The Animator's Survival Kit: Flexibility and Weight

From Richard Williams' The Animator's Survival Kit comes key chapters in mini form.

The Animator's Survival Kit is the essential tool for animators. However, sometimes you don't want to carry the hefty expanded edition around with you to your college or studio if you're working on just one aspect of it that day. The Animation Minis take some of the most essential chapters and make them available in smaller, lightweight, hand-bag/backpack size versions. Easy to carry. Easy to study.

This Mini focuses on Flexibility and Weight. How do we loosen things up and get snap and vitality into our performance at the same time as keeping the figure stable and solid? The answer: successive breaking of joints to give flexibility. In this mini, Williams stresses the importance of knowing where the weight is on every drawing. He demonstrates that the best way to show weight is to be aware of it, conscious of it, and think about it all the time - knowing where the weight is coming from, where it's traveling over and where it's transferring to.

About the Author

Richard Williams is best known as the Director of Animation and designer of the new characters for Who Framed Roger Rabbit, for which he won two Academy Awards, including a Special Achievement Award. Canadian-born Williams has won three US Academy Awards, three British Academy Awards, and an Emmy among 246 international awards - starting with his first film The Little Island in 1958.

Williams has also animated title sequences for Return of the Pink Panther, The Pink Panther Strikes Again, What's New Pussycat, Casino Royale and linking sequences for The Charge of the Light Brigade, as well as countless prize-winning commercials. In 1990 he was voted by his peers as 'The Animator's Animator', and in 1995 he started giving the Richard Williams Animation Masterclass for professionals and students worldwide.