Consider these books for animation enthusiasts.
Still looking for holiday gifts, or what to spend some holiday gift money on? Consider these books for animation enthusiasts.“Mr.
In-Between: My Life in the Middle of the Animation Revolution,” by Bill Kroyer, is a hilarious saga of Kroyer’s captivating journey through the renaissance of the animated film in the digital age.Readers will discover some of the most colorful, eccentric and remarkable geniuses who created hand-drawn animation and experience the evolution of the digital tools of computer animation.They’ll also travel on a world-wide tour of animation studios on four continents in places as diverse as communist China, the Philippines, India and Europe and find that despite vast cultural differences, artistic devotion of animators is common around the globe.
Kroyer was nominated for an Academy Award for his short film, , the first film to combine 2D and CG animated characters.In 2017, he and his wife Sue were the first couple to receive ASIFA-Hollywood’s prestigious June Foray Award.Bill directed , as well as dozens of commercials and animated feature film credit sequences.
As Senior Animation Director at Rhythm & Hues studios, he directed CG characters in films that grossed over $1 billion worldwide.“Drawing Life Back Into Animation: A Personal Journey through the Toon Renaissance of the 1990s,” by Tom Sito, will be arriving in March 2026 and is now available for pre-order.A fabulous storyteller, Sito takes readers deep inside studios and explains how animation bounced back from decline and boomed in the 1990s, becoming integral to video games, visual effects, television, and feature films.
Sito shares stories from the creators of animation that influenced society as well as presents an overview of technological changes that affected the animation industry.An animation veteran and knowledgeable historian, Sito was president of the Animation Guild for almost a decade and was a professor of animation at USC for 32 years.“On Animation: The Director’s Perspective,” by Bill Kroyer and Tom Sito, created and edited by Ron Diamond, is a brilliant set of books for any animation fan who wants some inspiration as well as solid information on what is involved in directing.
In Volume 1, Kroyer and Sito interview John Musker, Ron Clements, John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Brenda Chapman, Nick Park, Tomm Moore, Chris Wedge, Roger Allers, Chris Buck, Tim Johnson and Bill Plympton.Volume 2 includes interviews with Brad Bird, Henry Selick, Don Bluth, Pete Docter, Chris Sanders, Dean DeBlois, Vicky Jenson, Rob Minkoff, Jennifer Yuh Nelson, Carlos Saldanha, and Kevin Lima. Some of the questions they posed include: When did you first have the inkling that you might be interested in animation? Was anybody else in your family artistic? Where did you go to college? What did you study? Is there something specific you look for in a story? One of my favorite quotes from the book is from Brad Bird: “I think that people often underestimate their own talent...I think often people are capable of more than they think they are.” And Kevin Lima reminds us, “Ask for it.
It’s about putting yourself out in the world and saying, ‘I want it.’” Ron Diamond is the co-founder of Animation World Network with Dan Sarto, and the founder of Acme Filmworks and the .“The Horse Who Wanted to Fly,” an award-winning picture book I wrote that is illustrated by Melissa Bailey, tells the story of Charlie, one of the prize racehorses of Leland Stanford, the founder of Stanford University.Stanford commissioned a photographer named Eadweard Muybridge to take high-speed photos of the horse as it ran.
Conveyed through Charlie's story is an important message of resilience and self-confidence, telling young readers, “Believe in yourself, give it a try! How else will you prove that you can fly?” Muybridge produced a series of innovative photographs known as “The Horse in Motion.” These photos demonstrated the gait of a running horse.Some of the pictures showed all four hooves off the ground - proving that horses could fly! The photos could then be placed in a zoetrope, an optical toy consisting of a cylinder with a series of pictures on the inner surface that, when viewed through slits with the cylinder rotating, give an impression of continuous motion.This was the beginning of motion pictures and animation.
The book’s awards include: Gold Medallion Winner, 2025 Will Rogers Medallion Award - Western Young Reader / Fiction / Illustrated Category; Finalist, 2025 Western Writers of America Spur Award - Best Western Children's Picture Book Winner; 2024 EQUUS Literary Corral Winnie Award; and Nominee, 2024 Dr.Tony Ryan Book Award.It’s available on Amazon https://shorturl.at/FlC4a, Barnes and Noble, or your favorite bookstore.
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Pamela Kleibrink Thompson is a career coach who specializes in coaching creative people.She is the author of published by Firefly Books, which is about Muybridge's photos of the horse in motion, a precursor to motion pictures and animation. She also recruits for animation, visual effects, design, and games companies and speaks at colleges and conferences.Visit her website https://www.pamrecruit.com/
Book Review: On Animation: The Director’s Perspective Volumes 1 and 2
Bill Kroyer Talks His New Book, ‘Mr.
InBetween: My Life in the Middle of the Animation Revolution’
An Interview with Animation Director Bill Kroyer
EAT, DRINK, ANIMATE An Animators Cookbook By Tom Sito
Veteran Animator, Animation Historian Tom Sito to Receive SVA’s Dusty Outstanding Alumni Award
MOVING INNOVATION, A History of Computer ANIMATION By Tom Sito, MIT Press
