More Creatures and Characters: Drawing Awesomely Wild, Wacky, and Funny Animals

by Timothy Young

A professional artist and animator shows kids how to unleash their imagination on the page. Learn how to use a variety of artistic styles to draw all kinds of funny animals, from fuzzy bunnies and bears to fantasy creatures. With dozens of process drawings as examples, this children's book illustrator demonstrates techniques to conceptualize, sketch, and draw humorous animals with pen and pencil. This tutorial goes beyond the basic step-by-step method, showing children not just how to draw, but how to build their creative confidence.

48 pages, Paperback

Published October 15, 2018

About the author

Timothy Young always wondered as a child who made the toys he played with, who wrote and illustrated the books he read and who made the cartoons he watched. He grew up to be one of the people who got to do all of them.

Aside from being an author/illustrator he has also designed toys, worked in animation and built puppets. He has also illustrated books for other authors.

His career highlights include being the Head Model-Maker for the Penny cartoons on the first season of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, designing and building Muppets for Jim Henson Productions and sculpting the very first Simpsons character toys. He has been the design director for two toy companies and worked under contract with dozens of others.

Tim has visited hundreds of schools and libraries and finds that doing presentations with students is one of the most fun and rewarding things he get to do. He loves passing on what he’s learned to kids like himself.

Reviews

[Ren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though this book is directed at kids, I think someone of any age who wants to learn to draw illustrations could benefit from the information and examples here. Young discusses breaking down animals into the necessary elements to be recognizable (for ex, a bunny's ears or duck's bill and webbed feet) as well as creating your own imaginary animal characters. Deciding how stylized you want to make your characters is discussed and the author's drawing process is illustrated. Young also shows how to design a character with your intended characteristics (cute, slouchy, etc). Additional sketch poses are available on the author's website. This book would be a great jumping off point for a kid (or kid at heart) to get started with illustration.

Thank you to Timothy Young, Schiffer Publishing Ltd./Schiffer Kids and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book. All comments are my own, unbiased opinion.

[Sally Wilsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Children and adults can learn a lot from this book on drawing characters. I can't draw at all (children got that talent) but even I could follow along and it came out pretty good. If you want to draw bunnies, ducks, combination creatures, funny animals, imaginary animals this book takes you through it. This book will appeal to any child with its humor Pants or no Pants section and Boogers and Snot section. I recommend this book for age 7+ yr olds. Especially for the aspiring young cartoon artists.
I recieved this book in exchange for my honest opinion.