Our department is working on Motion Capture research. This book helps us to direct a practical approach on not only academic perspective but also entertainment applicaiton.

The historical overview in the first half gave an excellent and entertaining background. It tells the stories of various well known motion capture projects so readers can immediately relate to the real world applications of motion capture and understand what sorts of applications will not work. The technical information was well organized and clearly written. This is a must have for anyone considering motion capture as a part of their project! ---Scott Whitney

At last a no-nonsense book for both users of the technology and those considering using it in their future productions.

The first half deals with the checkered history of motion capture and it's use and misuse to date. Unfortunately most of the stories fall into the negative vein and concentrate on the cases where the use of motion capture turned out to be a costly mistake, but this is all to the benefit of the reader lest he/she should be aligning themselves to make the same mistakes!

There is good practical advice on how to come out of a motion capture session with useable data and some extremely useful math to allow you to transfer it to your character. If you are using off the shelf software some of this may be superfluous, but if you have the opportunity to supplement it with your own proprietary code it could save you months of work. Either way it is genuinely useful in understanding how raw data can be used to drive a computer generated character.

It is hard to find fault with this book. If there is one it is just that the reader is left wanting more of the invaluable 'war-stories' from those who have used the process in the past, and possibly more recently on projects like 'Titanic' and 'The Mummy', if those studios are willing to divulge the detils. Mr Menache warns that facial motion capture is beyond the range of this text but hints that there may be another one to follow to make up for this. It is comforting to see that he himself ran a motion capture studio for many years, and you can be sure that the sum of his experience is inside the pages.

Just buy it BEFORE you start your production!

I also do own a lot of books on interior design, and when it comes to looking in to the opulent french style, this is a book to own. Even if you are not going to do a room like the ones he does (which I suppose is extremely rare) his ways which objects, placement of furniture, various kind of traditional pieces, combination of textures and colors will give very good direction for working with this kind of inspiration, rather than the usual more country/cotteny feel so often done by others. His illustrations are very detailed, leaves you wondering if they were done before (as a service to his clients) or after the room was finished. (For himself, I suppose). A book to own.

I have an extraordinarily large library of books on interior design books and this one equals or surpasses the very best. The number and quality of the photos are without parallel. The book represents the very best in haute European design. Pinto's work now is rivaled only by Peter Marino's, others of this genre having died. The average homemaker looking for ideas to freshen up the family room will not find them here. But for anyone interested in seeing what perfection of detail looks like -- in upholstery, curtains, garniture, and the like -- every page of this book will show them. It is worth every penny of the price and should be in every interior designer's collection, if only to inform them and their clients of what superior upholstery design and lush color can do for a room.

I was scared and upset when I finally realized what the title of the book meant. I am a mexican-american, born on the U.S. side of the border. This book reminded me just how far away America is from Mexico, even though we are neigbors, we are worlds away. This book is blunt. Although it was a harsh reality check for me, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.

We, as United States citizens take for granted all that we have and this book is a solemn reminder of all that we do have to be thankful for. Urrea gives character sketches of sorts on the impoverished families and orphaned children that live unseen by the world in their own world of the Mexican garbage dumps. A very sad tale about the suffering in Mexico that goes unnoticed. Thank you Urrea for opening my eyes and my heart to these children.

just buy this book. beautiful pictures of beautiful buildings of one of the great european architects (but unfortunately still unknown in the netherlands)

Alberto Campo Baeza, one of Spain's outstanding modern architects and professor of architecture at American and European universities, has his elegant designs reviewed in Kenneth Frampton's book.

Sometimes you just want to read something that warms your heart. Something that is so rich and abundant with kindliness and warmth that you have to pause several times in your reading to ponder and absorb. The author must have been a very "nice boy." A nice boy with kaleidoscope vision and compassion.

Nothing fancy. Just plain home-cooking, albeit sometimes spicy, like the chilaquilas recipe in the book, which incidently, is wonderful!

I have never read a book about my hometown. This book took me back to my childhood days, and what it meant to grow up in a border town where everyone knew each other, everyone was friendly, there was no racism and you could sleep with the door unlocked, leave your keys in the car and it was safe. It also brought sadness at the same time, since Nogales is not the same Nogales of the fifties, sixties, seventies and even part of the eighties. It has grown extensively, has crime, and is no longer the little friendly town I once knew and loved.

Albert was at Nogales High School at the same time as I. He has truly written a BEAUTIFUL memoir of what my little childhood town was.I knew his family, his father married my husband and I and his mom pierced my ears. I was saddened by the fact that his father had passed away,(since we moved to culture shock California 10 years ago,I don't have much contact with Nogalians). But, believe me,you don't have to be from Nogales to enjoy this little marvel of a book.

Like the "halaiqui," the ritual storyteller of Mogador who transports his listeners to other worlds, Alberto Ruy-Sanchez invites his reader to accompany the protagonist of "En los labios del agua" on his journey to search for the ancient manuscripts of the Arabic calligrapher Aziz Al Gazali, founder of the "Sonambulos," a caste of men and women for whom desire is the compass which determines their destiny. While the quest for desire is embodied in a feminine protagonist in the author's first novel, "Los nombres del aire," in his second novel, the infinite forms of desire, longing, and love are explored by a male protagonist whose name, Juan Amado, reveals his fundamental obsession. The reader who accepts the author's invitation to penetrate the labyrinth of this novel, which is constructed with manuscripts, letters, notebooks, poems, calligraphy, dreams, and memories, should abandon conventional narrative expectations, and prepare to linger over the poetic prose which spills onto the page like the water of a fountain.

In its simplist form the novel is a long love letter written by Juan Amado to Maimuna, the woman at the center of his quest for desire. A whirlwind of erotic possessions carries the protagonist to many lands throughout the world, and finally to the Morrocan city of Mogador, where Aziz Al Gazali wrote his treatises on love so many years ago. As the reader puts together the fragments of this mosaic of desire, the image which emerges is a portrait of the narrator, a Mexican writer who traces his origins from the desert of Sonora to the sands of the Sahrara, and discovers in the Arabic world the seeds of his own roots and those of his ancestors. As he writes the story of his search for a lost paradise, Juan Amado discovers, as does the reader, that words evoked by desire have the power to cross oceans and deserts, erasing distance and time in their effort to reach the beloved. For those readers who enjoyed "Los nombres del aire," the author's second novel offers another opportunity to experience pleasure in Alberto Ruy-Sanchez's imaginary city of desire.

Alberto Ruy Sánchez made, in this book, the same magic as in the others. A wonderful, intriguing book to read in any period of your life. An exotic city filled whith passion, a strange world of love an spices. The book smells of heat and lust. A novel so pure, so wild in it's own world, it seems as if written by nature itself.

One of the most unbelievable books I've had the pleasure to read. I used to have a copy and think just about everyone should. Hell, I'm a jock and I loved it. Too bad its hard to find. Anyone that sees this, I am NOT OVER STATING MY OPINION.

The book grabbed me within a heartbeat. It was well written with much visual effects and sensory overloads. One felt as though they were actually becoming a Shaman. It made perfect sense and when he was scared I was scared. When things came together for him, it did for me too. Highly recommended, although it's out of print. Try to obtain it anyway you can.

Anyone who has ever wondered how a truly great artist gets his inspiration, works on a daily basis and incorporates his philosophies of life into his work will want to read this terrific story of how a young, American writer sat for his portrait by the legendary Alberto Giacometti.

Almost non-stop upon their meeting, Giacometti opens up and begins letting his thoughts come tumbling out of his mouth. He tells his subject that he looks like "a thug...if I could paint you as I see you and a policeman saw the picture he'd arrest you immediately!" And then, "Don't laugh. I'm not supposed to make my models laugh." He tells the author of his trip to London's National Gallery where he says, "...I deliberately didn't look at the Rembrandts, because if I had looked at them I wouldn't have been able to look at anything else afterward." Later on in his work, "It's impossible to paint a portrait...the photograph exists and that's all there is to it."

Giacometti was not only one of the greatest artists of the last century he was also, obviously, a wonderful, contradictory, clever, intelligent, verbal, loving, open, warm companion. When the painting is not going well, the artist exclaims, "If only Cezanne were here, he would set everything right with two brush strokes." Lord gently corrects him pointing out that Cezanne had plenty of trouble. And then Giacometti (probably with a hint of happiness) agrees, "Even he had trouble."

One comes to know these two men so well in this small, beautifully written memoir that one feels close to them and to their emotional upset when after only eighteen days, they part ways. The author reminds us that Giacometti would be the first to remark that a portrait could only achieve a "semblence of reality." He hopes that the artist will enjoy this written portrait. As Lord writes, "To see even so little will be to see very much." True.

Included in the paperback are snapshots taken to show Lord's portrait in progress. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

This book is a must, for fans of Giacometti's work and for artists world wide. It gives one the opportunity to be in the studio with a great artist. It is wonderfull but terrible at the same time, as an artist, I came away from the book feeling completely insignificant untalented and without hope, however this is a good thing, it is an experience all artists must, and do go through. Please read the book you will learn so much!

I don't know how Manguel did it. He offers more "variety plus quality" than some or even than many other gay male fiction anthologies. (1) Big and international author-names. Francoise Sagan, Alice Munro, Yukio Mishima, Isaac Basheivis Singer, others.....(2) Nice serving of gay-gay classic writers. E. M. Forster, James Baldwin, Tennessee Williams, James Purdy, Christopher Isherwood, Edmund White, Truman Capote. (And Denton Welch's overlooked but crisp tale "When I Was Thirteen.") (3) Heterosexual American writers. Anderson, O'Hara, Hemingway, oh and John Cheever....

(4) But above all, Manguel shares some gems which even I, the inveterate buff of non-porn gay male short fiction, didn't know! "Punchlines," by W. P. Kinsella, efficiently frightens in its portraying the blood-pressure-intense damage when a macho type suppresses his gay side--for a while....."The Cold Wind And The Warm," by Ray Bradbury, is a lyric watercolor of a very-gay contingent wafting into a staid Irish hotel--but everyone survives just fine....My two favorites include "May We Borrow Your Husband?" by Graham Greene. Never was "gay seduction" more crisply portrayed, though the seductee (a young British bridegroom) survives just fine also.....Finally, "Torridge," by William Trevor, re-creates in front of us the chilling, calculated revenge of a harrassed British schoolboy triumphing years later. At a dinner, the formerly-triumphant straight (or at least married) school "chums" and their families, collapse gently and stately like falling dominoes under Torridge's triumph--a scene to behold indeed.

Nowadays, yearly series of gay male short stories emerge--good ones, too. But IN ANOTHER PART OF THE FOREST carved out an indispensable "woodcut" in this genre; seek it out.

In Another Part of the Forest is a must buy for the Collector of gay literature. Manguel and Stephenson have assembled an anthology of gay short fiction by some of the worlds most reknowned authors that depicts the role of the homosexual in the course of recent history. At times sad and frustrating these stories expose the bigotry and hatred spawned by prejudice.

A fast-moving plot line that draws you into its lush desert landscapes, quirky characters, greasy roadside diners, drive-ins, and general Americana. A great novel on many levels.

This is simply one of the finest American novels I have ever read: fascinating, funny, wise, and beautifully crafted. Urrea's work ought to be as well-know as Kingsolver's, McCarthy's and other contemporary western writers. He's building a following over here in England simply by word of mouth, one imported copy at a time. If you're an American reader, don't miss one of the best writers you've got over there.