Character Animation Crash Course!

Best known for designing the Genie in Disney’s Aladdin, Eric Goldberg is a cartoon-comedy master who’s crafted a terrific how-to. Character Animation Crash Course! is not a coffee-table tome but a textbook, full of technical detail (and accompanied by a neat CD of visual examples). There’s plenty to engage casual browsers, though. As he diagrams what makes great ‘toons tick, whether hand-drawn or CG — the physics of double takes, the best way to splat a face into an immovable object — Goldberg will leave you bug-eyed at the intricacy of the medium. A-