Customer Reviews

Action! Cartooning

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Action! Cartooning is a comprehensive and well-organized drawing course likely to appeal to Saturday morning cartoon fans. This book thoroughly covers the fundamentals of cartoon anatomy, facial features, expressions, and action poses typically found in American-style animation and adventure comics designed for young audiences. Full of tips on how to improve rendering of specific parts of the human body from different angles and several pointers on how illustrate different body types and age groups, it provides all the basic tools a beginner artist might need to create his or her own original cast of cartoon characters. Bundled with some basic sketching supplies (also covered in the Materials section), this book would be a great gift for any budding artist.

"Action!Cartooning", by Ben Caldwell, is a great book on drawing cartoon figures. I am a professional caricaturist myself (I own caricature concessions in a major theme park, and wrote the book "Let's Toon CARICATURES"), and a lot of the info Ben gives about "pushing" the characteristics of your characters, in order to give a clear, instant insight into their personalities, can be applied to caricaturing as well. There's a lot of great things about this book, and a lot of beautiful drawings. If you want to learn to draw good, cartoony action figures, then this is the book for you. It is so much better than any other cartoon or comic book anatomy books on the market, that is isn't even funny. I have recommended it to all of the artists I work with, and many other artist friends, already. I'd like to know what else Ben's done, because I'd love to see more of his work!

I recently changed my at style from manga-inspired to more "traditional" techniques. I first picked up Mr.Caldwell's Fantasy!Cartooning (another recommended purchase) and the techniques were so helpful and informative, I immediately looked up his other books.

Don't let the title fool you- this book offers more than just straight action techniques. There are a lot of basic methods that really boost your style, such as using body structure to portray personality, etc.

I don't think this is a book for total beginners or someone who doesn't know at least a little bit about anatomy and structure, but the language of the book is easy to follow and very informative.

Even more experienced artists can learn something from Mr. Caldwell. I've been cartooning (off and on) for over 20 years and I found myself experiencing a second renaissance after reading this great book. After a year-long personal slump I feel like an artist again and it's thanks to Mr. Caldwell.

I very rarely write comments on books, but I had to make an exception for this book because it is far and away so much better than all the other books I own on cartooning. I keep it close by my desk for regular reference. When I teach my children to draw, this is the book we ALWAYS come back to. I'll probably buy a second copy soon because I am wearing my first copy out and I simply can't imagine not having this book around. Unlike other cartooning books that I find to be annoyingly wordy or too simple, this book is PACKED with vital, detailed, HOW-TO instructions on drawing dynamic figures in exciting poses. It gives you a full, easy method on how to draw ANY pose in 3-D, from ANY visual angle. It provides plenty of step-by-step instructions so you can practice this same method over and over until you master it. It provides detailed instructions and examples of important techniques like overlapping and fore-shortening, so your characters have depth, and can appear as if they are jumping off the page right at you. It gives amazing details on basic anatomy - both male and female. It shows how to draw difficult body parts like hands and feet. It also provides valuable information on character design, like explaining facial features that make a character appear young or old; how to make a character look heroic, charming, tough, or mixing these features to suggest hints of various personality traits. For example, you can mix features to create an intelligent looking, tough guy. It explains how to draw various expressions - not from templates - but how you can design your own. Most art books I buy I feel could have been cut down to half their size. But not this book - this book fits everything into only 80 pages, but every page gives you something of real value. It does not discuss color, and I would have like to have seen a section on dealing with hair, but other than that, the book is - far and away - the best value in cartooning that I own. If you want to learn to cartoon action figures - not copy them - but really create your own dynamic and exciting poses from scratch - right out of you own imagination, then buy this book. You won't regret it.

Ive always loved the semi-cartoony style of artists like Ryan Dunlavey and Ben Caldwell. I always wanted to learn how to draw this way. when i saw this book on amazon, i was amazed at how lucky I was to find it! once i got It, i started using it right away. it was a great book and i learned ssssooooo much from it that i wouldve otherwise never known. this book improved the quality of my drawings so much more than i couldve imagined and i bet it can to the same to yours.

Yep. It's that good.

Ben's style is infectious.

This would be in my top 5 how-to-draw books that I keep close by on my drawing desk.

I respect the advice passed on in these pages. His breakdown instruction on heads, figures, faces, women etc is second to none!

He is a master of his art. I would definitely buy another one as a gift for a budding cartoonist or even an established cartoonist.

This is one of those books you wish you had when you were first learning to draw cartoons.

I highly recommend it.

I purchased this and the Fantasy! Cartooning book. I really wanted to polish my drawings and they looked like great resources for 'finding my style'.

I'd be considered a beginner/intermediate artist, and these benefited me greatly. Definitely work through this book before Fantasy! Cartooning. You can think of that book as an expansion pack rather than a sequel. Fantasy! Cartooning is merely tips on tweaking your style and filled with a bunch of example drawings. If you're on a budget, you can completely skip that book. (Though I still like it and keep it handy for reference.)

Now Action! Cartooning on the other hand is a goldmine of resources for beginners. He goes over everything from breaking down gestures and cartoon anatomy for beginners. Gives the basics on drawing Emotions and gives a nice resource of eye/nose/mouth styles to study. It's written to be easy to understand and filled with humor. He makes it fun!

This is a great crash course on Cartooning basics. It greatly helped improve my art and drawing from my imagination. Definitely pick this book up! Now I recommend doing some figure study before cartooning though. You really need a basic understand of human anatomy before starting cartooning. Trust me. Get some books for that as well. I picked up How to Draw the Human Figure and basically drew an assload of nude people for awhile before cartooning, and still do. It helps a TON.

I've bought this book, read it (noticing some instructional

errors - but nothing you can self-correct) and started to draw

(rather copy) the examples. The results: Self-satisfaction.

This is a good book to start with if you plan to animate

action cartoons in the future (on paper or on the computer).

After I draw all the examples in this book, it would be a good

excercise to use Mr. Caldwell's principles and draw my own

characters.

I wish though that this book had examples on non-human characters

like robots, machines, animals, aliens, monsters, etc.

Another book of this nature perhaps, Mr. Caldwell?

I have several books on drawing the human figure and this is in the top two. Lots of great ideas and examples, and they're all very carefully drawn to avoid throwing the student off. Some books have vague or confusing examples; the examples here are always clear and straightforward and easy to mimic. Great examples of head poses; over the shoulder, tilted, etc., in relationship to the body.

I bought this used for a pittance and boy, did I ever get a bargain.

Sorry for the caps but this book is a gem. combined with fantasy cartooning youll be drawing anatomonically correct characters. My drawing skills went up drastically and it shows you basic anatomony so you know how the skull forms making for realistic heads and bodies. If you are looking for cartoony realistic characters this book is for you.