In the animation world, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston’s massive tome, The Illusion of Life, is considered to be the animator’s bible. Those who may be tempted to sneer at all things Disney should pause in their judgment. While this hard cover book is filled with gorgeous full-colour illustrations from Disney short films and features from the early 20s to its publication in the 1980, this is not some coffee table book for rabid fans being pushed by Disney corporate bigwigs to make a quick buck. This book is essentially the passing of the torch, a history of western animation and innovation being passed from the first generation who created the art form to the next generation that would carry it into the future.

I’ve owned a copy of this book since I was in my teens. It was a Christmas present from my parents and I always looked upon it with great pride, particularly after I learned how sought after a volume it had become. Oddly though, I never really sat down to read it. I’ve flipped through its pages on occasion, but for some reason the book itself felt intimidating. This strange queasy feeling you get when you approach a teacher you particularly admire. Of course, it is only a book and I know rationally that I’m not actually sitting at the knee of these two famed, talented animators, but still, the mind can be a strange and tricky thing. It was only recently, when I realized that one of my lingering hang ups was centered around the notion of “how could I call myself an animator and not read Illusion of Life, despite the fact that I’ve owned a copy for over 10 years?”

Upon putting that lunacy into words, I sternly took my skittish psyche by the ear and plunked her down in front of this book. Even though I’m only a few chapters in at this point, the queasy feeling has been replaced with a sense of awe and humility. Read the rest of this entry

Is there something in your life that you’ve always wanted to do, but can’t seem to get around to it? Maybe take up piano lessons? Start that diet? Finish that novel? Volunteer for a great cause? And yet somehow, despite all your best intentions, you wind up on the couch watching re-runs of Grey’s Anatomy and wondering if Patrick Demsey’s star-power is perhaps bottled in with his hair conditioner.

This ongoing battle with ourselves to get our butts off the couch and doing the things that we say we want to do is what Steven Pressfield defines as The War of Art. According to his book, our desire to do creative works or change our lives for the better is all too often met with an insidious enemy which he calls ‘Resistance’. Using the war metaphor, Pressfield personifies this enemy and chronicles Resistance’s various guises such as procrastination, excuses, fear, self-doubt, self-criticism, addictions and so on. Every possible self-sabotaging element that we could possibly come up with to throw in our own path is another face of Resistance. And, for an aspiring artist/writer/entrepreneur/musician/whatever, Resistance is public enemy #1.

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