Wednesday, July 20, 2011

VES Handbook now in eBook formats

The VES Handbook is finally out in Kindle format from Amazon. It came out last fall but had issues with the Table of Contents among other things.  Currently $37.22 on US amazon store. Paperback is $41.35

[July 17, 2012 Just checked amazon and they're back to selling it at full retail price. $64.95 Not sure why. I assume the publisher requested it?]


It also is out for the Nook format as well at Barnes and Noble.  Currently $64.95 on US Barnes and Noble.

There's hope for an iBook format version as well but unknown when that will happen.

(I haven't been able to do a full check yet)

The good news:
1. Now more portable. The paperback book is about 960 pages and is about 1 and 1/2 inches thick, so it's not an easy thing to carry around.

2 Should be able to run on any device that supports whichever format you buy. That includes the iPad and other devices.

3. The Kindle version at least includes the additional articles from the website so is closer to 1200 pages.

4. Working Table of Contents to make it quicker to go directly to chapters.

5. You can bookmark, highlight text and add notes to most of the eReaders to make it fast to go to a specific section.


The bad news:
1. Some of the photos from studios have restrictions and will not appear in the electronic versions.
(I'm not sure how many at this point)

2. The printed book included sub-chapter page numbers for the actual articles.  The electronic versions only list by chapters.  Wish they had the full table of contents working.


Other info about the Handbook:
It won a Prose award which is an award for profesional and scholarly excellence for publications. The Handbook won in the Art Technique category.

Animation World Review

We are actively seeking specific feedback for the handbook since we're already discussing version 2 update.  (They're already on the 2nd printing)  More than likely we'll be augmenting the book with added articles instead of totally revamping existing articles but please submit any thoughts and ideas.
Too much? Too little? What worked? What didn't?

Focal Press has a sample online.  The page also lists the table of contents. See link lower on that page for a sampler.   This is a section of Bill Taylor's article on shooting greenscreen/bluescreen.  This article gets into a lot detail because it's a defined technical process.  In the handbook there are a mix of articles, some that deal with very specific technical issues and some that deal with broader issues.

VES Handbook companion site - Includes author bios and extended versions of some of the articles.

(extended articles should be in Kindle version)

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