Preston Blair was one of the great animators. He was responsible for the Red Hot Riding Hood animation in several Tex Avery cartoons, for the hippos and other memorable characters in Fantasia, and many more classic examples of making drawings move. But his most lasting contribution to the art may rest with a couple of books he authored for the Walter Foster art book series. They were repackaged a few times under different names — Cartoon Animation, Advanced Animation, How to Animate Film Cartoons, Animation: Learn How to Draw Animated Cartoons and others.
It is difficult to overestimate the importance of the Blair books to animation. Darn near every kid who ever thought it might be neat to learn how to do that started to learn how to do that from these volumes. Many who took expensive courses in art schools reported that it was more educational just to page through the Preston Blair books and copy his work. (And speaking of copying: Blair's drawings have been ripped-off countless times for advertising and other purposes. I believe this current edition contains all or most of both volumes and if you buy it, you'll recognize a lot of duck and pig drawings.)
What many did not know until recently was that Blair had to redo his first book after its initial publication in 1947. He'd used drawings he'd done for MGM and a few from Disney, which caused legal problems. That edition was redrawn and he refashioned all the images of Tom & Jerry and Screwy Squirrel and Droopy and other established characters into generic versions. The drawing below shows how one rabbit received a makeover.
Copies of the first version are rare and prized. My pal Jerry Beck scored one from another great animator, Dave Tendlar, and now you can experience it. ASIFA-Hollywood is archiving and sharing rare treasures of animation and they've scanned Jerry's copy and posted it here and here. This is a valuable resource for wanna-be animators, and I'm sure seasoned professionals can learn from it, as well. A lot of those who do cannot teach but Blair was that rare talent who could so something and explain clearly how he did it.