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.

The book starts off discussing the thought process that begins before putting pencil to paper. Then it covers the basics of character designs using variations of basic shapes. The books also shows you how to push your designs from average to unique by playing around with exaggerating the shapes of your characters.

Once the basics are covered, there are chapters on drawing the lead character, animals, monsters, women, and people of different ages. The author also interviewed several other professional character designers and added their experienced perspective on the craft.

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