Creating Stylized Characters

As a kid, I aspired to be an animator of cartoony characters, but over the years I found myself stuck in a rut of realist or semi-realist drawing. For work, I occasionally have to come up with stylized characters, and I've been looking for resources to help me push beyond that realist paradigm and explore the world of style and exaggeration. This book was the next stop along that road, and it's been awesome. The first few chapters are a crash course in shape language, contrast, and exaggeration, and the rest is a nice "watch their process" walk through by some skilled character artists. Unlike some other stylization reference books, you're not shown how to mimic a visual style, or given a buffet of stylistic choices like "here's cartoony nose #1" and "here's cartoony nose #2" to mix-and-match some Frankenstein of a character that you didn't imagine yourself. You're shown how to take the style you already know and own, and push it farther to get more expression, more appeal, more readability, etc. Highly recommended.

I'm not really even halfway through this yet but it is totally beautiful and stuffed with valuable information. This really leveled up my knowledge of the fundamentals and I LOVE the diversity in the characters. I've been hunting for great art books and many of them are old and only include white people and they're pretentious and bland. This is so refreshing and the artwork is incredible. Easy 5 stars.

CREATING STYLIZED CHARACTERS is a fantastic resource for new and experienced artists. The book provides general advice, followed by some wonderful step-by-step process examples. The advice is well-written and they have a number of very talented artists contributing. Overall, it covers a full spectrum of concepts, from basic shapes to color theory in a very attractive and understandable format.

This book is wonderful! it has so many great examples. Well worth the price. My issue with this item is not the book, it is that the publisher shipped it in a box that was more than 4x , really 5x the size! The book was flying around in this massive box during shipping and has severe damage to the edges, where they are bent up and back. The shipping box was not only super long, but tall, and could have held 100 of these books - no joke! There was a random ripped off and crumpled brown packing paper floating around in this massive space. This book is not big, it's on the thinner side, so imagine when I saw the package at the front door and assumed it was the shipment of (2) TWO Essentia 9.5 pH cases of bottled water - yes 2, packed in a single Amazon brown box. When I lifted it, I was super confused, and when I opened it, dumbfounded. I have always gotten books from this publisher, and Amazon, inappropriate shipping envelopes or boxes that don't waste materials or are meant for a digital media or book item. Why on earth would anything be shipped this way? Again, I love the book - recommend this. Am I happy about the damage, NO, but I'll get over it, as I am excited to get into this book and utilize the contents, putting my own creases in the pages. Having pre-ordered this title, and saving $7, helps me forgive a little easier.

Probably one of the best, if not the best book in character design. The structured information on the how and the why ? That everyone wants to know about, how decision making from the brief to gesture the shape play all the way to color theory are all detailed here. This book along with Stephen Silver's are the best combination when it comes to the subject matter. This btw is my own honest opinion. I recommend it 100%. If I loose it, I'll buy it again. It's that great !!

Great book, helpful resource

I am absolutely thrilled with the book! The content is top notch and is better than I had hoped. I'd happily recommend this book to anyone. The only negative has nothing to with the book itself. Like the first post it has to do with the shipping. But unlike the first post mine didn't come in a box but rather an envelope and as a result the cover and a number of pages were bent and dog-eared. The cover has a crease straight down the front. I'm a little OCD when it comes to brand new items because I like to keep them as nice as possible so it was disappointing have it come already beat up a bit. But like I said the books design and content are fantastic.

It has the basics of artist design plus it's focused for characters. Some of the lessons learned can be used for imaginary realistic looking characters.