Tom Bancroft

This book really helped me develop my character for the Disney brief. It's called Creating Characters with Personality and is written by animator and character designer Tom Bancroft.

I must admit I didn't know much about him before I bought the book, but like most people once I turned the pages I realised I was familiar with his work. It's really well written with some great character sketches, hand written notes and character assignments. One chapter that was really valuable to me was "Pushing Your Design" because it helped me to develop a sketch I liked into something with more visual appeal.

Tom has over 20 years experience in the animation industry, 11 of those years was working for Walt Disney feature animation where he contributed to many feature films including: “Beauty and the Beast,” “The Lion King,” “Aladdin”, “Pocahontas”, “Mulan”, “Lilo and Stitch”, and “Brother Bear”.

Tom founded Funnypages Productions with friend Rob Corley. The company has provided illustration, character design and artistic animation development for clients like Disney, Big Idea Productions, CBN, Scholastic, Warner Brothers, Simon and Schuster Publishing, and Hasbro.

Please check out his Funny Pages website here: www.funnypagesprod.com