Books

Chromacolour carries a full range of select animation books.

CARTOON ANIMATION by Preston Blair
published by Walter Foster
The One-Source Book That Cartoon Animation Enthusiasts Have Been Waiting For!

 In this comprehensive, definitive book, acclaimed
 cartoon animator Preston Blair shares his vast
 practical knowledge to explain and demonstrate the
 magic of cartoon animation as well as many of his
 extraordinary techniques.
 Blair shows you how to develop a cartoon character’s
 shape, personality, features, and mannerisms; how to
 create movements such as walking, running,
 stretching, and dancing; and how to construct
 dialogue and coordinate it with movement.
 Full of familiar and famous sketches, drawings, and
 other artwork, cartoon Animation is a book no cartoon
 animation enthusiast should be without!

BK103 "How To Animate Film Cartoons #190"

by Preston Blair

$21.49

by Preston Blair

$21.49

by Walter Foster

$21.49

by Walter Foster

$21.49

“Designing Cartoon Characters for Animation”
by Brian Lemay
Are you tired of all those "Coffee Table" books on animation? You know the one's that I'm talking about; they show lots of nice, even beautiful drawings and illustrations from productions, but they don't have any information on how the artist came to draw the
character that certain way or what their thought process was.
What about all those "How To" books that are aimed at the young reader with those simple 3 steps to making a drawing? They just explain it all in too "simple" terms. I have all those
books myself. I love to read books on animation, cartooning and the process of getting it
done, I'm just frustrated with the lack of in-depth information available. If you're like me, and wish there were some books that really go through the whole process on a professional level, then this is the book for you! As an animator, you need to know how to draw cartoon characters in a 3-dimensional way, making them look solid and real. I've written this book so you can go through the entire theory on why and how cartoon characters are drawn and how you can do the same thing, not just copying my drawings but how to come up with your own characters.

“The Animation Drawing Course”
by Brian Lemay
This is the second book in the series of character design books. This book takes you through 8 assignments that will help you with the drawing of your cartoon characters..
The book ends with 29 pages of sketchbook designs with over 250 drawings of different characters.
Throughout the book are the Principles of Character Design and Drawing to help you understand your drawings better.
Also available is the complementary video 1 hour 45 minutes of Brian drawing and explaining the principles within the book.

“Layout and Design Made Amazingly Simple”
by Brian Lemay
Within the animation studio the layout department has become more and more important in series productions especially for studios that send their work overseas to be animated. This book covers all the departments that deal directly with the layout process. Each chapter clearly covers all the theory and applications involved. This book 
is becoming
the industry standard for educating people
interested in becoming layout artists. The book
has been widely sold to many College and University level animation programs and is
currently used as part of the curriculum in the
world famous Sheridan College Classical
Animation program. Check out any other book on animation and you'll find that they simply don't discuss 
the full process of layout in any
depth at all. This book gives you all the
technical and artistic theories involved.
Lots and lots of illustrations and examples are scattered throughout.

Click here to see the chapter headings and the topics covered in this book

"Layout and Design Made Amazingly Simple"

by Brian Lemay BK111 360 pages

$35.00

“Layout Examples” by Brian Lamay
This book is an extension of the “Advanced Layout and Design Workbook”. In this book I’ve taken the 40 layout assignments and drawn them out for you in thumbnail sketch form, then selected one from each assignment and completed it to final layout format.
I take you through the thought process on each
one letting you see how and why I did it that way.
I explain the perspective theories, cheating perspective, warping perspective, linear pans, non linear pans, tracks and trucks. Composition
rational as well as different options of style.
With over 250 layout drawings it ends with a
whole new set of 40 assignments that you can
do your yourself to help you put together a
portfolio for studio presentation.

 "Layout Examples"

by Brian Lemay BK112 182 pages

$25.00

“Advanced Layout & Design Workbook”
by Brian Lemay
This book is the follow-up to the book “Layout and Design Made Amazingly Simple”. This book is not
a repeat book but rather an extension. It is broken up into four sections.
Section 1 is an example of a film showing the process of going through the production from
script through to thumbnail storyboards,
character development, location designing, final character design, clean storyboarding and finally
to the layout process. It shows all the drawings, both good and bad that go into getting the final product.
Section 2 has a set of exercises that you can
work on that present you with a script, Character, location and prop designs, and a storyboard. You then take these and using the outline breaking
down the thought process involved, produce the
final layouts for yourself
Section 3 takes this same process a step further by providing you with just the script. You then develop the character, location and prop designs, and storyboard. 
From these you then produce the final layouts. Again, 
each step is covered in the book guiding you through 
the process. This helps you with the actual production 
of a series of
portfolio pieces. It's often hardest to simply
come up with the initial idea to work with. This section provides you with several options to
choose from.
Section 4 has 40 quick layout assignments that you can do within 3 - 4 hours. Each assignment
is a short descriptive passage describing a
specific location such as an alleyway in a city, a barber shop or the inside of a barn. It lists several elements that you should include within your environment. This section again, simply provides you with a series of springboards 
to work from.

"Advanced Layout & Design Workbook"

by Brian Lemay BK113 476 pages

$50.00

"Animation-The Basic Principles"
by: Brian Lemay
This book is broken down into several bite size portions. Each section deals with a specific animation "Principle". Within each section, Brian explains the theory behind the principle and its general purpose in animation. Following that, he'll show some common "Applications" of how each principle is applied in animation drawings.
There's lots of practical examples as well as assignments to help you explore the principles.

"Animation In The Home Digital Studio"
by: Steven Subotnick
Steven Subotnick is an internationally recognized independent animator. His recent works include “Devil’s Book”, a collaged and calligraphic abstraction, and “Hairyman”, a fractured folk tale using a variety of animation styles. He has taught animation at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, at Rhode Island School of Design, and at Harvard University. In addition to teaching, Subotnick also works commercially as a free-lance animator and director. He continues to produce his own independent animated films which include both computer-assisted and hand-made imagery, and abstract as well as narrative elements.