Introducing Character Animation With Blender by Tony Mullen (2007, Package)

"Introducing Character Animation With Blender" is a great book for anyone looking to start Blender, and yet still can challenge more advanced users.

It begins with an introduction to Blender, and then moves into the specifics of the animation. This starts with basic character creation, armatures, Inverse kinematics and forward kinematics, and then combines them all into basic character rigging. For advanced rigging the reader is walked through vertex grouping and weight painting, then shape keys for very complex actions such as facial rigging. At this point the author works through soft bodies in a character and animation techniques of characters. Finally, the author briefly covers post-processing through the nodes system.

Overall, this book provides very in-depth information regarding character rigging and animation, but is presented in such a way that it is easy to read and understand (but be at a computer with Blender!). In this way, a beginner is not thrust over his head in detailed information, while at the same time the book is not simplistic even to more advanced users, and will challenge.

So for those who are interested in character animation, such as me, this book is highly recommended. As a final "sales pitch", also look at Tony Mullen's other Blender books if you are interested in becoming a true expert with Blender. This is the third of his books I have gotten and all are excellent.