Creating Characters with Personality

by Tom Bancroft, Glen Keane (Introduction)

From Snow White to Shrek, from Fred Flintstone to SpongeBob SquarePants, the design of a character conveys personality before a single word of dialogue is spoken. Designing Characters with Personality shows artists how to create a distinctive character, then place that character in context within a script, establish hierarchy, and maximize the impact of pose and expression. Practical exercises help readers put everything together to make their new characters sparkle. Lessons from the author, who designed the dragon Mushu (voiced by Eddie Murphy) in Disney's Mulan—plus big-name experts in film, TV, video games, and graphic novels—make a complex subject accessible to every artist.

Genres: Art, Drawing, Nonfiction, Reference, Design, Comics, Writing

144 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2006

Reviews

[Danielle The Book Huntress · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book to get ready for my character design class. It turned out to be a worthwhile purchase. It's a good intro into the field of character design. It offers some fundamentals and walk-throughs on creating and developing your own characters. It's not deep, so one would nee dot seek further for specifics, such as features and poses. But it's a good start.

[Jaime Guzman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ex-Disney animator, Tom Bancroft, in his well explained book "Creating Characters with Personality" teaches you how to bring life into your drawn characters.
Each chapter covers a topic with an assignment for you to do. One animator/cartoonist in the industry have also done the assignment and they give their explanation on how they came about of completing the assignment. It gives you a window into how their creative process works.
If you enjoy cartooning and animation and want to bring life into your drawings this book is one to have on your shelves.
Highly recommended.

[Daniel Farrelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's OK. I found the sequel in a book store for cheap so figured I'd read this first. Some general good advice, but doesn't get very deep. It covers a lot of stuff, but to the level of "hands are really important so make sure you do a good job with them". Also, a lot of the drawings are really ugly. Like, obviously the guy can draw, he worked at Disney, but he often uses really ugly, almost-caricature styles. And some of the guest artists (cough butch Hartman) really didn't understand the assignment at all. The sequel seems better.

[Malkhaz Shonia · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my favorite books on character creation. Well illustrated and funny explained.

[Neelasish Banerjee · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's awesome. I m able to understand my mistakes and this book is helping me to improve them.Thank you Bancroft sir

[Adriano · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great theory and guest artists to show the differences.

[Hannah Leimkuhler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great intro into character design and how to draw a character lineup from start to finish. Easy to read with a ton of example drawings to help get you started

[Marsha Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a designer and illustrator, and have been for nearly 40 years. It is important to me to always expand the scope of my art style, which tends to be quite literal and realistic, pragmatic and industrial. Because I'm in "learning mode" for designing animated characters, this book was extremely helpful to me. The process of diligent drawing and redrawing a character to achieve the exactly correct appearance was emphasized, in addition to encouragement for exploration of extremes in size and shape relationships in the characters' bodies that are in development. A sense of playfulness and adventure is stressed, noting that in experimentation the ideal characteristics often emerge. The introduction to this book was written by Glen Keane, the supervising animator and director of Disney Feature Animation and designer of the Beast from "Beauty and the Beast." He describes in detail the agonizing process of creating the perfect beast for this film, and the fact that it was not easy for him - he consumed months of sketching and researching in his development. I found that fact very heartening, that such an established veteran of animation would experience much the same type of struggle that I would in search of a character.

Throughout its chapters, there is specific instruction in the basics through specialized areas such as distinctions of age, and how to make different races look beautiful and believable. There is a chapter on animating animals, ranging from realistic through various degrees of anthropomorphism to extreme human characteristics. There is even a chapter on how the coloring you choose for your characters affects their perception to your audience, and how the coloring of an entire cast of characters must work together harmoniously.

The author, Tom Bancroft, is quick to say that this is not an exhaustive book on animating technique, and that it is truly one artist's approach to an art genre with many possible "right ways" to be approached. But I appreciated his humility and willingness to share his experience in a field that clearly is his profession. I will keep this volume in my research library and plan to refer to it often.

[Richard Haddad · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've grown to like Tom Bancroft's books and style of teaching. He has a way of really drawing you into what he's trying to say and gets you involved and interested. Some may see his style as a little too cartoonish but you can't exactly blame him since he worked from many years as an animator for Disney.

In this book, Tom Bancroft discusses the importance of adding personality to your characters and giving them life. His focus is to get you thinking from step 1 to plan your character so that when a passer by sees him/her, they can immediately tell what sort of person your character is.

Bancroft discusses things such as poses, body shape, expressions and the like for characters of different types including humans (male and female), animals as well as monsters.

I would recommend this book to beginners although it can also be helpful for intermediate artists. The only thing I'll add is to say that this book is definitely not a must have. It doesn't have secrets in there that you can't find anywhere else. Having said that though, Tom Bancroft teaches with a rich background and portrays things quite simply encouraging you to try it out as he teaches through.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent art tutorial book. Rather than just showing you how to diagram a person with the stacks of circles and the lines through them, this book goes into detail about why a comic book character looks different from an animated TV character, or a newspaper comic strip character. In addition, Tom Bancroft gives simple and achievable assignments to help his lessons to sink in. If you are wanting to design an illustrated character this book is the place to start.

[Edaena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really good book, gives useful advice on do's and don'ts.
The author has a strong background in animation.

[Dooz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don't be decieved by the juvenile cover - this book is meat n' potatoes for those wishing to design memorable, unique characters.

[Bria]

One should probably really learn to draw before tackling this book.