Saturday, October 24, 2009

Book Review : Cartooning: Character Design :

Cartooning: Character Design: Walter Foster Books: Sherm Cohen

Outstanding !

This is an outstanding piece of work in teaching character design/cartooning. Only a person with tremendous experience can produce all the essentials in just 32 pages !!

Format: The book is Large! 13.7 x 10.1, the drawings are so clear in this format, which is very important, for us to study and draw. We can just keep it open and start drawing. Drawings are all either in pencil or in black india ink using a brush, which is simply lovely.

Concise: The book is small! :) only 30 pages. so it is very easy to work it through, refer, study and learn. no page is wasted. each page is packed with plenty of drawings with detailed notes, that are so refined and upto the point!

Clear: The large format, clear lines and step by step approach, makes this book so clear and easy to follow.

Workbook: The approach of the book is to take us in a workbook manner, as you study, draw, redraw, practice each of the pages progressively you will get to learn about various aspects of character design (and cartooning) is systematic manner. learning and mastering basic shapes, the Head, the features of the head, variations, body shapes, "Types", body language etc.. and if one sincerly works this book through, one would have become a character designer !.

This would form perfect platform to launch into cartooning, animation and more advanced character design through books such as ,
Cartoon Animation (The Collector's Series),
The Animator's Survival Kit--Revised Edition: A Manual of Methods, Principles and Formulas for Classical, Computer, Games, Stop Motion and Internet Animators,
Creating Characters with Personality: For Film, TV, Animation, Video Games, and Graphic Novels

Sherm Cohen and Walter Foster.. Thank you!

This is an extract from my review at Amazon.com, You can find more of my reviews here.

2 comments:

Sherm said...

Hello Ganapathy ...I just came across yout review of my book, and I just want to say thank you for giving it such a thorough and positive review! It makes me very happy to know that other cartoonists find this material helpful.

I will keep a close eye on your blog because I can tell from your posts that you love the same kind of art instructional material that I do.

Best wishes and happy cartooning...Sherm Cohen
email at: sherm at cartoonsnap dot com

Ganapathy Subramaniam said...

Hi Sherm,

I think you have done a great job.

This book, will be of practical, immediate use and belongs to the category of books by Preston Blair, Jack Hamm, The Famous Artist School's Cartooning course and the likes. And the right size (large page format plus small number of pages) is an awesome aspect that would make it very valuable and actually usable for anyone wanting to cartoon.

Looking forward to more books of same quality from you.

It was a pleasant surprise to see your comment. Thank you for visiting my Blog :)