Books and the treasures within!

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My Stop-Motion Monster Puppet Menagerie

Richard Svensson
I have know Richard for quite some time and have watched many of his animated videos on YouTube. Recently he released a book, which at the time I believed was a form of art book detailing his designs of his finished puppets. 
However, I was pleasantly surprised to see the first 7 pages were describing his build-up processes and methods when creating his puppets. these pages are very detailed and a great source of reference for any stop-motion student that wish to learn how to make build-up puppets, especially if they want to make creature based designs. 
The book is available in Digital and Printed formats.



Susannah Shaw
This was one of the first books I ever got back in 2003, its a VERY detailed book, explaining all levels of the stop-motion process, literally from start to finnish. There are now three editions of this book, personally I would advise owning all three purley because each edition adds more to what is currently industry standard at the time of its publication. But not everything in these books is everybody's cup of tea, so its advisable to try find copys at your library and read through them before dedicating to purchasing.
This book is available in Kindle and Printed formats.

Tony Dalton
This book has tones of photo material that is valuable research in understanding stop-motion model making, granted that the majority of the items are decaying BUT they do display methods that are still in use to today and allow the reader to have a great example in studying Ray's drawing skills. There are also three other books by Tony Dalton on Ray's work, An Animated life (set more like a biography) A Century of Model Animation/ Stop Motion Animation (detailing a history of stop-motion animation) and Fantasy Scrapbook (this one contains lots of great model puppet photos). These can be found in your local libraries and are certainly worth checking out before investing in them.
This is, in my opinion, a must have on any stop-motion students shelf. 
Harryhausen: The Lost Movies
John Walsh 
This book is relatively new to my collection, but it is one that has a great educational purpose. Filmmakers rarely talk about the projects they dont get off the ground, treating them like failures or their followers are unaware of their projects. In John Walsh's case, he along with the other trustees at the Ray & Diana Harryhausen foundation, uncovered over 80 projects Ray either never got off the ground, turned down or changed due to budget and time restraints. Any young student would find this a fascinating read, as well as a great insight into the film making system. for every good idea, there are 10 unused ones, but that does not mean they are bad idea, ideas can be recycled or transformed into something more for later projects.



















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