Animation History

There's a lot of good blogs out there for animation history.

Jerry Beck has "Cartoon Research" :
http://cartoonresearch.com/

Michael Barrier has a lot of great articles on his site, as well as a number of long books:
http://www.michaelbarrier.com/

And the recently departed Michael Sporn kept a great blog with lots of animation knowledge over here:
http://www.michaelspornanimation.com/splog/

Reading animation history is useful to deal with frustration of how time consuming and difficult doing animation is. People in the past were struggling with the same issues of how to plan their shots, properly pose their characters, time out actions, make lipsynch work, deal with administrative demands, and figure out how to hit deadlines. Many CG animators get frustrated when looking at the graph editor and realizing how analytical animation can be. But take one look at a traditional animation exposure sheet or the effort Chuck Jones spent timing actions to music, and you'll see that animation has always been about careful, meticulous planning with heavy doses of logical thinking. It has to be. The process is too labor intensive and expensive not to carefully plan out. The trick, I think, is finding out how to internalize the planning so it becomes an organic part of the creative process. But knowing this on a theoretical level isn't the same as putting it into practice. This is something I'll only gain over time.

All of the above listed blogs mostly deal with American and European animation, with a bit of attention paid to Miyazaki. For a much more in-depth look at contemporary and historical Japanese animation, Ben Ettinger has a great blog called Anipages:

http://www.pelleas.net/aniTOP/index.php

Anipages is probably my favorite animation site because of how few sources exist in English on anime production. There's so many movies Ben talks about that I wish I could track down and watch, though most don't exist in digital form. And the forums are a great place to get feedback. Every so often someone like Peter Chung or Bahi JD will stop by with some amazing knowledge about a production or how to make better animation. Highly recommended.