Anatomy for Fantasy Artists: An Illustrator's Guide to Creating Action Figures and Fantastical Forms [Paperback]

Glenn Fabry (Author), Ben Cormack (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 2005

Here in a single volume is a practical, comprehensive training course for budding illustrators working to master comic book art, graphic novels, fantasy posters, sci-fi book covers and illustrations, and computer games. The author, a highly successful fantasy artist, teaches the basics of human anatomical drawing and musculature, as well as perspective and composition. He then instructs on ways to distort, develop, and transform the human figure, giving it features that range from monstrous or magical to super-agile or larger than life. Detailed artist's references and step-by-step instructions show how to build bodies that truly stretch the imagination--mighty alien warriors, kick-boxing cyber-punks, and mega-muscled superheroes, to name just a few. Art students also learn how to show their characters in many different dynamic action poses, such as flying, spinning, punching, and jumping, as well as how to express each character's emotions through facial expressions. More than 300 color illustrations.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

[back cover]


Make the unreal look real with this unique guide to inventive anatomy, and discover how to create fantastical figures for graphic novels, fantasy art, sci-fi, comics, and computer games.



Learn the basics of anatomical drawing and musculature, as well as perspective and composition. Then find out how to distort, develop, and transform the figure into something monstrous, magical, super-agile, or larger than life.



Detailed artist’s reference and step-by-step instructions reveal how to build bodies that defy belief, including mighty alien warriors, kick-boxing cyber-punks, mega-muscled superheroes, and many other fantastic creatures.



Find out how to depict characters in a variety of dynamic action poses such as flying, spinning, punching, and jumping, and how to render extreme body language and unusual facial expressions.



Give flesh to your fantasy creations



More than 300 color illustrations

About the Author

Glenn Fabry is famous in the comic book industry for his fabulous figure paintings. A freelance illustrator for 20 years, and winner of an Eisner award in 1996 for best cover artist, he has worked mainly in the fantasy genre. His creations include covers for DC Comics' Hellblazer and Preacher.

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Barron's Educational Series (February 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764129503
• ISBN-13: 978-0764129506
• Product Dimensions: 11.1 x 8.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #218,715 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Works as a beginner's guide, June 23, 2006

By 

Heidi Morris - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Anatomy for Fantasy Artists: An Illustrator's Guide to Creating Action Figures and Fantastical Forms (Paperback)

4/5 stars for lack of attention to drawing clothing. Clothing (or costume) is mentioned as being quite important to your character, but is not addressed well enough. Still, it's enough to get you up and running.

This book works best if treated as a beginner's guide, for both someone new to drawing people and someone new to trying the fantasy genre. When I picked this book up, I had been toying with drawing the figure -- I had basic drawing skills and some good still-lifes, but no access to a figure drawing class. I attempted drawings based on photos. Most other "anatomy for artists" books overwhelmed me by detailing every single bone and every muscle. This one will give you a quick overview of the muscles that affect the surface of the body (both male and female), plus a pretty good introduction to facial expressions, which is a nice addition.

Good companions to this book would be:
- "Dynamic Figure Drawing" by Burne Hogarth
- "Human Anatomy Made Amazingly Easy" by Christopher Hart
For alien/non-human creatures, draw inspiration from earthly animals in "Animal Anatomy for Artists: The Elements of Form."

I think this book would work best if you take it in order: study the first half (muscles, photos of muscular models in action poses, expressions), and then study the characters in the second half as a kind of survey of possibilities.

The author does make a good attempt at describing the characters in the second half, but read the first half before studying them -- the author's remarks will probably seem dull and uninformative unless you connect it with the basics covered earlier in the book. Use the examples to help you "see" the parts and pieces more effectively as you draw.

As you practice, you'll find that you don't need this book anymore. In the future, when you want a more complete understanding of the human body, that's when you should pick up one of the "Anatomy for Artists" books.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Where is the Fabry Art?!, May 17, 2005

By 

Florence Chan "Florence Chan" (Calgary, Alberta, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Anatomy for Fantasy Artists: An Illustrator's Guide to Creating Action Figures and Fantastical Forms (Paperback)

I initially bought this book based on my impressions of some of Fabry's other work, namely his comic artwork and his published sketchbook, which is an awsome document of figure studies and the way he works.

Glenn Fabry is an incredibly skilled artist who works mostly in traditional media. Much of his work is speculative in nature and really rather appealling to a fantasy/scifi artist such as myself.

That having been said, this book contains very little content relating to his actual working process. Instead, much of the graphic content in the book is taken from other sources (NOT Glenn Fabry) to match up to text for each chapter. While the text may bring up good points, such as different body types, expressions, etc, many of the graphics that accompany these passages do not reflect the professional level Glenn Fabry's work is at - namely those which the books claims are prime exemplars of fantasy art. Instead, many such images are examples of the cliche dodge/burn/smudge/cut&paste techniques that are so often employed by newcomers to the digital fantasy art craze.

The book isn't all bad. I appreciated what Fabry content there was - namely textual, one traditional media tutorial and a few character sketches here and there. I also very much appreciated the 14 pages of photo reference for common action poses used in fantasy type artwork. These things are pretty much the redeeming points by which I rate this book.

This review is NOT a criticism of Fabry on my part. I quite enjoyed what areas of the book seemed to be plainly his. My criticism DOES lie on the 'additional text by Ben Cormack' as well as additional art direction provided by the publisher, Barron's.

It seems like quite a number of 'how to' books these days are being put together by book companies who want to capitalize on one art craze or another. Unfortunately, their method of compiling such publications has been more and more about having enough pictures to match the text, instead of encouraging experienced artists to put together a complete book themselves. Doing so has led to inconsistent art choices and thus inconsistent quality throughout such recent books.

A recommendation for true aspiring artists in this field: Look for books by Andrew Loomis and Jack Hamm. Both are old-school illustrators who wrote and illustrated their own books and packed them full with information every aspiring illustrator should know.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Li'l anatomy, March 24, 2007

By 

servete Kolar - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Anatomy for Fantasy Artists: An Illustrator's Guide to Creating Action Figures and Fantastical Forms (Paperback)

Thankfully, I was able to browse at this in my public library before buying it. The title doesn't reflect on the actual book. While the illustrations were clear and quiet a few were lovely the book failed to explain how the artists used anatomy and how they determined how to compose their figures. for an anatomy book, this falls horrible short. There about a handful (literally one handfull) of pages with live models. The images are of various sizes and almost on top of each other. More annoyingly for what few live model poses we are given the best are put inbetween two pages. You'll have an annoyign crease righti n the middle of the picture. It's not that hard to fill in the gaps, but certain details are lost from this type of placement.
Also when going into skeletal structures he might have used a real model skeleton instead of sketches. You don't get an adequate understanding of dimension with a pencil depiction alone. Also, most of the book is dedicated to the common characters of comics (e.g. the barabarian, the female robot, Muu the fatman, Brutus the hulk). All these characters really show are sketches at different angles with bullets with brief common sense info.
Plus the anatomy of most of the characters arenot really explored. It would have been nicer had they compared the exagerated features with realistic features.
Overall , despite some talented artists' contributions, this book fails in teaching anything abotu anatomy.