You Can Be A Woman Animator: Book Review
Skwigly
This is part of the ‘YOU CAN BE A WOMAN’ –insert job title here—series of books intended to convince young girls that they have a chance at succeeding in, to quote the flyleaf, ‘non traditional professions’.
Animators have historically been so anonymous that when the occasional woman does break the glass ceiling and appear in the credits of an older film, you can’t pick out scenes that appear to be ‘animated by a woman’. Nevertheless, it is a profession that runs on old- boy-networks and discrimination was rife in the not so recent past. Comparatively few women study this art form and not too many stick with it. YOU CAN BE A WOMAN ANIMATOR is clearly designed to rectify that situation.
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Cohen’s book appears to be aimed at an audience of girls aged 7 to 12 though some portions, notably the exercises, appear to be geared toward very young children. It features artwork from the movie SHARK TALE, but is not a typical tie-in book. Cohen gives the educational background and career profiles of five woman animators and a female director, and there are lesson plans at the end of the book that are designed to show children—and not just the female ones—how to convey ideas through motion, staging and light using inexpensive materials.
I would have rather seen some more pre-production and concept work instead of the finished SHARK TALES renders we see here; only three pieces of conceptual art are included. The inclusion of juvenile pictures of the animators are a little on the twee side but are evidently intended to show young girls that they have something in common with the artists. Recommended for beginning animators of both sexes.
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