the principles behind each topic. Each recipe covers a logical step of the complete creation of a character rig and animation, so you're not overwhelmed with too much information at once. You'll see numerous examples and screenshots that guide to achieve various rigging and animation tasks, logically separated so you can understand each in detail. The rigging topics are divided by each region of the body (torso, limbs, face, eyes), and further separated by the specific topic (neck, fingers, mouth, eyelids, etc) for clarity. All rigging tasks are accomplished with the built-in tools in Blender, without the complexity of coding custom Python behaviors or user interface elements. The animation topics deal with common situations found in real world productions, showing good practices to understand and overcome the challenges.

Character animation is a high profile field with high salaries, high visibility tie-ins to TV and film, heavy recruiting, and few formal training requirements. This complete reference covers all key resources for character animation. Demos and sample files are contained on the CD-ROM, along with demo reel video clips and stills from major studios and individual artists.