Book Reviews

Authors: Steve & Raf Anzovin ISBN: 0764129511 3d Toons Creative 3D Design For Cartoonists and Animators is a powerhouse of information that focuses on artistic choices in explaining to its readers how 3D cartoonists reach their goals. As mentioned in the inside flap of the book, "3D cartoons are becoming the hottest thing in Hollywood, and they are also taking over TV." The book is written by authors who have an enormous and intimate knowledge of 3D cartoons. Steve Anzovin is the CEO of Anzovin Studio, a computer-generated character animation that he co-founded with his son Raf. Their objective in putting together this book was to deemphasize the teaching of techniques and focus on the "nitty-gritty" inner workings of the creative process. It is amazing how much effort and talent is required in the making of an animation. Readers are informed how 3D characters and sets are brought to life in cartoons, graphic novels, and computer-animated short films. It thus is...

My brother continues to be a great source for new story ideas. Just like he recently linked me up with Bruce Bell, one of Toronto's most well known experts and historians, he recently read about a German photographer by the name of Susanne Schleyer who had just published a new book, "Unterwegs" ("On the Road") with 100 photos and stories from 12 different cities: Amsterdam, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Jerusalem, London, Paris, Prague, Rom, San Francisco, Saint Petersburg, Venice and Vienna. I started doing some research on Susanne's website and realized that she had done other interesting projects and yesterday I spent two hours on the phone, talking with her in Berlin. Susanne is an interesting individual. She is in her early 40s, and studied art and German philology in Berlin and later photography in Leipzig. From 1990 onwards she has undertaken travels for photography projects to Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Russia, Chile, Argentina, Austria, the Netherlands, ...