Rating: - Good companion book that will not change your life
Like Goldberg said on the book, the xerox copies of his notes on character animation have been going around for a while now, and it is very good to see them finally compiled into a proper book. The animator offers some good advice, but the book won't change your life if you already know how animation works. It is more like a good compilation of things worth remembering, with good examples demonstrating what he says.

If you never animated before, this book won't teach you from scratch, and if you already have been through Richard Williams' book entirely, this one will not add too much. It is more like an intermediate book between "Cartoon Animation" by Preston Blair and "The Animator's Survival Kit" by Richard Williams. Besides, it focus too much on "Disney animation" and might be a little useless for stop motion animators for instance.

Only two things really bothered me on the book. One is that the CD-ROM comes in a plastic bag that is binded together with the paper leaves, which makes the book difficult to read and also ruined the binding - it was already breaking when I first opened the book.

The other thing is that many americans talk about each other as if everybody was a genius and had invented the wheel. This book even praises the author for having worked on a movie that haven't been produced yet! Goldberg is an excellent animator, but we don't need to be reminded of that over and over again.

In a nutshell: buy it if you already know how to animate, but is too lazy to read Dick William's book five times, and is looking for some good advice.

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