With holiday gifting and the end of the years on people’s minds, there are plenty of lists that are “Best of..” or “Perfect gifts for …” This list is a little different: here are 2 books that should be purchased as BOOKS… not e-books, not i-books, not Kindle books. I hope the reasons will become clear, but I’ll explain why, and, in particular, why these books are great for visual thinkers, whether it’s you, your children, your parents, your friends, or your colleagues.
The first is to be released on December 6, 2013, and I was able to receive an advance copy:
The CG Story: Computer-Generated Animation and Special Effects
This profusely illustrated book, researched and written by Christopher Finch, is probably the physically largest of the books out of all I have included. But I’m not calling this a “coffee-table book”, because it’s scope goes beyond just showing pictures of finished frames from Hollywood’s finest efforts in CG, with little content to explain or support the images. He tells a longer story than you might suppose is possible, given the short time frame of merely a few decades we think of computer-generated animation and special effects of being in existence.
Finch’s narrative keeps in mind throughout the book a proposition described in 1965 by CG pioneer Ivan Sutherland:
The Ultimate Display would, of course, be a room within which the Computer can control the existence of matter…With appropriate programming such a display could be the Wonderland into which Alice walked.
Beginning with the simplest visual representations created in fabric through a jacquard loom (using punched cards) in the mid-19th century, the story moves quickly through the beginnings in the academic world expanding into the somewhat geeky/technical world of early SIGGRAPH meetings and conferences to the landmark film “Toy Story” (1995), the first animated film to be completely created on computers, by chapter 5.
Here are some of the spreads from the book, with text and illustrations to which the large format of the books gives justice:
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[panel title=”The CG Story – mixed digital arts in the 80’s-90’s” description=”Disney’s CAPS system – traditional animation mixed with computer generated effects. Courtesy: The Monacelli Press”]
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[panel title=”The CG Story – Chapter 5: Toy Story” description=”Toy Story (1995) – the first fully computer generated animated film. Courtesy: The Monacelli Press”]
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[panel title=”The CG Story – Green Screen and motion tracking” description=”Films from 2012 using green screen and motion tracking of live actors become digital cinematic graphics. Courtesy: The Monacelli Press”]
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There are at least 175 films mentioned, many with behind-the-scenes photographs of drawings, computer models, and green-screen work next to their finished on-screen equivalents.
This book isn’t full of technical specifications about hardware and software, but rather tells many back stories of how films using CG animation and effects were conceived and made, including the machinations of major studios resisting advances in technology and pioneers (both known and not well known by the general public) who often innovated on their own before seeing their work become accepted practice.
This is a book about delight, wonder and visual exploration, and could not be satisfying in a digital format.
You can purchase the book here.
The second book is an updated version of a monograph first released in 2009, but with far more material and timed to coincide with what would have been the subject’s 125th birthday:
Fritz Kahn (English, German and French Edition)
The life’s work of an infographics pioneer
This amazing book, carefully curated and filled with images, displaying page after page of the work of this pioneer of visual representation of information. Fritz Kahn’s images are certainly a strong precursor to contemporary infographics, particularly of the kind we are seeing daily shared across the internet.
This is an expanded version of the book first released in 2009 by Uta and Thilo von Debschitz, with many new images, (mostly presumed lost due to Nazi persecution and book burnings, and also simply forgotten over time) and a forward by Steven Heller, a well-respected designer and highly knowledgeable visual thinker, artist and teacher.
Fritz Kahn’s “Man as Industrial Palace” (1928)
Kahn, a physician first by training, is probably best know for the imaginative visualizations of the systems within human beings and, by extension natural systems that he created. Although these amazing images did not come, by and large, from statistical data analysis, Fritz Kahn applied his scientific training and powerful imagination, fueled by awareness of contemporary knowledge and society, to create powerful visual metaphors that made sense to those without a technical background.
Although not necessarly factual, in their fanciful metaphors they both stir the imagination and provide inspiration for artists and designers attempting to illustrate systems, cause and effect, or other types of visual stories that are ripe for metaphors that non-scientific audiences can grasp.
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[/panel][panel title=”Fritz Kahn ” description=”The five points in common between muscle operation and an electric doorbell circuit. 1929″]
[/panel][panel title=”Fritz Kahn ” description=”Erection: technical schematic representation of the male erection system – 1939″]
[/panel][panel title=”Fritz Kahn ” description=”Car and ear conform to one another – 1929″]
[/panel][panel title=”Fritz Kahn ” description=”Sunbathing! The twelve effects of sunlight on the skin – 1939″]
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