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Blender Character Animation Book Planned

18

typewriter.jpgWe received word from Tony Mullen that he will be working on a new Blender book called "Introducing Character Animation with Blender". Tony could use your help! Read on to see how.

Tony writes:

Hello Blenderers,

I'm pleased to announce that I have signed a contract to write a book for Sybex/Wiley called "Introducing Character Animation with Blender". Ton Roosendaal is aware of the project and has been very encouraging, and it looks likely that there will be at least some level of cooperation between Sybex and the Blender Foundation to do some sort of co-promotion. Furthermore, I'm delighted to announce that Bassam Kurdali, the director of Elephants Dream, has agreed to be the technical editor on the project. His input will certainly elevate the book beyond what I would be capable of coming up with on my own.

The current deadline for me to complete the book is the end of September. It's daunting, but I think I can manage to do something which will at very least be valuable for beginners and hopefully also have something of use for more experienced users.

The book will include 15 to 18 full color pages in the book which I am hoping to use to show off the best and brightest of Blender's character modeling potential, and also space on an accompanying DVD in which I hope to include some actual animation samples. Elephants Dream will certainly be included, but I would love to have a varied and impressive collection of images and animations. This book is likely to be a lot of people's first look at Blender, since Sybex typically produces books aimed at Maya and 3DS Max users. So it would be great to have a first rate collection of work to show people what Blender is capable of.

If you have character renders or animations that you think would help to show off Blender's character modeling and animation potential, I would love to consider your work for the gallery and/or the DVD. I cannot offer payment for inclusion, but selected artists will receive a free copy of the book and have a very nice showcase for their talents.

To submit work, please contact me at [email protected].

Hoping to hear from you!

Tony Mullen

This looks like it's going to be a great project and with people like Bassam and Ton backing it, they can't go wrong! I'll go digging around for some character modeling/animation tutorials to get everyone in the mood :-)

About the Author

Avatar image for Bart Veldhuizen
Bart Veldhuizen

I have a LONG history with Blender - I wrote some of the earliest Blender tutorials, worked for Not a Number and helped run the crowdfunding campaign that open sourced Blender (the first one on the internet!). I founded BlenderNation in 2006 and have been editing it every single day since then ;-) I also run the Blender Artists forum and I'm Head of Community at Sketchfab.

18 Comments

  1. Ricardo Ortiz on

    Habria oportunidad de una version español? vaya que si hace falta este material de referencia en nuestro idioma.

  2. Dear friends,

    As always I´d like to suggest something for interesting projects like this.

    Its important to keep the attention of Blender begginers making something that represents an step by step evolution of the use of the Blender features.

    1 ) Make several complete examples of all steps of the creation since the start mesh cube until the render or postproduction.
    2 ) You should start with simple but complete examples like “Gingerbread Man - My first animation in 30 plus 30 minutes”
    http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/PartI/Your_First_Animation_in_30_plus_30_Minutes_Part_I#Warming_up
    3 ) You should improve to the more sofisticated features with intermediate examples like “Create your own Racetrack”
    http://www.blendernation.com/2006/06/30/create-your-own-racetrack/
    4 ) You should use simple language and consider some sense of humor to improve memorization.
    5 ) In each tutorial you should enphasize one of the main features of 3D(Modeling,Texturing,Animating,Rendering,Sound,Game Engine) but in all exercises include all process cutting details according to each level.

    Well, these are some of my suggestions to have a good Character Animation Book.

    By the way I know almost nothing in 3D but I think it will work better with some didactic tips.

    Best regards,

    Professor Tio Ilmo (hehehehe)

  3. broken_sword on

    Hi,

    Oh what a great news!!!!! Can I pre-Order Now?
    I'll send you one of my render from blender.

    Cheers!!!

    broken_sword

  4. Any chance of this book to be available on the Blender Conference? Some sneak peek for attendees or something like that would be nice.

    Thanks

  5. Looks great. I have always dreamed a Blender Carachter Animation Book!!!!
    Hope you start from a beginner's point of view towards advanced topics.

    I will surely buy this book.
    Renato.

  6. Charlie Brown on

    It's great to see the world around Blender evolving.

    Be sure to let us know when it comes available in the blender-shop, so we may pre-order when possible.

    Charlie

  7. Pretty Meshed Up on

    Deadline by the end of Sept? Phew, cutting it fine maybe. Hopefully the published book won't be full of typos and such as a lot of technical computer books seem to be!

    Looking forward to it very much.
    Cheers.

  8. I don't think he was suggesting the author nick other people's animation tutorials verbatim, but rather citing examples of the kinds of complete, start-to-finish (with all pertinent details) examples the book ought to include, and degrees of complexity (beginner, intermediate, advanced).

  9. All in all, the deadline doesn't seem realistic.

    Max and Maya books take considerably longer than a few months from announcement to completion, even if there is a good amount of pre-completed material going into the final product.

    Blender users don't see too many dedicated book releases, I know they're going to want this to cover a lot of material.

    It's great to get someone started but they won't discover the advanced techniques on their own. I certainly didn't!

  10. Cool nice project, i think i'll buy it to. Will it be available in blender store?
    Well i think i'll buy it through amazon etc. so i don't have to pay for the international credit transfer. ^^

  11. ....examples like ...

    I said the project could include "examples like" not the exact tutorials available.

    Jean you are right !!!

    Tio Ilmo (Structure professor and Ortograph teacher) hehehehehe

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