There aren’t a lot of good books about character design but Tom Bancroft’s book Creating Characters with Personality is worth your time. It covers how to design characters that are unique, fit into a cast of characters, and fit the genre.

Chuck Amuck is a great autobiography of Chuck Jones, the iconic animator behind many of the Warner Brothers characters. In this book, and the sequel Chuck Reducks, he tells stories of his life and his experiences with fellow animators and writers who created the iconic characters.

I love to draw with the Namiki Falcon fountain pen by Pilot. It’s a slim and light pen with a beautifully designed 14k gold nib. This pen allows you to make lines with a wide variety of thicknesses while maintaining a good flow of ink. It’s a little stiffer than a lot of other fountain pens but it tends to give a more consistent flow of ink. (One tip for artists: you can lay in very thin gesture and construction lines by turning the nib over.) I would recommend getting the soft fine point (SF) for maximal line variation.

Noodler’s Ink makes great fountain pen ink. I like to use their inks because they offer a lot of variety with rich colors that flows well through a pen. The company also has inks that vary between being water soluble to permanent. I personally like using water soluble ink while sketching because you can create a simple wash over your drawing using just water and a brush.

The Simpsons have been an American TV staple since its debut in December 1989. What started out as crudely drawn comedy shorts on the The Tracey Ullman Show became a full fledged show with huge cast of characters. The art evolved from roughly-drawn characters to more refined and rounded characters. In The Simpsons Handbook, artists from the show breakdown how each character is drawn. This book is a great resource for seeing how characters are developed to be drawn consistently by many different artists. It’s also just fun for fans of the show to flip through and see how the characters are drawn and see all the unique character variations from special episodes.

Bill Mauldin (October 29, 1921 – January 22, 2003) was an acclaimed cartoonist most famous for his editorial cartoons about the American soldiers’ experience during World War II. His two most famous characters were Willie and Joe - two battle-weary infantrymen. Bill Mauldin’s humorous take on the everyday experiences of a soldier on the ground gave us a unique look into the soldier’s perspective of the war. The cartoons focus on the day-to-day struggles of being and infantryman and Willie and Joe’s stoic attitude to their situation. For those of us who have never experienced war, it gives us a unique glimpse into the culture of the World War II soldier.