My second book, for which this website is named, is CHARACTER MENTOR from Focal Press publishers. CHARACTER MENTOR fills the gap for many people that already have a character design but want to know how to bring it to life for all forms of print media. The book focuses on the three subjects of EXRESSIONS, POSING, and STAGING your characters. While the book is perfect for animators also, it is not an animation book. CHARACTER MENTOR was created to give tips and instruction on how to bring personality and life to your character in a single drawing.

My first book, CREATING CHARACTERS WITH PERSONALITY from Watson-Guptill Publishers, focuses on the basic thought-process and drawing instruction needed to design characters in any style. That book has become the world's best selling book on character design! It is used as the main textbook on character design at many prestige art schools around the world.


The Character Mentor Studio “Workbook” series is a fun educational tool for any artist that enjoys creating characters. Each Workbook is themed to a certain aspect of study and they grow in complexity as the series progresses. Formatted as part sketchbook, part “how to” art book each workbook has fifty 8 ½” x 11” pages of lightly printed instruction and shapes for you to draw over and use as a tool to spark your creativity.
This workbook is 50 PAGES of regular and odd shapes- 4 or 5 per page- for you to make into crazy, serious, or inventive characters! Explore all the nooks and crannies and see what kind of character comes out of it.
This workbook goes beyond doodling characters and into the world of creating full characters. Some of the work pages will concentrate on creating side views of your character, different versions of the same character, turn sheets of your character, and exploring simple expressions with your characters.
This book focuses on working on more in-depth exploration of creating characters- with personality. Workbook 3 starts with basic shapes to use but progresses into written descriptions of characters for you to "blue sky" various versions of your own. These can become characters you use for your portfolio or as great blog fodder!
This workbook concentrates on bringing the characters you designed in Workbook 3- to life! Assignments will include specific written descriptions of emotions for you to illustrate your character emoting. Full body poses will be accented also. Push yourself by finding multiple ways to show a single emotion!