Producing Animation by Catherine Winder and Zahra Dowlatabadi is written from the perspective of a producer, hence it is more process driven.
The art and craft of animation has evolved over the years and it is a global industry today. It is not uncommon for the producers of animation projects–both TV and feature– taking the outsourcing route with the pre-production stage in USA/Europe and the prouduction outsourced to a studio in Asia.
This book presents the nuts-and-bolts of how a project is created in addition to describing the role of the producer at each phase. The producer here is seen as both a project and process owner. Hence there are chapters devoted to the non-production aspects like sales pitch, concept marketing etc. It also makes an interesting surfing material for the not so hands-on-producers, who would like to limit themselves to the deal-making and then hand over the reins to a day-to-day person.
The book dwells at length on each process and provides pre-requisites, crew requirements and check points for each one of them. This information is often supplemented by the authors’ past experience. This information is very helpful in setting up a tracking sytem.
It would be nice if the authors come up with two seperate versions for 2D and 3D animations and supplement these two with a good companion website.
Overall, if you are looking at a decent head start on the making of an animation project, this book is for you.