Check my blog too www.jaisbredsted.blogspot.com
This is my Class 1 REEL from the Animation Mentor - The online Animation School. Spring 2010. My mentor was Chad Stewart.
It's a 6 term course where each term is 12 weeks.
We start with the basics and then, body mechanics and last we have acting with the famous rig Bishop 2.0
I would recommend this school to everybody who is interested in animation.

Info about the making of this presentation:
The book is a made in 3dsmax2011 from a script called book rigger:
scriptspot.com/​3ds-max/​scripts/​book-rigger Don't know if there is a similar script for Maya.
The background is different elements collaged together in Photoshop. A coffeecup, a wooden texture, some pencils etc.
The light is a simple 3 point light setup and rendered with max scanline render.
The maya renders (jpg sequences) are mapped on the pages in 3dsmax.
The Animation Mentor Rigs are shaded and rendered in Maya from a tutorial from this Ciaran Dempsey in this Vimeo video.
vimeo.com/​11266079
(check his REELS too. They are simply awesome).
The hard part was the logistics when keeping track of all the jpg sequences and mapping them the right way on the pages.
Rendertime was about a day.
Thats about it.