Directing for Animation: Everything You Didn’t Learn in Art School
$38.73
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There’s no class in art school that can teach you this. Believe it or not, there’s a lot more to directing a great animated film than beautiful illustrations and cool characters. You need to bring out your inner creative visionary and take your savvy leadership skills to the front lines – being great with a pencil, brush, or stylus is not enough. Tony Bancroft released his inner creative visionary when creating Mulan. In Directing for Animation he shows you exactly how. Pull the right strings to bring your characters to life and center your story by developing the visual cues that lend to your audiences understanding of the plot, place, and purpose. Tony walks you through the process, bringing you behind the scenes of real, well-known projects – with a little help from some famous friends. Learn from the directors of Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, Ice Age, Chicken Run, and Kung Fu Panda, and see how they developed stories and created characters that have endured for generations. Get the inside scoop behind these major features…pitfalls and all.
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Marco –
Great book to how to learn to be a good director for animation from a real professionist! I loved every page, it’s wrote in a way that it can be read easily and in a funny way too! A perfect balance of lesson and anecdotes about the work in Disney.
Parka –
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This book is written mainly for animators and those who want to learn more about animation directing. While I’m not into creating animation, I still learned a great deal from the stories and tips that come Tony Bancroft and the directors that were interviewed. The writeup is incredibly insightful.
Content is organised into eight chapters that look at the different aspect of directing an animation. The topics covered include finding the vision, understanding the workflow, story, working with people, handling politics, managing budgets and schedules and finding ways to learn and improve constantly.
Note that this is not a guided course to animation directing, but lessons and tips written from Tony Bancroft’s perspective as animator and director for the several films he has worked on. The tone used throughout is enthusiastic and almost infectious.
Each chapter ends with a lengthy Q&A with an acclaimed director. It’s basically an all-stars list of directors featuring John Musker (Aladdin), Nick Park (Wallace and Gromit), Dean DeBlois (How to Train Your Dragon), Jennifer Yuh Nelson (Kung Fu Panda), Pete Doctor (Monsters Inc), Eric Goldberg (Pocahontas), Chris Wedge (Ice Age) and Tim Miller from Blur Studios. It’s a mix of directors with experience in stop motion, 2D and 3D animation.
The interviews don’t actually follow the topics of the chapters. Instead, the directors talk about how they made it to directing, the challenges, developing and managing the film, the stages of production, responsibilities, budgets, handling people and even how they feel about meetings. There are a lot of interesting war stories. Just like Tony Bancroft, you can also feel the passion when they start sharing about the work they do.
Overall, it’s a really insightful and educational book that uncovers the mysterious of what animation directors really do.
Chiarotti Luca –
Ho comprato questo libro dopo aver acquistato gli altri dell’autore Tom Bancroft.
In questa pubblicazione, come il titolo racconta.è possibile trovare nozioni tecnico pratiche molto utili per l’arte dell’animazione.
Chiaro nel linguaggio e nella spiegazione degli aspetti prettamente tecniche.
Vivamente consigliato ai principianti ma anche a chi ha già esperienza nel settore.
Tom Bancroft è un direttore dell’animazione, ma anche un ottimo characters designer e questa sua visione a tutto tondo si rispecchia in maniera esaustiva in tutti suoi libri.
rschiwal –
Managers everywhere can benefit by reading the sage words of Tony Bancroft. I work directly with Tony and initially bought his book just to have. It is a highly insightful and enjoyable read and it explains to me exactly why this magnetic personality is such a good director and a good boss. Life in a production studio is very interesting, and being in charge of such an “interesting” group of people can be equated to herding cats. Tony does it masterfully. Other directors come to our studio to work for him. I don’t think I’ll ever be a director, but that doesn’t change the fact that this book is one of my favorite in my library.
Chad Frye –
“Directing for Animation” is a good insider’s view of the experience of directing for large studios such as Disney and Sony, and for directing independent projects. Bancroft attacks the subject from having come up through the ranks as an animator to the captain’s chair of director on a variety of projects. He covers topics such as how to deal with the different personalities of your crew, how to balance your vision with what the studio heads want, how to work with voice actors, and most of all, how to serve your crew so that they will want to give you their best work.
A true delight in the book are the many interviews with very experienced animation directors. Of note are the interviews with Nick Park (“Wallace & Gromit”) who gives some good insight into working in stop-motion, and with Eric Goldberg whose experience is not only with feature films (“Pocahontas”), but also with commercials where time and budgets can be very tight.
Before reading this book, it is a good idea that the reader already has a rudimentary understanding of animation terminology and a bit of the process, which you will likely have if you have read any “art of” book out there. This is not a step-by-step book on the animation process, nor is it intended to be. After all, you need to know what animation is before you direct it. However, this book WILL give you a good understanding of what you will face when someone next hands you some money and a deadline.
Prantik –
This is a great book. I am an animator and I love reading about People who made it. This book covers all the Directors who are in the Forefront of Animation Films. Some started as Animators, some as storyboard artists! Its just so great to learn about their Journey.
I recommend this to everyone who loves the artform of Filmmaking and any Artform in general!
catherine pratt –
It was a gift