Kevin Crossley - Character Design from the Ground Up

Preface

My initial thoughts when I began preparing material and subjects for a book concerning character design were, I suppose, similar in essence to many of the books, manuals, and guides that had inspired and influenced me since my childhood. Almost without thinking, I began to fall into a rhythm for the book that featured a list of chapters explaining and illustrating various topics concerned with the subject at hand.

Very soon though, it started to feel like nothing more than a tedious list of what to do and what not to do. Obviously, this sort of content is and should be at the core of any instructional book, but confronting a student or anyone keen to learn with a checklist of points to remember and emulate was never the best way to learn at school, so I wanted my book to avoid falling into the same trap. That said, it could still be argued that this learn-by-list technique is valid to a pointafter all you do need to learn the basics from somewherebut such a dry, factual approach can quickly become boring and even counter-productive. Most importantly, it can lack the expressive fluidity essential for making artwork that is as engaging and invigorating as it is informative and instructional.

Luckily, character design is a subject that lends itself well to a loose, creatively liberated approach. Throughout the chapters that follow are pages upon pages of instruction, guidance, and advice by seasoned professionals from a variety of disciplines. Advice from such experienced artists is essential in helping you develop and hone your own skills, but for every polished piece of deliverable artwork youll see in the book, there are many more examples rendered in a looser style, complete with mistakes, thumb-smudges, and scribblesall illustrating the fact that while a final character concept drawing might look amazing without a line out of place, it actually takes a lot of trial and error to achieve such a standard of finish.

This, then, became the most important aspect of Character Design from the Ground Up: to inform and instruct, but never at the expense of the excitement involved in creating a drawing from nothing but imagination. That is surely the reason we choose to practice art in the first place, and I hope this book manages to capture a little of that.

Kevin Crossley