Character Mentor: Learn by Example to Use Expressions, Poses, and Staging to Bring Your Characters to Life

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 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 samplesCons: (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.

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.

The media could not be loaded. FormatThe 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.

This book is invaluable as a resource for the various stages that go into designing and developing characters. It is an excellent teaching/learning resource for the beginner, and full of information that experienced artists can apply to their work.I love Tom Bancroft's drawing style, and this book is full of illustrated examples of the tips and techniques he is describing. The illustrations are a nice size... one thing I hate is when art/instruction books have tiny little pictures that obscure detail... but these illustrations are a pleasure to look at.For a companion book, I would highly recommend another book by Bancroft... Creating Characters with Personality: Creating Characters with Personality: For Film, TV, Animation, Video Games, and Graphic Novels I would, and will, give it the same review as this book.

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

Quello che mi aspettavo... scritto da un grande maestro!

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.

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

A really nice and well done workbook that is broken down as if you were receiving "jobs" from clients that are asking you to design Characters for different projects. This shows you the breakdown of how to achieve your designs and what to look for in order to design successful characters.