---
title: Character Animation
description: Character animation focuses on bringing digital figures to life by applying principles of weight, timing, and emotion. Students will understand how to manipulate rigs, choreograph movement, and convey personality through body language and facial expressions.
category: arts-design
subcategory: 3d-and-animation
difficulty: beginner, intermediate, advanced
url: /subject/character-animation
---

# Character Animation

Character animation focuses on bringing digital figures to life by applying principles of weight, timing, and emotion. Students will understand how to manipulate rigs, choreograph movement, and convey personality through body language and facial expressions.

## Available Resources

3 Books • 2 Websites

## Websites

### 1. 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.

**Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://cloud.blender.org

**Tags:** blender, 3d-animation, character-animation, rigging, open-movies

### 2. 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.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.11secondclub.com/

**Tags:** websites, arts-design, 3d--animation

## Books

### 1. The Animator’s Survival Kit

**Author:** Richard Williams

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.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/057126171X?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** books, arts-design, 3d--animation

### 2. Character Animation Crash Course

**Author:** 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.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1879505975?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** books, arts-design, 3d--animation

### 3. Acting for Animators

**Author:** Ed Hooks

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.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/032500580X?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** books, arts-design, 3d--animation

---

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