Whitaker and Halas’s Timing for Animation has been a mainstay in the literature of animation instruction since its first edition was released in 1981. Sitting dog-eared and spine-split on desks and workstations around the world, it is the standard reference for all involved in making animation. This is true not only for those doing pure cartoons, but visual effects and interactive game design as well. Its only shortcoming is that it was originally written for a pre-digital age, so it offered few insights to the challenges of new media. With this update we will attempt to address this, and provide the animation novice—professional and fan alike—with a more complete look into the wonderful complexity that is modern animation and visual effects production.
I knew John Halas, and admired his work at the Halas & Batchelor Studio in the UK. John’s writings were some of the first serious instructional works on creating animation I had read. Harold Whitaker was a top artist in the London animation scene, and was a mentor and teacher to a great many young animators. So, it was with understandable trepidation that I accepted the invitation from Focal Press to update this work. For those who have loved this book for so many years, fear not. It is not my intention to glue new arms on the Venus de Milo. Much of the original copy is undisturbed. I am merely adding notes to reflect some of the more modern practices that have changed animation since the first writing. George Bernard Shaw said Britain and America are two great nations divided by a common language. I will also try to clarify some differences in nomenclature between what is used in studios in the Anglo-Canadian Commonwealth and its Yankee counterparts. So Dope Sheets = Exposure Sheets, a Fade To = Dissolve, etc.
Being one who has watched the Digital Age evolve since its earliest experiments, I am also sensitive to not dating the material. Large books that have painstakingly explained software programs from the 1980s and 1990s are now considered quaint, but irrelevant. Animator Jim Hillin stated it nicely, ‘In computers, today’s groundbreaking innovation is tomorrow’s screen saver.’ The modern pace of technological development has become so rapid that some animators complain they must learn a new software system with each new project. So, I will not dwell on the nuances of a specific animation program. I even have to catch myself when I refer to the final product as a ‘film’, since many projects are now delivered as a digital file. Celluloid film itself has become an endangered species. When I now use the terms ‘film’ or ‘filming’, it will have to be in a more symbolic sense.
The strength of Timing for Animation is in its simplicity and directness to whatever purposes you put its principles. You will find that the precepts laid out between these covers are important to all who create a frame-by-frame performance, regardless of whether they use a stylus and digital tablet, clay, cut-outs, some form of live-actor performance capture, or a pencil and paper.
Hopefully, despite my fingerprints on the finish, Timing for Animation will continue to be a vital text for anyone who is serious about creating animated film.
Tom Sito
Hollywood, 2009