Well, this certainly wasn't what I was expecting but it was still a pretty interesting read.
I'm not sure if the "Crash Course" in the title is accurate though. Goldberg assumes you have *quite* a lot of prior knowledge. You know who Chuck Jones is, right? Well good because if you didn't I'd have to banish you from my sight. But do you know who Ken Harris and Gerry Chiniquy are? Because the author kinda assumes you do. You also better know how an exposure sheet works, otherwise this book is going to be very technical-looking for you.
And the book overall is technical almost to a fault. There's very little art in the book itself, although the art that is included is very good. I still have a hard time recommending this over, say, Preston Blair's classic Animation books.
"But Trish," you're thinking, "doesn't Goldberg's book come with a CD-ROM? What did you think of that?"
I have mixed feelings about books that include CD-ROMs. One of them is usually, "get with the times, dudes and dudettes; last time CD-ROMs were cool was that one facepalm-worthy line in 'Jurassic Park'." What I mean is that including a CD-ROM in with your book often feels too gimmicky; why isn't it in the book itself if it's worthy information?
But Goldberg's CD-ROM broke down my barrier here, because he uses it to demonstrate something important about the art in his book: it has to be seen in motion. Many pieces of animation from the book are made into Flash files which you can either watch at normal speed or frame by frame. It almost makes me wish he had produced an instructional DVD instead of a book. If anything, it would have given him the opportunity to give the reader/viewer more information, more film clips, and the whole thing would have been a lot less expensive (I feel a little buyer's remorse-by-proxy as this was a Christmas present.)
My verdict: borrow this from the library as it is an interesting read for sure.
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Sketchatheday! I have made more ACEOs for you!
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Bonus/Addendum: My already-"Jossed" crazy theory! Let me show you it!
As you'll see, this also serves as kind of a "2009 wrap-up" post. Some of these will demand longer posts later on after I've watched/read/played with them:
I got the collection of Chuck Jones' "Tom and Jerry" cartoons on DVD. I know these shorts have their detractors, but I like them. I haven't watched this yet but it looks like it may be similar to the excellent "Droopy" collection they put out last year (well, LAST last year).
I also got the four-disk Blu-ray edition of "Up". "But Trish, you don't have a Blu-ray player!" You're right but Disney has decided to do something neat to wean people onto the new format: regular DVDs come packaged with the movie and not a whole lot else but the Blu-ray DVDs come with the movie (both on Blu-ray and unleaded DVD format) and a whole lot of goodies.
Wait, did I say neat? What I meant was unnecessarily confusing.
Anyway, as you know I enjoyed "Up" and the disk is very nice.
Man, I can NOT wait to plow through these! I've thumbed through these books and they all look to be amazing. The two-volume Drawn To Life books are about as daunting as the Greg S. Paul textbook I unwittingly got a while back, but I think I can take my medicine. The Goldberg and the Gurney (I have started in on the latter and it may be the best "how to paint" book I've ever read) are shorter but very nice and packed with rare artwork.
These are a little more personal/in-jokey, but I had to share how awesome my sister is. She made a lovely photo album of our family reunion. My godfather gave me the cookbook, knowing I've started getting serious about expanding beyond my "heat up a can of Cream of Mushroom soup, cook frozen spinach, mix and dump in some spaghetti" repertoire. The random loose photographs are from my participation in LAST last year's Comicazi.con. I also got a copy of Inventory (not pictured but very nice and funny as to be expected from The Onion), and Obligatory (but useful) Gift Cards to GameStop - destined to take a chunk off the cost of "Soul Silver" (if it has the more interesting version exclusives) - and to the Apple store. Hmmm... why would I need that?
For my new toy badass art-making machine, of course.
I am... REALLY excited to start playing with this. I shall gush when she's fully set up.
Here's today's Sketch of the Day (or Whatever)!
Not sure what part of the creative process this gives insight into but that rabiescorn may need to be colored in soon.
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Oh gosh I just learned -like, literally just learned- that Arisia is this weekend! I don't know much beyond the fact that this is a huge sci-fi/fantasy convention in Cambridge, MA, they will be showing "Zombieland" and "Moon" among other films, and I missed the registration deadline. Wah. (To be fair, spring tends to be the start of convention season around here. Oh well.) Still, this may be a fun time for those of you in the general MIT vicinity.
