Character Mentor: Learn by Example to Use Expressions, Poses, and Staging to Bring Your Characters to Life Author: Tom Bancroft | Language: English | ISBN:
0240820711 | Format: PDF
Character Mentor: Learn by Example to Use Expressions, Poses, and Staging to Bring Your Characters to Life Description
You've researched your character extensively, tailored her to your audience, sketched hundreds of versions, and now you lean back content as you gaze at your final character model sheet. But now what? Whether you want to use her in an animated film, television show, video game, web comic, or children's book, you're going to have to make her perform. How a character looks and is costumed starts to tell her story, but her body language reveals even more. Character Mentor shows you how to pose your character, create emotion through facial expressions, and stage your character to create drama. Author Tom Bancroft addresses each topic with clear, concise prose, and then shows you what he really means through commenting on and redrawing artwork from a variety of student "apprentices." His assignments allow you to join in and bring your drawing to the next level with concrete techniques, as well as more theoretical analysis. Character Mentor is an apprenticeship in a book.
Professional artists from a variety of media offer their experience through additional commentary. These include Marcus Hamilton (Dennis the Menace), Terry Dodson (X-Men), Bobby Rubio (Pixar), Sean "Cheeks" Galloway (Spiderman animated), and more. With a foreword by comicbook artist Adam Hughes, who has produced work for DC, Marvel Comics, Lucasfilm, Warner Bros. Pictures, and other companies.
- Paperback: 180 pages
- Publisher: Focal Press; 1 edition (April 24, 2012)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0240820711
- ISBN-13: 978-0240820712
- Product Dimensions: 10.7 x 8.4 x 0.6 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Character Mentor is sort of an extension of Tom Bancroft's earlier book Creating Characters with Personality.
The first book focuses on the actual designing of characters. This book focuses on bringing the characters to life with body language, specifically by using expressions, poses and staging. In other words, this book is about acting using your characters.
It's filled with tips and insights, just like the first book. As the book title suggest, the teaching style here is one of mentoring. There are many assignments included, and Tom Bancroft has included his students' work, together with his mentor notes on the different ways to improve the result. You'll feel the years of experience seeping through the pages as he explains. It's all very simple and practical tips you can use to improve your characters instantly.
There are many wonderful illustrated examples in the book to show how important acting is to creating believability. One look at them and you'll be able to guess accurately how the character is feeling, who the character is or what the scene is about. These are all done without dialogue. The goal of the book is to impart the knowledge of getting to that level of clarity with your characters, the same sort of clarity you would expect from a masterful silent movie.
The book also includes a section on composition. It teaches you how to frame your scene with your characters to better tell a story. While this section is not technically character design, it's still useful knowledge. Several guest artists are also invited to have a go at an assignment.
Character Mentor: Learn by Example to Use Expressions, Poses, and Staging to Bring Your Characters to Life Preview
Link
Please Wait...