Beginner's Guide to Digital Painting in Photoshop: Characters Paperback – March 17, 2015

OMG I love this book! It is an absolute favorite. What I really like are the several character design examples throughout the book. It takes you from beginning steps to techniques that are still a little beyond me - but that is OK - because I am growing as an artist with this book. If you are looking into character design - this is my #1 pick and suggestion.

I have read the bad reviews and I am not really sure why people are confused about this book (my interpretation of the star scores they have provided anyway).This is a book on how to use photoshop tools to draw your characters, if you are a beginner in drawing/painting then of course this is not the book for you. If you are a beginner and want to learn how to draw the human form then anatomy books (for artists) are a great way to start your journey and this would be a great book to simultaneously learn digital art/photoshop (at least for the beginner)If you are a beginner with photoshop this is a good place to start. Give it a try!

I ordered this book as a "throw in" just because I felt I might need it later, but it turned out to be the best book of my bundle!It is extremely detailed in ways to utilize Photoshop if you're interested in character design. It explains step-by-step how to achieve various textures and forms.If you're interested in digital art and character design, this book is a must!

Let's dispense with the bad part: There should've been a wider range of racial types represented in this book, as the character types are basically all Caucasian. This is what keeps me from giving this book 5 stars. Artists would do well to look at other sources (art classes and websites) if one wants to depict characters of other races. This isn't a racial screed, just a clarification of what isn't in this book.Otherwise, this is a book to add to your collection if you're serious about wanting to render concept art. Even though it's geared for Photoshop, those who use other art programs (such as Painter, ArtRage, Manga Studio/Clip Studio, Sketchbook, and Gimp) can make use of the tutorials, also. It's important to remember that there is no one "definitive" book or website that has all the answers in helping one to become an artist. It takes time, dedication, and lots of practice to improve one's artistic abilities, as well as looking at multiple sources. This book can be one of the invaluable resources even to traditional illustrators and even fine artists whose focus is figure and portrait painting. This book does help clarify the importance of nailing down a characters look and should be a companion to other books which focus on character design, such as the various books based on videogame, movie/television animation, and comic book art creation. This book really emphasizes establishing and maintaining consistency in a character's look, dress, and behavior (character design). If you already know how to add flat colors (flats) to your pencilled or inked character, then this book will show you have to go to the next painted step. This applies to both digital and traditional artists.This is not a book I would recommend to someone who is a novice to drawing and painting. I would suggest that a novice artist takes some classes in traditional drawing and painting and practicing constantly before doing it digitally. With a fair bit of traditional art skills under his or her belt, a person will find that what they've learned traditionally will carry over into the digital realm. Only then would a book like this be of value to them.

I hesitantly got this book because I love one of the artist's work that is featured in this book and it did not disappoint. The book brought in a lot of different artists with different styles and it helped me to learn various ways to represent a character. The book didn't just get into how to develop a character artistically, but also how they use programs to get their work done.

Its a godsend, although anyone who's looking to use this would need to have some experience with (or at the very least, basic understanding of) Photoshop. An essential book to have. Step by step processes and techniques are very easy to understand and follow. Looking forward to buy more books from 3dtotal because this stuff is really good. Glad I took the plunge and bought this book. It's quite expensive but it's worth every penny

Amazing book with lots of great tips. What I loved most is that it gave tutorials from a few different artists that all had very different methods of designing their characters and how they went about bringing them to life digitally.

So much information it's overwhelming. I'm like 1/4th the way through it and I have to re read a lot of it to get it to sink in, don't know if I'm daft or if it's just this confusing, probably both. I do understand a lot more about digital painting now and I hope to learn more. I've attached a work in progress so don't judge me to hard but I used what I could understand