Character Animation Crash Course
by Eric Goldberg · Eric Goldberg
Disney animator Eric Goldberg's guide to building believable cartoon characters from the inside out, covering personality, design, timing, posing, dialogue and effects animation. Readers learn how classic hand-drawn principles translate into strong performances, with companion animated examples viewable frame by frame.
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More resources on Character Animation
Blender Cloud
Subscription training and production-file platform run by Blender Studio, the Blender Foundation's in-house animation team. Its courses and open-movie assets, including rigged characters and animation breakdowns, show how professional character animation is planned, blocked, and polished inside Blender.
The Animator’s Survival Kit
Richard Williams's manual of classical animation technique, built from his masterclasses and illustrated with hundreds of drawings. It covers timing, spacing, keys and breakdowns, walks, runs, weight, anticipation and dialogue, giving animators working principles that apply in 2D, 3D and stop motion.
11secondclub.com
The 11 Second Club is a community-driven platform that hosts an annual character animation challenge using supplied audio clips. Animators submit 11-second entries, browse a gallery of submissions and winners, and access tutorials and resources to improve timing, lip-sync, and performance.
Acting for Animators
Acting teacher Ed Hooks applies stage-acting theory to animation, explaining how thought drives action and emotion, how to analyze a character, and how scenes build on negotiation and conflict. Animators learn to give characters motivated, readable performances rather than mechanical movement.