Now, besides being called the “top recommendation” among all books about short animation production by one reviewer, it is also available for perusal on your Kindle or iPhone with Kindle app.

You can bop over to check it out here.

The article makes good points about all three of the books, but I’m particularly proud of the section about Animating with Blender. First, they refer to the production values, down to typography and layout as “superb.” That may not seem like a big deal at first, but spend a number of days with your nose in a book and those little touches can make the difference between an effortless entry of informational into your mind and a fatigue inducing struggle.

Best quote:

What makes this really well-organized book so good is not only the organization of the information presented, but the down-to-earth writing style of Mr. Hess [Dude -- Mr. Hess is my father! -ed.]. Reading the book and going through each section you feel like the author is right next to you helping with mistakes and pointing out ways to save time.

And what the reviewer [Mr. Ricky Grove] does not tell you is that, in fact, I am right next to you. I am sneaky. I already went through your kitchen cupboards looking for pop tarts. By the time you turned around, I was gone. Out and down to the street, with your breakfast pastries in my greedy little mitts, and all because you bought my book. How awesome is that?

I just wanted to remind folks that until Blender 2.6 (the real gold release in the middle of next year) hits the stands, the Blender 2.4x series is still the stable production version to use. If you’re ready to move past making still scenes and just doing new feature test renders and haven’t already picked up Animating with Blender, you should think about it. If you’re interested, click through the ad on the side of the page and read the Amazon reviews. It’s worth it.

Thanks for your time!

I know this site gets a decent amount of traffic (and Google-crawled almost daily) and figured a link here might speed things up for him.

So, I unequivocally say that this house in Altoona is a great buy.

UPDATE: The house is under contract! Congrats!

In Blender news … well there isn’t a lot to report. I’ve been editing a new book about Compositing with Blender being published by APress.

Animating with Blender (link to the right!) has been selling incredibly well. Focal Press has been bugging me to do another book, but right now I don’t have the time or the material. In order for another book to work, two things have to happen:

1. Blender 2.5 is released/usable.

2. I have enough already-made material for a new book.

My thought is to do one on realistic materials, lighting and rendering with Blender’s internal engine. My next short animation project will give me more than enough material for examples for the book, but I refuse to do both a short project and a book simultaneously ever again.

In case you’ve been wondering about how the book is (i.e. thinking “Should I buy it or not?”), here’s a couple of clips from Amazon.com, which seems to be the best aggregator of such things:

“From your first idea to the final release, there are some great tips on common mistakes and ways to avoid those “natural causes”.”

“The writing style is also a nice change from overly technical books that I’ve read (it’s still technical, but it is far more interesting to read!).”

“Highly recommended for Blender users.”

“This is a beautifully written guide to creating an animation. It is filled with useful tips and tricks that can be used for not only animation projects, but other projects well. It is well written in reader friendly language and uses humor to illustrate and explain difficult concepts.”

“I’m an experienced Blender user (and developer), but have only dabbled with the animating and rendering capabilities of Blender, and this book has greatly increased my confidence of being able to tackle those topics in my own potential animations.”

Thus far, the book is now 6 for 6 with five star reviews on Amazon. While that’s a great result, it could of course change with one person who doesn’t get it. But I’ll take batting 1.000 for now.

Obviously, if you’ve been on the fence about whether or not the book is worth it, it’s probably time to… er… get off the fence.

At the end of August, I’ll be doing the web release of The Beast, in 720p HD. There will be downloadables, a crummy YouTube version, and a nice streaming HD version on Vimeo. When it’s time, it’ll get it’s own page, as well as a link from here and the main Blender forums, just to make sure that no one misses it. I’m down to re-working the titles in HD. The animation itself is re-rendered, and I only have to finish the titles and pump the whole thing through the final compositing network, which takes several hours.

I’ve just gone back and read some bits and pieces from the book, and it’s such a different experience from writing or revising it on screen. I’ve found that while I’m writing something, I think it’s great. Then, when it’s out of my hands my confidence in the voice and material falls by several orders of magnitude, and I’m convinced it sucks and will be the object of ridicule. Finally, when I dare to crack the cover of the finished piece, I read a little and find myself saying “not bad… not bad…” and even “that’s pretty good…” in some places. Thus it was with The Essential Blender, and hopefully how it will be with this

The real test, though, is when people in the target audience finally get the book. Despite accusations of arrogance from time to time throughout my life (It’s just confidence I tell you!), I know enough to realize that I’m not the one who will ultimately declare something I write anything better than “good.” That can be done by others, and only if it deserves it. We’ll see next month!