Great character design immediately conveys a lot of information about the character through visual cues. You should immediately get a sense of the character’s personality and know something about their role in the story. Character Mentor: Learn by Example to Use Expressions, Poses, and Staging to Bring Your Characters to Life by Tom Bancroft is a great book to help you hone your skills to design a great character.
The book begins with some figure drawing fundamentals (particularly facial expressions) but quickly gets into techniques to inject personality into your drawings using effective posing. Tom Bancroft encourages you to get to the heart of your character and to bring that out in your drawing. The book also shows how staging a scene and composing a final image works hand in hand with character design to tell a story or convey a pivotal moment in a story.
There are several useful assignments in the book to help you practice the techniques being taught. Also, there are several “Mentor Notes” sections where Tom Bancroft takes student drawing and points out how the artist could strengthen their drawing.
Character Mentor is a good follow up to his also excellent Creating Characters with Personality: For Film, TV, Animation, Video Games, and Graphic Novels.
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