Explore Disney's 12 principles of animation, while learning how to animate in Maya. You can develop your own leading digital techniques rooted to traditional workflows. From squash and stretch to timing and appeal, you will enhance your creative toolset with strong classics training and cutting edge techniques. Trusted Maya Authority, Lee Montgomery offers the only artistic guide to applying the principles of traditional animation with Maya's tools, which are used in production by the best animators and VFX artists today. Add another webpage to your favourites and expand your digital workflow to include the practical resources of the Tradigital Maya with the robust companion web site that include demonstrations, project files, links to further resources, available at www.tradigitalmaya.com.

Focal Press adds a new star to its brightening constellation of superb Animation titles: The "Tradigital" line of books. "Tradigital" titles bridge the gap between animating with a particular software tool, and applying the 12 principles of animation to your work. The first three titles in the series cover: Maya, 3ds Max, and Blender. The 12 basic principles of animation were introduced by the Disney animators Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas, who wanted to codify the efforts of the leading Disney animators from the 1930s onwards to produce more realistic animations. The principles mainly teach animators how to create characters that look like they are adhering to the basic laws of physics. The principles also deal with more abstract issues, such as emotional timing and character appeal. Today, the core Disney principles are generally adopted by animators around the world. Though originally intended to apply to traditional, hand-drawn animation, the principles still have great relevance for today's more prevalent computer animation. Lee Montgomery presents "Tradigital Maya" which shows animators how to use the Maya controls, while applying the classical principles of animation and core techniques. With our new "Tradigital" series, we are finally bridging the gap between software-specific instruction and the world of classical animation.

As the popularity of "Marley & Me" attests, people love their dogs-and everyone else's too. For all the time spent on grooming, petting, and other care-it's as if owning a dog is a religion unto itself. Woof! brings together original essays from acclaimed writers ruminating on the sometimes tumultuous, often selfless love affair between human and dog. Alternately poignant and hilarious, these collected stories of mutts and purebreds alike will win the hearts of the millions who've ever loved a member of the world's most loyal species.

The hope for this book is to show the narrative of the day when the South was invaded by those who desired to inflict their ideals, morals and attitudes, just because "these Southerners" needed to be brought back under the Northerner's way of life, their philosophy of life and their interpretation of the law. But above all, it was because the Northerners way of life was jolted economically when the Southern states seceded from the Union. Hopefully, as you read these quotes and narratives, of which most come from primary sources, that it will bring us closer to the facts of history and erase the opinions, of the new order of modern historians, where facts are deemed as secondary. History can easily become a lie when interpreted by the opinions of men and then, what do you get? Certainly you get no facts. George Santayana hit the bulls eye when he said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

History books, the media, school systems and on, and on, and on, abound in falsehoods and inaccuracies of Confederate and Southern history. Here are but a few fictional teachings which are presented today as true.

The Montgomerys are among the last of a dying breed -- New England WASPs who effortlessly combine repression, flamboyant eccentricity, and alcoholism. Fragmented by drink and dysfunction, the family has not assembled in more than a decade. But when Big Dad, the patriarch, is diagnosed with stomach cancer, the siblings return to their childhood home, Four Corner Farm, to help their parents navigate the specialists, treatment options, pain management, and, most difficult of all, their own anguish.

Big Dad has always moved carefully through life, taking responsibility for the farm, the cars, the house, and his wife. The irrepressible Mumzy, now in her late seventies, drinks her first gin each day at 8:45 a.m. and spends her time singing jazz standards and reliving the glory days when she rescued horses from the now defunct hunt club. Prickly and proud, the two have always tried to keep their chins up, but Big Dad's cancer rattles their formidable denial.

Montgomery's stunning memoir vividly evokes the often unspoken bonds between family members -- bonds made of memory, love, and disappointment. Heartbreaking, lyrical, and frequently hilarious, "The Things Between Us" hums with a sense of wonder as the author discovers anew the most familiar people in her life, herself among them.