Book Review: Pure Animation: Steps to Creation With 57 Cutting-edge Animators

This book is very close to being a disaster.

By choosing to include the work of 57 animators, the depth of the book is seriously compromised. The production process is explained in only 4 paragraphs or so. It's incredibly condensed. There seem to be no challenges and obstacles at all. As if creating animation is that easy! Wow.

There's also something seriously wrong with the screenshots. The book is trying to show us the short film by a series of sequential screenshots.

First of all, for all those short films without strong composition and visual style, the lack of audio — it's a book for goodness sakes — totally rendered those screenshots useless.

Secondly, screenshots doesn't pace as well as comic panels. You can experience it yourself. Just go to any video streaming site and find your favourite video. Turn off the audio. Hit the pause button for the video to load in full. Now click at different spots on the play bar until the end. Yes. That's what the screenshots in this book is about.

When the subject in the film is moving from right to left, and the screenshots read from left to right, there's pure confusion. It just doesn't feel right.

I've a big question. Do film makers review their films by playing the video or looking at screen shots of the video? If I'm the film maker, I choose the former. Guess what. There's no disc included with the book! There's also no book companion website. In the book, there are also no URL links to the featured videos or to the animation company! Seriously? Seriously??

This is a catalog book that should have come with a disc. And if it's a catalog book, at least present it like one. A good example is Animation Now!.

I can't think of the type of readers I can recommend this book to.

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