Fans, Friends and Followers: Building an Audience and a Creative Career in the Digital Age may be this year’s must-read book for anybody who makes creative content on the Internet. Everybody, including the Brewmasters, constantly preaches that the future for artists is on the Internet, but how exactly can an artist establish a fan base, generate revenue, and create a reputation on the Internet?

Scott Kirsner, Variety writer and editor of the invaluable CinemaTech blog, breaks it down in his new book by offering case studies of thirty visual artists, comedians, animators, documentary filmmakers, musicians and writers. I haven’t seen the book yet, but I’m sure that it’s not going to offer many easy-to-follow formulas. Even the traditional media gatekeepers, with their hundreds of millions of dollars, have yet to figure out a formula for taming the Internet. What the book will likely show though is that there are countless different models that indie media makers, including animators, can use to connect with an audience online. Unlimited opportunities await artists on the Internet, and this book should serve as an invaluable handbook for any creative soul who is brave enough to venture into this uncharted frontier.

The website for Fans, Friends and Followers offers the book for purchase in multiple formats including Kindle and PDF, and a paperback version is available on Amazon.

The author, Scott Kirsner, has kindly provided Cartoon Brew an exclusive excerpt from an interview in the book with JibJab founders Evan and Gregg Spiridellis, and how they’ve found unconventional ways of generating revenue from their animation work:

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I endorse everything Craig Yoe does. Even this.

Especially this. His latest book project, Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman’s Co-Creator Joe Shuster, is having a launch party this Sunday night. The book collects recently rediscovered X-rated art by the Shuster, done to illustrate erotic magazines in the 1950s, a low point in his professional career. The public is invited to join Craig (”along with assorted BDSM fetishists and comic book enthusiasts” — is there a difference?) Sunday April 5th from 8pm to 2am at ARLO & ESME, 42 E. 1st Street [at 2nd Ave.] in lovely New York City. Come dressed as a superhero and win a prize. For more info go to Yoe’s blog.

UPDATE: Thanks to everybody who entered! Here are the winners:
Maya Shavzin (who commented on this post)
Brad Blackman (who follows us on Cartoon Brew Twitter)
Fabian Molina (who is a member of our Cartoon Brew Facebook page)
Stay tuned…we’ve got a lot more contests coming up!

It’s give-away time on Cartoon Brew! We’ve got three sets of my new book The Art of Pixar Short Films and its companion DVD, the Pixar Short Films Collection, Volume 1. Here’s how to win a set:

* We will choose one winner from the comments section of this post. Anybody who posts a comment below, before 12am tonight, is automatically entered.

* A second set will be given away to a random subscriber to the Cartoon Brew Twitter account. If you’re already a subscriber, then you’re already entered. If not, just subscribe to our Twitter feed. Winner will be chosen tonight at 12am.

* A third winner will be randomly chosen tonight at 12am from subscribers to our new Cartoon Brew Facebook Page. To enter, just join the page. (Note: This is different from our Facebook group.)

Want to hear more about the book. Check out this interview I did with Mike Bastoli at The Pixar Blog.

Reviews of the book are starting to come in. A selection:

“[W]ith the Pixar Shorts book, Amid has written what I consider to be his best book. His writing style is fluid and easy to read, but he doesn’t dumb down the material. His focus is more on the people who made the films than the films themselves, although he smartly lays out what is so remarkable about each film.” (Ricky Grove/Renderosity)

“Author Amid Amidi gives wonderful insight into the Pixar process with stories and anecdotes you won’t find anywhere else…It’s kind of hard to do this book justice via a write-up, you really need to take a gander at all the beautiful art that is contained within. I’ve had it in my living room for a couple of weeks now and every time I have friends over they end up getting caught up in it for a good amount of time. The book is definitely an easy way to show off your passion for all that is Pixar.” (Monki/Ain’t It Cool News)

“[N]one of the art-of Pixar books to date have taken us behind the creative process, and deeper into the history of the company, the men and women who made the company the juggernaut it is today. That has changed with Mr. Amidi’s terrific The Art of Pixar Short Films. A lovingly packaged and in-depth look at not only the films themselves, but also a de-facto history of Pixar, and their critical importance in the development of digital animation in general. (Brett Warnock/Hey Bartender!)

“An always astute Amid Amidi has partnered with Chronicle Books to write a concise but fairly thorough and very smart monograph hidden in an “art of” that, frankly, looks like every other ‘art of’ book Chronicle has ever produced…Amidi provides some excellent historical information and carefully measured editorial observations in a smart, easy to read take on the development of Pixar via the amuse-bouche of animation.” (Rhett Wickham/Laughing Place)

“The writeup is great. There’s a short history of Pixar before it was even known as Pixar (founded in 1986). Following on, it details the making of each short film. There are interesting things like how depth map shadowing and tweening were used in Luxo Jr. or how John Lasseter would animate into the morning and sleep under his table.” (Parka/Parka Blogs)

“Going through the book, it’s obvious that Amidi wanted to give the spotlight to a wider variety of artists than what one often sees on DVD special features, where the main directors and producers generally get the spotlight. In this book, you get to see work from a large number of artists who contributed to the films. There is no conceit here in terms of making us think that any film is the product of one man; rather, the exuberance of Pixar collaboration is quite evident.” (Randall Cyrenne/Animated Views)

“I can really appreciate the difficulty of writing the establishing section, distilling highly technical systems and challenges in understandable terms while avoiding the obvious out of respect for the readers. As each short appears in the book, historic narrative is woven in order sustain the context of the films and their impact.” (Greg Ehrbar/MouseTracks)

“What’s particularly nice about The Art of Pixar Short Films isn’t its use of seldom-seen photographs…but – rather – that Amidi isn’t afraid to dig into the more controversial aspects of the Pixar story…Amid Amidi strikes just the right balance with this handsome new hardcover. There are just enough new stories to interest history buffs like myself. While – at the same time – there are enough great illustrations to be found in The Art of Pixar Short Films that animation professionals & students of the medium will probably want to pick up a copy of this new Chronicle Book just for inspiration and/or reference purposes.” (Jim Hill/Jim Hill Media)

“I’d like to start off by saying that The Art of Pixar Short Films by Cartoon Brew’s Amid Amidi is, in one word, beautiful!…The Art of Pixar Short Films will look great next to your other “Art of…” books, but on the inside it is more like To Infinity and Beyond!: The Story of Pixar Animation Studios (also from Chronicle) although it focuses on the shorts in more detail than ever before!” (Martin/Pixar Planet)

The Pixar “Art of” books are always a treat, and next to that the Little Golden Books and various tie-in publications always feature incredible art, frequently by Pixar artists and designers themselves.

Pixar’s Ronnie Del Carmen discusses and previews his UP book, My Name Is Dug on his blog. It looks gorgeous - and has me doubly excited about the feature film that inspired it. The book comes out on April 14th.

I’m pleased to report that Darrell Van Citters’s book on the making of Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol has now gone to press. If all goes well, advance copies will be available at the 2009 San Diego Comic Con, July 23-26 with a wide release in the fall. Darrell has been at work on this labor of love for several years and when he couldn’t secure a satisfactory publisher, he decided to go the self-publishing route. Events to support the book launch are in the works on both coasts with the intent to reach as wide an audience as possible. I will certainly keep you posted about it on Cartoon Brew — I can’t wait to get this!

If you appreciate good design and color work, then you’ll want to add the new hardcover publication The Whimsical Work of David Weidman and Also Some Serious Ones to your bookshelf. While this career retrospective features mostly his silk-screened prints from the Sixties and Seventies, there is also a healthy sampling of Weidman’s animation artwork from studios like UPA, Storyboard and TV Spots (later Creston Studios). Some of his UPA art from 1955 is identified as being from the ’70s and the writing (what little of it there is) didn’t particularly impress, but the star of this show is the artwork and there is loads of nicely presented imagery throughout. To see some of David Weidman’s artwork online, visit WeidmansArt.com.

I could have sworn someone would’ve posted the animation section from Alan Dale Bogorad’s 1943 book Jr’s Fun To Draw by now. When comics/animation historian Mark Arnold offered to scan his copy (in better shape than my own) I jumped at the chance to put it here for posterity. This chapter was compiled by Nat Falk and is a companion to his 1941 How To Make Animated Cartoons, combining model sheets, storyboards and animation sketches from Terrytoons, Fleischer and Warner Bros. Click on thumbnails below for full size images.

Just a quick note: if you’re part of the media (print or online—US/Canada) and would like a review copy of my new book The Art of Pixar Short Films (now with a striking cover of Luxo Jr.), then drop me a line with your details. Review copies will be going out soon. There’s a limited number I can send from my side, but I’ll try to get you on the list. I received an advance of the book this week and I think it’s a really nice addition to Pixar’s ‘art of’ series. I’ll also be doing book give-aways for Brew readers sometime in the next month or two.