Blender books for advanced character animation and modeling?

Question

I've been messing with Blender on and off for over a year, and am now ready to put a lot of sweat into making a great model for an iPhone app I'm working on. I want to learn tips and tricks on how to make great looking models and how to animate them as well.

I know how to do key-frame animation, I just want to learn how to do it well. For instance, I have made a model that walks, but I want to improve it. I want to learn how make its movements realistic.

Does anyone have any resources that could help me with this?

Answer 1

http://www.blendercookie.com/2010/05/13/game-enginecharacter-part-1/

This was very educational for me...

Answer 2

There's a book soon to be released for 2.5: Blender 2.5 Character Animation Cookbook

For 2.4 there is Introducing Character Animation with Blender:

but @stephelton recommendation is very good also.

Answer 3

I'm agree with the books recommended in other answers. I want to encourage to learn animation concepts that are universal and there aren't linked to no specific tool.

Animation is the process to give life to things. The movement is very bound to the life. The things that are dead not move. The unanimated things not move. The animation process is very hard and need a lot of experience to achieve good results. There are some small concepts that are essential to begin animating. The books of a tool normally forgive these concepts and focuses only in the use of the tool.

I recommend the book: "The Animator's Survival Kit" from Richard Williams that is a "must have" to every animator, that teach these concepts.