I had a 25% off coupon that I got through e-mail so I was able to get the book for just over $32. Normal retail price for the book is $40 plus tax.
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I had been wanting to get this book since last year when I saw it listed in Bud Plant's Catalog. I first saw it at the flagship Barnes & Noble in Columbus (at Easton Shopping Center) but didn't ask for it for Christmas or really think about getting it until the Borders 25% off coupon came in through e-mail.
I haven't read a lot of the book, but it looks pretty good to me.
It's a very basic survey of the best animation studios and top independent as compiled by an editorial team. Not everybody's favorite studios and animators are there (Uli Meyer is missing, no mention of NYU's animation program, no mention of Sheridan College, and Spumco isn't in there), but it's a fairly good listing of world-class elite animation producers.
The book is printed in 3 languages which is the usual case for a Taschen Euro-produced book. The languages in order are English, French, and German (I think). If there's a problem with the trilingual format, it's that short thrift is given to histories and descriptions of each animation producer. None of the entries in the book gets much more than half-a-page description, I'm afraid. The book IS over 500 pages long, but most of it IS pictures.
However, the problems with the thriftiness of the text are offset by high reproduction standards of art, the massive quantity of art reproduced, and the paper quality of the book. (For $40, those production standards BETTER be high!
) The artwork reproduced in the book is EXCELLENT for the most part.******************************
The companion DVD, like the book is a mixed bag.
You're not going to find a feature-length film on this DVD. Most of the complete films that are on the DVD run 5 minutes or less. Many of the studios and individuals highlighted in the book are represented by clip that run under 2 minutes.
The biggest problems with these films are the actual footage quality. It's highly variable. It goes from being squeaky-clean digital, to slightly grainy 16 mm film, to somewhat washed-out and blurry VHS. It's somewhat inconsistent, but I guess this is what was provided to the DVD producers.
However, if you dig deep enough, you can still find a few gems on this DVD.
Koji Yamamura's short film, "Mt. Head," is on this disc. Will Vinton is represented by the short 3-D (stop motion) film "Dia de Los Muertos." The best short I saw on the DVD was Wild Brain's "A Dog's Life."
There are excerpts of Bill Plympton talking about "Hair High" and how he created hype for the film by doing webcasts of its production. (This apparently didn't help since like his other features he's had next to no distribution of the movie beyond festivals.) Unfortunately, the video quality of the Plympton segment is lousy. It appears, the DVD producers were given the same compressed video that Plympton broadcast over the Internet! Blown up on a TV via DVD, this video is full of digital artifacts and will make you believe the Animation Now companion DVD is defective. It's not -- the source video provided is LOUSY. Nevertheless, "Hair High" is a film I want to see IF it ever comes to a local art theater, OR I'll get it on DVD like all the other Plympton features since "The Tune."
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I really haven't looked at much more material on the DVD other than the ads that represent Duck Soap Studios. The video quality of the Duck Soap ads varies from good to fair depending on how old the ads are. Some of those ads were AT LEAST 20 years old. However, I did get a chance to see the old Popeye Quaker Oats ad that got the Quakers mad at General Mills!
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I can't recommend this book for casual animation fans, people who think animation is limited to Disney or the Japanese, and people that want to learn about animation history. You just won't get that out of this book.
The DVD by itself probably isn't good enough to recommend for $30, $40, or whatever you spend on this book... (I predict the book will show up in half-priced or used bookstores within a year tops.)
However, for people that want to see a brief, if somewhat sparse description of what's going on in independent animation and outside of the US, it might not be a bad book and DVD combination to pick up.
