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Character Mentor: Learn by Example to Use Expressions, Poses, and Staging to Bring Your Characters to Life by [Tom Bancroft]

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Character Mentor: Learn by Example to Use Expressions, Poses, and Staging to Bring Your Characters to Life 1st Edition, Kindle Edition

4.6 out of 5 stars 194 ratings

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Editorial Reviews

Review

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.--CartoonBrew.com

If, like me, you are always looking to push yourself as a character artist I cannot recommend this book enough... Each chapter is a lesson on a specific topic, ranging from Posing to Shape-based composition. At the end of a chapter [Tom] sets you homework followed by examples of completed tasks by fellow students. Tom himself has gone over each example, annotating and thoroughly explaining each one in order for you to see how to bring your own work up to scratch...The best thing about this book for me, however, is that it doesn't end. You can never be truly finished with it as the teachings within are always relevant...it's like having a teacher on your shelf that will never be too busy to help you out and will always give you good advice.--Robin Liebschner, Skwigly.com

--This text refers to the hardcover edition.

About the Author

Tom Bancroft is a 30 year veteran of the animation industry. In his artistic career he has specialized in children's character designs, animation, video game development, and comic books. Formerly, he worked at Walt Disney Feature Animation for twelve years, animating on new Disney classics, including Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, Aladdin, Pocahontas, Mulan, Brother Bear, and more. He is the author of the popular character design book Creating Characters with Personality: For Film, TV, Animation, Video Games, and Graphic Novels. --This text refers to the paperback edition.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00ABLIKPU
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Routledge; 1st edition (November 12, 2012)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 12, 2012
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 19200 KB
  • Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Up to 4 simultaneous devices, per publisher limits
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 174 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 out of 5 stars 194 ratings

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Tom Bancroft is a veteran Disney and Big Idea director. At Disney, he helped create the animation for many memorable characters including: Roger Rabbit, Young Simba, Jafar and Iago, Pocahontas, Rutt and Tuke and for the film MULAN he designed the character "Mushu", the dragon. While with Big Idea, he designed and directed the LarryBoy 2D series of videos. Tom still keeps his hands in animation, but he also enjoys creating comics, children's books, and characters for all forms of media.

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
194 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 17, 2015
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Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 8, 2012
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Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 1, 2016
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Top reviews from other countries

Pearl
5.0 out of 5 stars So helpful, especially for intermediate artists
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 1, 2018
miki
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 10, 2014
Nat
5.0 out of 5 stars Love it
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 23, 2013
R Dallas
1.0 out of 5 stars Paperback version is rubbish
Reviewed in Australia 🇦🇺 on June 22, 2022
Blue
5.0 out of 5 stars Wundervolles Buch!
Reviewed in Germany 🇩🇪 on August 6, 2013
4 people found this helpful
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