Preston Blair, John Kricfalusi and the $100,000 animation course

I'd like to share with you some links/definitions.

Association Internationale du Film D'Animation

ASIFA-Hollywood is the Los Angeles chapter of The International Animated Film Society

The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive



The $100,000 Animation Drawing Course

I came across these links in a round about way. I'd been told about John Kricfalusi's blog and although I've been reading it since before Christmas, he's be churning out a lot more than I can read. So much so that I've even been printing blog pages out to read on the bus on the way too and from work. I was a bit puzzled as to why these articles were so long and why the comments were even longer but I was happy to read them in ignorance of this fact. I've been particularly interested in his comments on clear staging and hope to write a short article on how it applies to CGI and model animation in the next few days. John had mentioned Preston Blair's book "Cartoon Animation" a few times so I though I'd get myself a copy.

After wandering around the books shops and failing to find a copy like an animated J.R.Hartley I decided to look on the web. After a few searches I realised a few things. The first is that Cartoon Animation is actually a compilation of Preston's earlier works, a series of booked entitled "Animation". The next was that the Animation Archive have posted the first of these online.

Preston Blair Animation Part 1
Preston Blair Animation Part 2



The final piece of the jigsaw that made sense of everything was that John was actually running an animation course based on Preston Blair's material hence why the detail in the blog articles and the inquisitive responses in the blog comments.