Book Review: Fantasy! Cartooning by Ben Caldwell

 

Fantasy! Cartooning by Ben Caldwell is another great book with great art, with a focus on fantasy themes. Now is it necessary to get this book after the first one called Action Cartooning?? The truth is it has great illustrations and great tips and personally I'm a fan of his work. But for learning purposes, I don't think it's necessary to own both books.

The first one is better for beginners it has more focus on the basics. However if you are very much interested in fantasy illustration it's a very nice reference and has some great tips as well. 

Now both books are very inexpensive but if you are on a tight budget, just get the first one, it has just more information in it. 

If you want to get better at what you do, focus on your basics. As a great famous disney animator once said (I forgot his name, sorry): It's all sophisticated use of the basics. And trust me when I say there is a whole lot of those basic rules.

Anyway, a general thought on buying those books, check out the artist who wrote it first. If you don't like the art or if you think he may not be able to teach you something new, then get another one. I have bought books that feature mediocre art at best and still had some great advice, but generally this is not the case then.

I do realize that these reviews are very personal :) but I hope that's ok. I love this book, I love his style. The way he exaggerates and simplifies anatomy is just brilliant. Every pose he draws is very dynamic and the characters have a very nice design.

I think one of the main reasons I admire his work is that it combines a deep understanding of anatomy translated into shaped-based design. Now if that's a little hard to process, imagine your favourite disney feature film character mixed with a flash animated TV show character.

The outcome is something that looks edgy and stylized but is at the same time very plausible.

Here's a link to the book: Fantasy! Cartooning Book & Kit

And as always a flip trough:

Book Review: Action! Cartooning by Ben Caldwell

Action! Cartooning is filled with great tips and tricks when it comes to drawing characters. It talks about facial features, exaggeration, posing, character design and construction. Troughout the book there are mainly sketches, not polished renderings or finished line art. However the art presented is very, very good.

Ben Caldwell's style is very dynamic, it is very edgy and angular. It looks as if you would mix a disney character with some marvel super hero characters. If you look at the art presented, you can see, that he has a great sense for design and a lot of knowledge about human anatomy.

So is this the only book you'll ever need? No, definitely not. Don't get me wrong it's an amazing book, it has awesome art and great tips. But altough it looks simple, the art is very sophisticated, so it may not be the best book for a beginner. The texts troughout the book are rather short tips than long written explanations.

You should get the book anyway, and you could copy some of those drawings. But being able to replicate that style in your own designs, takes years and years of practice and a lot of knowledge about design and human anatomy. So get your lazy ass of the couch and start practicing.

With that said, it is one of those rare cartooning books that has high quality art and high quality tips.

So don't miss out on this one, but do not be discouraged if you can't reproduce what you see in the book :). By the time I'm writing this, the book costs 9$ on Amazon, that's a freaking steal, you should probably donate something to Ben Caldwell ;)

Here is the link the book:

And here's a flip trough of the book:

The next review will be about Ben Caldwell's second book Fantasy Cartooning. After that I think I will do some reviews about animation books, but I'm not sure yet.
If someone wants a review for a specific books, add a comment. You could check out the picture I had take of my bookshelf. If your desired book is on my shelf, the chances might be could ;)

Book Review: How to draw and paint crazy cartoon characters by Vincent Woodcock

Now it's been a while since I read the book, but it is also one of the books that stuck with me. Vincent Woodcock started his career in the Richard Williams Studio. If you don't know Richard Williams is, he designed Roger Rabbit and wrote "THE" standard book on handdrawn animation.

He wanted to be an artist, but Vincent Woodcock started there as a delivery boy. In the book he shares his encouraging story how he had managed to work his way up. However that's just the introduction, the main content is about as the name of the books says, drawing crazy cartoon characters.

It has all the standard content you would expect of such a book like how to draw hands, faces, bodies, expression etc. But this books also shows how to caricature, use different lights and it also talks about color harmony and model sheets. So it has a lot of content, very good but also short content. It has only about 120 pages, I own the german version, so mine might differ from yours a little bit.

That said, altough short, it is a very good book and full of very nice artwork. When you look at his work you will hopefully see that he must have had some great mentors, it looks like disney school with a little weird flavour added on top.

If you are new to character design, drawing, concept art or whatever you might be into, you might feel that there is a ton of good books on how draw this and that. WRONG, the reality is there are literally only a couple of books that are really good. Most of those how to draw books contain bad art and not necessarily bad advice but often times they do as well.

Vincent Woodcock's book is one of the good books, and yeah this is my personal opinion but to explain this further, what is it that I look for in these books. Proper construction, perspective, knowledge of human anatomy, proportion, design. Furthermore convincing poses and expressions and a ton of other concepts, but the list would be too long. People often do not realize how much knowledge and effort is necessary to produce high quality cartoon drawings.

It also takes some time to train your eye and see the differences between good and bad art, I may not be the best artist in the world and I also don't have a huge understanding of fine and modern art ;), but I believe I have a reasonable understanding of design and art you would see in entertainment and games. So the thing I want to get across is that there are only a few pearls that teach you the right things and this book is one of them. You shouldn't waste your money on bad books, or bad advice.

Some additional personal thougts on art, people, fruit n' shit: You might ask why would I want to learn something about cartooning or disney style animation if I can learn how to do some cool realistic concept art?? Don't get me wrong I love concept art and teachers like Scott Robertson for example. But what I think a lot of aspiring artists forget is: what are you doing it for?? You might have heard this before but it's about telling stories and conveying emotions.

I often look at art and think: "OH man, that's looks awesome, I would love to paint like that!", but a minute later I have forgotten what I just looked at. The only art I remember is art that makes me laugh or tells me a story, or even makes me think. Now not only cartooning is able to do that, that would be a dumb thing to say, but good cartoons own those essentials. They make everything as clear and comprehensible as it gets. Sorry, I had to get that out of my system :)

Anyway here's a link to the book:

How to Draw and Paint Crazy Cartoon Characters: Create Original Characters with Lots of Personality (Quarto Book)

And here's the video of a flip trough:

Book Review: Character Mentor by Tom Bancroft

Character Mentor is the second book by Tom Bancroft. His first book Creating Characters with Personality was about designing characters, which I consider, as mentioned in the previous post, the best book on the subject of all times.

Now in the continuation it's all aboutposing and staging your already developed characters. If you do character design for games or animation a model sheet is required for coworkers to model or draw the character properly. That's the sole purpose of a model sheet. The characters do look very stiff and lifeless cause the drawings on the model sheet are usually ortographic drawings of the characters from different viewing angles.

However if youwant to present your character to a client and sell the concept you need to show the character in an interesting pose, maybe in an environment, also showing expressions.

That is what this book is going to teach you. It shows how to add expression, How to create interesting poses that add life to a character. It also tells how to avoid common errors such as bad silhouettes, twinning and lack of spatial depth.

What I learned from the book was, how much difference a little head tilt can make or a subtle change in expression. The book is truly amazing!!! 

As in the previous book there's again an assigment given to professional artists (e.g. Stephen Silver) and the results and their solutions are presented troughout the book. The task this time was to draw a girl texting in her room while a shadowy figure watches her from outside the window. Here's the link to the book: Character Mentor: Learn by Example to Use Expressions, Poses, and Staging to Bring Your Characters to Life

Here's a flip trough of the book:

Book Review: Creating Characters with Personality by Tom Bancroft

Of all the books about drawing, cartooning, character design and art in general I own thisis my absolute favourite. I'm gonna write about the content soon, but first I have to say how much I love this book. If you want to become a cartoonist or character designer, animator and you're not in the right country or haven't got the money to go to CalArts, you will most likely buy some books and online courses to learn what you can.

I have a special interest in character design and I love the style of disney animation and other animated movies. Unfortunately there is not a lot of good information out there and it took me years to find the right resources. Believe it or not there's only 5 or 6 books on character design that are worth to be mentionend at all.

Short Introduction of the Author:

Tom Bancroft is a former disney animator and a legend in that respect. Just to give you an example he animated the young Simba in the lion king. So believe me if I say that guy knows what he's talking about.

The Book itself:

At the beginning he sets a up a briefing to design different characters for a cowboy theme. Troughout the book you will see the different result by many different professional artist which is also very interesting but not the reason I like it so much.

The reason I like it so much is that it teaches you the CORE principles of design. It talks about shape, variety, size and proportion, placement, symmetry, straight vs. curved, negative space, silhouettes, recurring shapes etc...

For a beginner that sounds like a lot, and it is, but the book makes use of simple language, good structure and simple concepts that build upon each other.

The art in it is brilliant and very appealing. Now, not a single book in the world can teach how to draw or to become a better artist, cause it still takes years of good pratice, but for me this book gets as close as it can get. Here is a link to the book: Creating Characters with Personality: For Film, TV, Animation, Video Games, and Graphic Novels

Here is a flip trough of the book:

That's it for now, the next review will be about Tom's second book Character Mentor. This book takes the character designs and shows you how to pose them. But more about that later...

Hello World. My name is Sebastian and I'm an illustrator/animator/designer from Vienna, Austria. I have a slightly sick passion for art books. At this moment I own 101 books which a bought the last couple years. Recently I haven't bought any new ones, cause I was shocked when I finally counted them.

Here's a picture of my bookshelf, if you like to have one of them reviewed, just add a comment somewhere below and maybe someday, if I can overcome my lazyness, I'll review it.

I have to admit I haven't read all of them from cover to cover, but I'm fairly confident to review most of them. This is the first day I'm doing this, so it might take me some time to figure out how to do this properly :)

Today I shot videos for the first 5 books I'm going to write about. These first 5 books are mainly about character design and cartooning. I picked these because cause I love cartooning and these are my favourite ones.

They are:

1. Creating Characters with Personality by Tom Bancroft
2. Character Mentor by Tom Bancroft
3. How to Draw and Paint Crazy Cartoon Characters by Vincent Woodcock
4. Action Cartooning by Ben Caldwell
5. Fantasy Cartooning by Ben Caldwell

Tomorrow I'm gonna start with the first review. For the impatient there's already a flip trough, here's the video: