Perspective! for Comic Book Artists: How to Achieve a Professional Look in your Artwork

by David Chelsea

This clever book teaches artists the unique skill of drawing perspective for spectacular landscapes, fantastic interiors, and other wildly animated backgrounds to fit comic-strip panels. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0823005674
• Release Date: October 1997
• Publisher: Watson-Guptill
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 1.09 lbs.
• Dimensions: 10.0" x 0.5" x 7.0"

Customer Reviews

Simple to follow, step-by-step instruction for all artists!

I learn well from visual instruction. Perspective for Comic Book Artists has great visuals, set in a comic book format. I do murals in my small town and the lessons from this book will greatly increase the beauty of our walls and alleys. I also work with children, so this book will get a lot of use from us all. Thank you for such a great book. I have learned so much!

And the best part? It's written in comic book form!

David Chelsea has produced an informative and entertaining resource in this book. He's cleverly managed to sum up perspective lessons from numerous sources into one compendium for comic book artists, fans of the genre interested in learning how it's done, or even the casual artist. After the opening chapters dealing with depth cues, the picture plane, the horizon and vanishing point, and the use of cubes in illustration, he divides the book up into several tutorials covering one-point perspective, two-point perspective, three-point perspective, the use of circles and ellipses in perspective and the human figure in perspective. You can easily sit down with a sketch pad (I would also recommend some graph paper) and go through his lessons one by one to get a more hands-on approach (I intend to do this soon!). The three-point perspective lesson is very complex but worth the effort, especially for the burgeoning comic book artist. Three-point perspective, as Chelsea points out, allows the artist to render some pretty dynamic scenes. When I first saw that the majority of the book was written in comic book form, I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. However, once I got into it, I found it to be very entertaining. I was learning the process of perspective illustration while enjoying the medium I love: sequential art! I highly recommend Chelsea's book. Even if you never sit down and attempt to use his methods, it will help you get your head around the whole topic. He also provides several short cuts for those who want to achieve those dynamic perspective effects without doing all the tedious legwork.

One of the best perspective books

If you are a serious artist then you will probably have to study a few perspective books before you learn all you need to know about the subject. This book deserves to be in that collection. It covers the nuts and bolts of the correct methods for drawing in one, two and three point perspective and offers hints for shortcuts that you can use to build drawings with a perspective look, even if they are not technically accurate, when you have to work with a deadline. What I like about the book is that it provides thorough context for understanding not just the how, but the reasons behind the perspective techniques. If you know the rules you can do it, but if you understand the context in depth you can make informed decisions about when to follow the painstaking rules and when to use the shortcuts. The book is also written in a very approachable visual medium. Basically it is a comic book following in the tradition of Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics". The book also includes some facinating bits of trivia about 3 point perspective, when it was developed and why, and the lengths that some artists, like M. C. Escher, had to go to in order to properly employ it. The book has two shortcomings. The first is a consequence of its comic format, there are a large number of pages which present more character development than is strictly necessary to get the information across. By contrast, most perspective books are very condensed, explaining as much as can be explained with illustrations and diagrams. This not only goes into detailed discussion of perspective, its uses and theory, but does so within the voice baloons of two characters. The second shortcoming is one that I can't think of any other perspective book that treats, that is, it leaves out curvileniar or 5 point perspective, though apparently the author is aware of this kind of perspective, he tantalizes us by using it in a couple of illustrations in the book.

Outstanding, funny and accessible

Nothing more need be said about this book other than that one of the great Disney layout men, Kendall O'Connor, loved it when it was given to him as a Christmas present. High praise for a fine book.It's the best guide to perspective for cartoonists, who are often not known for following 'normal' perspective. Celsi knows his business but also knows how to entertain. This is a must have for any comic artist or animator.

Not your average Take on Perspective

I found this book extremely helpful, in more ways the one. Instead of your usual text with diagram format, it has a refreshing comic book format. This means that examples are almost always right there, WITH the text that discusses it - so you can absorb what's being talked about with out having the "break concentration" and look for the relevant connection between explanation and example. Also, rather than discuss only the "terminology" and the like, I found the explanations were geared so that anyone who can read could understand them - without a dictionary being close to hand! I'd highly recommend picking up this book - to the beginners and pros alike! The gains from it's knowledge are definately worth the price.

A must have for ANY artist.

This book is probably the best perspective book i have ever read. I dont see how anyone can give it a bad review or call it useless. Author not only explains how to draw the perspective in the simplest way but also explains a bunch of different techniques that might work for you. The book is written as a large comic strip wich makes it very enterntaining and at times alsmot like you are watching a movie. Explanations are very straight forward and not hard to undestand with a little bit of thinking. It is quite amaizing what kind of depths about perspective this book goes into. If you draw, you got to have it. I also hope it will be printed in hardcover someday