Again, one of those books that needs to be in the library of every animator.
Preston Blair was a character animator at Disney. For Fantasia he animated Mickey Mouse in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” and the dancing hippos in “Dance of the Hours”. Later he worked with Tex Avery at MGM, and on The Flintstones at Hanna-Barbera. So he knew both sides of cartoon animation: the soft, believable Disney movement and the fast, wild Tex Avery gags. You can see both in this book.
The great thing about this book is how Blair breaks characters down into easy-to-use building blocks. He goes from gesture drawing to simplified forms: circles, pear shapes, cylinders and blocks. It gives you a very structured insight into how a character is built up, and what makes a pose look dynamic. There’s always a clear line of action running through his figures.
And it covers a lot. Cartoon construction, facial expressions, cute and screwball characters, the bouncing ball and squash and stretch, walks, runs, sneaks and struts, four-legged animals, timing, silhouettes and staging, and dialogue. Almost every page is drawings, with short notes next to them. His walk and run cycles are classics. You will find them copied in a lot of other books and courses.
I got my copy as a gift: the classic Walter Foster edition with the elephant on the cover. There’s also a newer, revised edition called Cartoon Animation with Preston Blair, which I’m thinking about getting as well.
Want to see more of the book first? Comic artist Andy Smith does a great flip-through on YouTube, page by page. He also explains why the book is just as useful for comic artists: the exaggerated movement helps to make still pictures feel alive.
It’s a great first book if you want to learn cartoon animation by hand. It’s less useful if you work in a realistic style, or if you want a deeper explanation of timing and spacing. For that, The Animator’s Survival Kit goes much further. And if you want to know where all these principles came from, read The Illusion of Life.
Purchase Cartoon Animation on Amazon
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