Blue Sky: The Art of Computer Animation

This book contains a lot of tips for people involved in cg animation, but mostly is the story of bluesky studios, their works and their hardware.

The title BLUE SKY is from the name of the company. Company director Chris Wedge says that they started out in 1987 with blue-sky ideas. They had big, seemingly impractical plans. But they believed that dreams could come true. They also believed that we're only limited by our imaginations.Blue Sky studios began in advertising. Their reputation for high quality computer animation and effects drew in big clients, such as Bell Atlantic, Gillette, and Rayovac. In 1992, their TV commercial for Braun had a computer-generated image of an electric razor. It was so well done that even experts didn't know it wasn't the real thing.The company then got into films. They went on to win an academy award for "Bunny," as the best animated short film in 1998. The film ended up with 25 international awards for excellence in animation. With all this attention, the company, in 1999, became part of 20th Century Fox feature animation. With this kind of money, power and reputation behind them, in 2002 the company released a computer-generated-image feature film, Ice Age.The book is about animating Ice Age. Peter Weishar starts from building a scene by watercolor sketches, all the way through lighting and live-action. In between, there's modeling of characters and props, for scanning into the computer. There's storyboard drawings of who, where, what for each scene. There's rigging of skeletons inside characters for movement. There's lip syncing speech. There's 3-dimensional layout of all physical sets and movements of camera and characters. There's texture mapping of objects and surfaces. There's special effects, such as geysers and lava. There's making convincing fur for a mammoth, a sabertoothed tiger, and a sloth, as well as self-shadowing hair for a human baby and parents. Whew!All along the way there are clear explanations, good examples, and telling illustrations. There are also interesting anecdotes about the business, the company, and the film. So it's a fascinating read. It's also a pleasantly easy learning experience, along with the author's DIGITAL SPACE.