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Draw Great Characters and Creatures: 75 Art Exercises for Comics and Animation by Beverly Johnson
panda_incognito's review
5.0
This book explores a variety of artistic techniques and is filled with creative prompts. Unlike many books of its kind, this is not a how-to guide where you copy cartoon images step-by-step; instead, it is a jumping-off point for people with any level of artistic experience who want to learn how to illustrate a variety of facial expressions, clothing options, physical activities, and personal relationships in a dynamic way.
The prompts are thoughtful and interesting, and because most of them deal with emotions, characters, and relationships instead of specific props or situations, artists can generalize them to whatever context they prefer. This artist is experienced with a number of genres, and she enriches this book by providing examples of her work with contemporary, historical, fairy tale, and science fiction settings and characters. This makes the book versatile, and because it is full of interesting prompts and helpful guidance for conveying character and emotion, I believe that its appeal can even reach beyond the comics and animations market. People who prefer to draw more realistically can also benefit from this book, since it encourages thinking through shape language, height differentials, emotions, and visual cues for personality and relationships in ways that generalize to any form.
I greatly enjoyed looking through this. The art is delightful, and unlike other books that I have seen, it shows a wide range of ages, body types, races, and personal interests among its characters. Since most art books of this type which I have seen at the library focus on narrow subjects of interest, such as chibi manga or sexualized superheroes, this book's diversity of subjects appealed to me very much. Here, we have parents interacting with children, a roller-skating girl, a happy businessman, friends hanging out, a grandma and child dancing, and a wide variety of other images taken from life. This was a delight to look through, and even though I prefer painting landscapes to drawing figures and may not personally use the prompts, I will keep this book in mind as a gift for artist friends and highly recommend it to anyone who wants to grow as an artist or just enjoy this book's appealing art.
The prompts are thoughtful and interesting, and because most of them deal with emotions, characters, and relationships instead of specific props or situations, artists can generalize them to whatever context they prefer. This artist is experienced with a number of genres, and she enriches this book by providing examples of her work with contemporary, historical, fairy tale, and science fiction settings and characters. This makes the book versatile, and because it is full of interesting prompts and helpful guidance for conveying character and emotion, I believe that its appeal can even reach beyond the comics and animations market. People who prefer to draw more realistically can also benefit from this book, since it encourages thinking through shape language, height differentials, emotions, and visual cues for personality and relationships in ways that generalize to any form.
I greatly enjoyed looking through this. The art is delightful, and unlike other books that I have seen, it shows a wide range of ages, body types, races, and personal interests among its characters. Since most art books of this type which I have seen at the library focus on narrow subjects of interest, such as chibi manga or sexualized superheroes, this book's diversity of subjects appealed to me very much. Here, we have parents interacting with children, a roller-skating girl, a happy businessman, friends hanging out, a grandma and child dancing, and a wide variety of other images taken from life. This was a delight to look through, and even though I prefer painting landscapes to drawing figures and may not personally use the prompts, I will keep this book in mind as a gift for artist friends and highly recommend it to anyone who wants to grow as an artist or just enjoy this book's appealing art.
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