Perspective! For Comic Book Artists: How to Achieve a Professional Look in Your Artwork (Paperback)

by David Chelsea (Author) "Why bother to learn perspective at all?..." (more)
Key Phrases: comic book artists, picture plane, depth cues

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
This clever book teaches artists the unique skill of drawing perspective for spectacular landscapes, fantastic interiors, and other wildly animated backgrounds to fit comic-strip panels.

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Watson-Guptill (October 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0823005674
• ISBN-13: 978-0823005673
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 7 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #113,726 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A great book for beginners and pros alike., July 29, 2001

By	Karma (Alberta, Canada) - See all my reviews

A tome about comic perspective in comics form, this book helped me discover new principles in perspective and the REASON for these principle. Not just for your scenery, human bodies in perspective are also covered... but you had better know anatomy before hand. The reason for the missing star is because Chelsea uses two forms of curvilinear perspective, but suspiciously absent is the chapter ON curvilinear. Even with this oversight, Chelsea has written an engaging and fairly complete perspective guide. Look closely at the icecubes on page 131 and try to find the hidden pictures!

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best perspective books, January 7, 2005

By	Greg Banville "Artist" (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

If you are a serious artist then you will probably have to study a few perspective books before you learn all you need to know about the subject. This book deserves to be in that collection. It covers the nuts and bolts of the correct methods for drawing in one, two and three point perspective and offers hints for shortcuts that you can use to build drawings with a perspective look, even if they are not technically accurate, when you have to work with a deadline.

What I like about the book is that it provides thorough context for understanding not just the how, but the reasons behind the perspective techniques. If you know the rules you can do it, but if you understand the context in depth you can make informed decisions about when to follow the painstaking rules and when to use the shortcuts.

The book is also written in a very approachable visual medium. Basically it is a comic book following in the tradition of Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics".

The book also includes some facinating bits of trivia about 3 point perspective, when it was developed and why, and the lengths that some artists, like M. C. Escher, had to go to in order to properly employ it.

The book has two shortcomings. The first is a consequence of its comic format, there are a large number of pages which present more character development than is strictly necessary to get the information across. By contrast, most perspective books are very condensed, explaining as much as can be explained with illustrations and diagrams. This not only goes into detailed discussion of perspective, its uses and theory, but does so within the voice baloons of two characters.

The second shortcoming is one that I can't think of any other perspective book that treats, that is, it leaves out curvileniar or 5 point perspective, though apparently the author is aware of this kind of perspective, he tantalizes us by using it in a couple of illustrations in the book.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not your average Take on Perspective, June 1, 2000

By	"skunkbomb" (California, USA) - See all my reviews

I found this book extremely helpful, in more ways the one. Instead of your usual text with diagram format, it has a refreshing comic book format. This means that examples are almost always right there, WITH the text that discusses it - so you can absorb what's being talked about with out having the "break concentration" and look for the relevant connection between explanation and example. Also, rather than discuss only the "terminology" and the like, I found the explanations were geared so that anyone who can read could understand them - without a dictionary being close to hand! I'd highly recommend picking up this book - to the beginners and pros alike! The gains from it's knowledge are definately worth the price.