Animation Art: From Pencil to Pixel, the World of Cartoon, Anime, and CGI

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 384 pages
• Published by: Collins Design October 26, 2004
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0060737131
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0060737139
• Book Dimensions: 10.9 x 10.3 x 1.2 inches
• Weighs: 4.8 pounds

From The New Yorker
While mentioning such precursors as the nineteenth century's zoetrope and the lantern slides that afforded crude animated effects as early as the seventeenth century, Beck and his contributors concentrate on the history of film animation and provide a comprehensive overview. The pioneers here include Winsor McCay, Walt Disney, and a variety of European and Asian auteurs whose work tended to be less populist. This dichotomy between the medium's high-art potential and its commercial appeal has persisted into the present, with such innovators as Pixar, on the one hand, and Jan Svankmajer, on the other. The two strands met in the career of Oskar Fischinger, a German émigré to California, whose abstract animations elaborating his concept of "visual music" were influential but who lasted just nine months on Disney's "Fantasia."
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

Product Review
"How can you not admire such an ambitious project that dares to chronicle the evolution of animation?" -- Animation Magazine

Reader Reviews
This is a magnificent achievement. Serving as General Editor, Jerry Beck has brought together in a single volume a riveting narrative which examines the history of cartoon, anime, and CGI with stunning full-color illustrations of that history. As he explains in his Introduction, "We have assembled an international team of animation authorities to tell the tales behind the toons. -The story is told in chronological sequence with choice images that enhance its history...From popular Disney characters to obscure personal films, it is all covered: Hollywood hits and Japanese anime, as well as Russian masterpieces and Asian artfilms. Looking it over, it is quite a wild ride." Indeed it is. The material is skillfully organized within twelve chapters which range from "The Origin of the Art" to "The New Century." By no means do I claim to be an expert on the subject of animation art but I presume to observe that I cannot imagine what has been left out. The illustrations are stunning; the prose narrative is crisp and lucid. In the Foreword, Jeffrey Katzenberg observes that animation art provides a unique opportunity "to remember to know who has gone before, to really know the stories, take lessons from them, and bring that knowledge to the future. My hope is that, one day, other people will feel the same way about about those of us who are making animated films now. While it is an amazing thing to have the opportunity to create films and to bring these enormous enterprises to the world, it is something entirely different and entirely more rare to have our work remembered and considered part of the continuing evolution of an art form." Thanks to Beck, those who work their way through this magnificent volume will not only remember what has been achieved in animation art thus far; they will also understand what can yet be accomplished as others who have yet to reveal themselves through their art. I highly recommend this volume to anyone interested in animation art, of course, but also to those who have an interest in the creation and evolution of comic books. Also to those who share my high regard for illustrators such as Al Hirschfeld whose art is celebrated in Hirschfeld on Line, now available from Amazon in both book and DVD formats.