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...