28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Dissapointed, June 29, 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: Handbook of Costume Drawing, A (Paperback)
As someone who has "fallen in" to costume design, I was hoping that this would be a great reference that would help me to get my ideas across to my director, but it has done little more than show how to proportion the male and female figures correctly. I was dissapointed in the lack of technical information about drawing fabrics on the human figure. Instead of technique, it gives a very brief overview of what changed in the line of the garments and has a half silhouette on the side of the page to show how the figure changed from period to period. There are several fashion history books availible that have much better overviews and illustrations. Only a few examples on four pages are given for each period.
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11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Really disappointed, May 6, 2005
This book is lame. It's black and white drawings are sloppy and they don't instruct. There is little or no instructions
This book is way over priced. Stay away from it.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
The worst costume rendering handbook I have ever seen, July 18, 2010
As a student of costume design, a book that has "for students" in its title is marketed right at me. It's too bad no one told the publisher or the author that students do not have $50 to spend on a book that would be better used as toilet paper.
First off, there is no excuse for a professional costume designer having to bring in an illustrator to illustrate the book for them. Costume design is inherently about your ability to create art that helps you communicate your ideas to others. If you can't do that, why are you writing a book telling OTHERS how to manage it? The author's costume renderings are shown in color only as small thumbnails on the front cover of the book and only in black-and-white internally. Given her style of rendering, this is one step down from useless.
The illustrator has made a nice effort, and the silhouettes from the time periods might be useful in a pinch, but there are plenty of costume history handbooks out there which illustrate far more of the range of silhouettes - and cover more than just white-washed portions of European history. I find it both disappointing and hilarious that this book devotes more pages to Ancient Greece than Ancient Rome. How many plays survive from Ancient Greece as opposed to Ancient Rome?
(hint: less than 10)
This book is an extreme disappointment from start to finish. The instructions seem highly hypocritical when viewed in context with the illustrations and the costume renderings on the cover. Instructions to use realistic style and to avoid "wide, cartoon-like" eyes and figures which appear to float on nothing seem wholly inappropriate given the style of the renderings on the cover. I can't help but wonder how the author would react if she saw the work of students who rendered in a style more in accordance with her instructions. One must hope she would at least be gracious about it.
I don't know how much input the author and illustrator were able to give their publisher with regard to these problems, but honestly, far more can be accomplished by going to a search engine and finding free, online tutorials. Perhaps in the future, a blog would be a better venture than a book?
At least those only waste the money of the people who pay for the hosting, and not for those unfortunate enough to stumble across them.
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