Follow from start to finish the creation of an animated short from the pre-production thought process to story development and character design. Explore the best practices and avoid the common pitfalls of creating two to five minute shorts. Watch a specially created animated short, demonstrating the core techniques and principles at the companion website! Packed with illustrated examples of idea generation, character and story development, acting, dialogue and storyboarding practice this is your conceptual toolkit proven to meet the challenges of this unique art form. The companion website includes in-depth interviews with industry insiders, 18 short animations (many with accompanying animatics, character designs and environment designs) and an acting workshop to get your animated short off to a flying start! With all NEW content on script writing, acting, sound design and visual storytelling as well as stereoscopic 3D storytelling, further enhance your animated shorts and apply the industry best practices to your own projects and workflows.