It's the best guide to perspective for cartoonists, who are often not known for following 'normal' perspective. Celsi knows his business but also knows how to entertain. This is a must have for any comic artist or animator.


A great book for beginners and pros alike.   July 30, 2001
 13 out of 13 found this review helpful

A tome about comic perspective in comics form, this book helped me discover new principles in perspective and the REASON for these principle. Not just for your scenery, human bodies in perspective are also covered... but you had better know anatomy before hand. The reason for the missing star is because Chelsea uses two forms of curvilinear perspective, but suspiciously absent is the chapter ON curvilinear. Even with this oversight, Chelsea has written an engaging and fairly complete perspective guide. Look closely at the icecubes on page 131 and try to find the hidden pictures!


Not your average Take on Perspective   June 1, 2000
 12 out of 13 found this review helpful

I found this book extremely helpful, in more ways the one. Instead of your usual text with diagram format, it has a refreshing comic book format. This means that examples are almost always right there, WITH the text that discusses it - so you can absorb what's being talked about with out having the "break concentration" and look for the relevant connection between explanation and example. Also, rather than discuss only the "terminology" and the like, I found the explanations were geared so that anyone who can read could understand them - without a dictionary being close to hand! I'd highly recommend picking up this book - to the beginners and pros alike! The gains from it's knowledge are definately worth the price.


One of the best perspective books   January 8, 2005
 12 out of 13 found this review helpful

If you are a serious artist then you will probably have to study a few perspective books before you learn all you need to know about the subject. This book deserves to be in that collection. It covers the nuts and bolts of the correct methods for drawing in one, two and three point perspective and offers hints for shortcuts that you can use to build drawings with a perspective look, even if they are not technically accurate, when you have to work with a deadline.

What I like about the book is that it provides thorough context for understanding not just the how, but the reasons behind the perspective techniques. If you know the rules you can do it, but if you understand the context in depth you can make informed decisions about when to follow the painstaking rules and when to use the shortcuts.

The book is also written in a very approachable visual medium. Basically it is a comic book following in the tradition of Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics".

The book also includes some facinating bits of trivia about 3 point perspective, when it was developed and why, and the lengths that some artists, like M. C. Escher, had to go to in order to properly employ it.

The book has two shortcomings. The first is a consequence of its comic format, there are a large number of pages which present more character development than is strictly necessary to get the information across. By contrast, most perspective books are very condensed, explaining as much as can be explained with illustrations and diagrams. This not only goes into detailed discussion of perspective, its uses and theory, but does so within the voice baloons of two characters.

The second shortcoming is one that I can't think of any other perspective book that treats, that is, it leaves out curvileniar or 5 point perspective, though apparently the author is aware of this kind of perspective, he tantalizes us by using it in a couple of illustrations in the book.


Entertaining but...   February 13, 2000
 11 out of 13 found this review helpful

I bought this book since I was interested in creating my own comic book for my amusement.

I found the format quite engaging and entertaining, pretty much like Scott McClouds Understanding Comics (whom the author's format is inspired by). The explanations are pretty straightforward and user-friendly, especially for the general introduction and one point perspective.

Personally, I wish that it had more examples for implementing three point perspective (which is heavily used in the more dramatic/dynamic shots and scenes).

Overall, it's a pretty good book, although I'm now purchasing other perspective manuals to clarify some of the more difficult aspects of this.