Character Mentor by Tom Bancroft – Review
Character Mentor
Tom Bancroft
Focal Press
By now you should have heard of the Bancroft Brothers, animators who have been in the industry for over 30 years. With credits like Supervising Animator on Pumbaa and Mushu to their name, this pair possess a huge breadth of industry knowledge and are eager to share their knowledge whenever possible. If you haven’t come across these two, let’s just say you’re missing out big time.
I could write an entire dissertation about their history and their place in my personal learning experience, but for now I’m going to be talking about one brother, Tom, and his brilliant book Character Mentor.
If, like me, you are always looking to push yourself as a character artist I cannot recommend this book enough. Tom’s aim is to help you develop your practice and ‘learn by example how to bring your characters to life!’ And it is certainly working for me.
Each chapter is a lesson on a specific topic, ranging from Posing to Shape-based composition. At the end of a chapter he 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 cherry on the cake is that sprinkled throughout are ‘Celebrity Artist Assignments’. These glossy, double page folds show various well-known artists taking part in one of the assignments, accompanied by a brief biography and their personal thoughts on the task. This allows you, the reader, to see how professionals tackle work. Not something to be sniffed at!
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. I have done some of the assignments two or three times and still feel like I can do better, and that’s with just one character! What I’m trying to say is 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.
I am certainly not saying that this is the be all and end all of your character design education. There are astonishing amounts of literature, podcasts and web-based learning available for you to browse through at your leisure. However, this is a definite must for your collection.
You can find out more at the website – charactermentorstudio.com