Character Mentor: Learn by Example to Use Expressions Poses and Staging to ing Your Character

The art of staging is rather complex. Most people don't give a lot of thought to staging a picture. In general, a lot of drawings are kinda haphazardly thrown together with the background just being tacked on as an after thought. I'm by no means a great artist but this has always bugged me in a lot of the pictures I've studied. This book is brilliant in explaining how to show personality through little details, how to show contextual clues and how to direct the viewers eyes. Previously Mr. Bancroft has praised his former mentors in his other book. I have to say, he really paid attention and I'm glad he decided to share what he learned from the masters with the rest of us. If you ever wonder what type of background or area to drop your characters in, this book will help you put together plenty of real deliberation and planning that can be used both now and for years to come. The tutorials and the examples from guest artist and animators are phenomenal.

I was first exposed to Tom Bancroft when I took his class on Skillshare.com, and I was just as impressed with this book as I was with his expertise, knowledge and teaching in his video. This was after a considerable amount of research on the art of character design and illustration (primarily for comic books), so I have a lot to compare against. Most cartooning and animation professionals simply do not share immediately applicable insights, and when they do it's through expensive DVDs that are suspect in quality. If you think some of the material is "light" you'll be surprised to learn that he is actually teaching what all good animators already know and practice, and have learned in school. I took another course on Lynda.com given by another popular animator, and many of the concepts he taught were the same as what you'll find in Character Mentor. This really is a great book, but if you're an absolute beginner, and have very little artistic background, then you may want to try something like "Cartooning: Character Design (HT291) (How to Draw & Paint)" at http://amzn.to/1Qw71Vs. It approaches character design at a higher level, but still offers advice on body types, pose, and facial expressions. If you're not yet ready to spend the money then I suggest starting with the very approachable videos of Mark Crilley on his YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/user/markcrilley. They aren't tutorials per se, but he offers a fair amount of insight into how he designs his characters as an artist. He also has a book called "Mastering Manga with Mark Crilley: 30 drawing lessons from the creator of Akiko" at http://amzn.to/1Mk1NnU that gets ridiculously good praise, although I've not read it myself. All things considered if you're serious about character design then I would consider this a must have for your library.

This is an absolute must for anyone into animation / illustration. This book is an incredible inspiration to not settle for "good enough" when designing, but to really push the design. And even though its focus is on characters, it actually goes further than that by looking at staging and composition of a scene. One of the nice touches is that the author presents some very high caliber student work, and then shows how to turn that work into something truly excellent by adding more life to it, and describing the reasons for the changes. Each change is fairly subtle but it adds up very quickly. I have about 12-15 books on animation and this has now become the most inspiring, and the one that has had the biggest and most immediately implemented change in my drawings. This book is best suited for an advanced beginner (if there is such a thing!) or intermediate animator/illustrator. Fantastic.

This book is very appropriate to my learning style. A bought it a while ago, when I was looking for books to help me with hand-drawn animation (this is NOT an animation textbook, by the way; it focuses on bringing your character to life. So, don't expect anything about timing and all that. And of course, you will need to have a character to start with). Level: intermediate (not for beginners in drawing; I have been drawing for more than 10 years, including 4 years at an art institute, and I still had to do some research and practice on anatomy while reading this book). Pros: - the chapters are well organized. Each will focus on a different feature of your drawing. - very helpful tips from a professional - there are exercises for each chapter, with student samples and instructor's comments on said samples Cons: (I can't really call this a con, but for lack of a better word, I'll just go with it) Don't expect this book to hand you all you need to know on a platter. It's a mentor, so you will still have to do some work on your own to find how to adapt the instructor's advice to your own style.

Format The great idea this books has is to sperate the images from the text (video). In this case, you can enjoy the text with a illustration, but then focus only on the illustration to get more meaning from it. I need revise Mark Cirlley's Mastering Manga because he does same thing with his book, but here the examples just seem to match more. I miss buying traditional books. Since I lost most of my library just due to strorage and weight issues, I have had to move to digital. However, this is first book I feel wasn't just thrown together and placed on kindle. Content: A super helpful fun read. It's not all new when looking at something like Draw Magazine, but unlike Draw Magazine it contains many practical character design and illustration advice in one coherent art style and direction.

Beaucoup de dessins étape par étape, et de très bons conseils et astuces. Beaucoup de dessins mais aussi des explications.

Me encanta este libro. Muy buenas imágenes, explicaciones y consejos para quienes estan empezando a dibujar. Facil de entender y de seguir las instrucciones

This book comes PACKED with advice and details, especially if you've been drawing for a while, but feel yourself being in a rut when it comes to improving, even if you try to look for references and all that. He actually gives you pointers that help into making your art feel more alive, that actually makes you realize what you need to look at and what you need to pay attention to. I'm super happy, you NEED this book.

Ich bin 35 Jahre alt und beschäftige mich seit ca. 18 Jahren mehr oder weniger intensiv mit Grafik, Gestaltung und Charakterdesign. Außerdem habe ich vor Jahren im professionellen gestalterischen Umfeld gearbeitet und hätte fast eine medienbezogene Ausbildung begonnen. Jedoch musste ich mir eingestehen, dass ich nicht wirklich begabt bin und meine Stärke eher im technischen Bereich liegt. Ungeachtet dessen, habe ich mich immer wieder dem Drang des kreativen Schaffens hingegeben. Vor allem jetzt nach der Geburt meiner Tochter habe ich wieder angefangen. Ihr möchte ich spätestens zum 2. Geburtstag ein Buch mit einer Geschichte schenken, die ich selbst geschrieben und bebildert habe. Ein Kollege gab mir den Tipp zu diesem Buch und ich habe es bestellt. Es hat mich auf jeden Fall sehr voran gebracht und ich habe kurz nach dem Kauf seine Ersterscheinung "Creating Characters with personality" bestellt, welche ich übrigens ebenfalls sehr empfehle. Was mir an den Büchern Bankrotts gefällt ist: - Er hält sich nicht mit ewiger Prosa auf, sondern steigt gleich ein. Dies zieht sich durch seine ganze Arbeit. Ich will zeichnen und nicht lesen! - Die Beispiele sind mit kurzen Kommentaren versehen und animieren einen zum Nachahmen. - Beim Lesen habe ich das Gefühl, dass ein guter Freund oder mein großer Bruder mir zeigt, was ich wie zutun habe und worauf ich achten soll. Das ist sehr angenehm - Er gibt imaginäre Projektideen vor, und lässt andere Designer (wahrscheinlich aus seinem Freundes o. Bekanntenkreis) diese Umsetzen und gibt lässt deren Gedanken wiedergeben. - Er schreibt ganz witzig. - Einfacher Schreibstil, den man auch ohne sehr gute Englischkenntnisse folgen kann. (Es gibt leide keine Übersetzung) Die Bücher, die ich bisher las, sind sehr inspirierend und haben mich auf jeden Fall sehr voran gebracht. Es macht Spaß sie zu lesen oder einfach nur zu durchblättern. Ich freue mich schon auf das nächste Buch von ihm.

Book is fine, packing was terrible - no bubblewrap, only plain plastic. Very disappointed to get an expensive book packed this way.