Rad Sechrist's "How To" blog

This is a great blog which ought to be on every animation student's blog roll -

Rad's How To

Rad Sechrist is a storyboard artist , currently working at Dreamworks Animation. His blog has some terrific tips on drawing for animation.

Rad also has combined his talents with several other animation artists on another how-to blog :

The Art Center - Sharing Ideas & Tips from Artist to Artist

He gives Tips on basic Storyboarding:

(click images to see larger)

How to Get Good FLOW into your rough drawings:

And many other fine tips for animation artists.

Check it out.

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"Drawn to Life: 20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes" by Walt Stanchfield

It seems there is a plethora of animation riches being published these days.

Another set of books to add to your MUST HAVE list is "Drawn to Life: 20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes" Volume 1 and Volume 2 by Walt Stanchfield , edited by Don Hahn.

Go to Don Hahn's website to see a "trailer" for the book where Don speaks about the material contained in these two volumes:

http://www.donhahn.com/

These weekly handouts from Walt Stanchfield are something that those of us who worked at Disney in the 80's and 90's treasure. Now they are being shared with the whole world . (actually they've been "shared" quite a bit by being copied, scanned , and passed around from hand to hand or from website to website , but this is the first time that ALL of Walt's notes have been formally compiled into two handy volumes . 800 pages of material ! )

The press release from Don Hahn says:

"I am so pleased to announce that for the first time ever, we have assembled all of Walt Stanchfield’s amazing handout notes and lectures into a two volume collection titled, DRAWN TO LIFE - 20 GOLDEN YEARS OF DISNEY MASTER CLASSES. Walt was an animator, trainer, mentor and coach for decades at Disney and helped breathe life into the new golden age of animation with his teachings. He influenced such talented artists as Tim Burton, Brad Bird, John Musker, Glen Keane, Andreas Deja and John Lasseter.

To me, DRAWN TO LIFE is one the strongest primers on animation ever written. The material spares no detail on the craft of animation, but also digs deep into the artistic roots of animation. It is a publication that has been anticipated for many years by every artist and student that Walt ever came in contact with. It has been a labor of love for me and I am so proud that Walt’s teachings will live on in these two volumes."

Pre-orders are being taken now. Official publishing date is March 27.



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Sherm Cohen's Sponge Bob drawing tips

Hey , Kids !  What time is it ? 

Time to talk about more fundamentals.   (never get tired of those , because we all need to remember this stuff and use it in our work) .

Ace storyboard artist Sherm Cohen has posted some good stuff about Line-Of-Action,  Contrasting Shapes, Silhouette, and all that jazz on his blog Cartoon Snap : 

Sherm Cohen's Animation Drawing Tips

Take a look .   Good examples of these foundational principles.

(click image to view it larger. More images on Sherm's blog.)