The Art of Animal Character Design

by David Colman

Finally, there is an art book above the rest. There are many animal drawing books out there, but none explain how to use the knowledge obtained from study in an actual trade craft. This book explores the methods, philosophies, and secrets of a top character designer in the animation industry when dealing with creating animal characters, both professional production samples and personal work make up the content.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, Drawing

175 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2007

Reviews

[Parka · Rating 5 out of 5]

(More pictures at parkablogs.com)

David Colman is a character designer specializing in animals. The Art of Animal Character Design is a sketchbook containing his wonderful caricatured animal designs.

This is not the step-by-step instructional art book. However, it does contain a lot of practical tips and points to look out when drawing animals. He workflow is to observe, to think and then to draw. The emphasis is on thinking and he talks about his thought process for the sketches in the book.

His principle is to draw what the animal is doing and draw the character of the animal, rather than just drawing the animal. To quote from the book, it's to draw the 'verb', not the 'noun'. This is the repeating theme throughout the book, and it shows in his examples.

There are a lot of interesting and useful insights provided. For example, he talks about the need to lock down shapes to preserve design integrity so that the animal is still recognizable. There are also tips on how to improve believability through the application of gravity and forces. Other than just drawing animals, he would also caricature humans into their animal form based on their behaviour. There's also a section on creating imaginary animals.

This book is a very good resource to character designers. It's highly recommended.

[Gaby Suarez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Animal character design is an art of its own...what a great book.