Students of fantasy art who open this book will learn how to imagine and draw a wide variety of mythical characters to illustrate legends, myths, and fables. Author Matt Dixon presents both ideas and techniques for creating fantasy characters, demonstrating how to pose them correctly, and give them appropriate costumes to fit the story being told. After advising on uses of both conventional and computer art materials and tools, he coaches his readers on basic methods for sketching figures, adding tone and color to the illustration, and providing correct proportions and balanced composition. A detailed chapter on human anatomy follows, with instructions for transforming human figures into convincing fantasy characters. The bulk of this self-teaching manual consists of a directory of fantasy character types, each of them shown with concept sketches, constructional drawings, and fully-rendered images, all supplemented with instructive captions. The directory consists of approximately 30 different character types, including: * Warrior * Wizard * Princess * Hero * Peasant * Elf * Gnome * Barbarian * Goblin * Witch * Vampire . . . and many more The text is supplemented with more than 600 full-color illustrations.