Angie Taylor

The author says on page 21, "It's quite common to see people entering the profession from a variety of directions." That's me. A reference librarian pretty much untainted by formal art training. But over the years I've published a zine, created books using MyPublisher, and dabbled with everything from the Gimp to Bryce to Daz3D Studio to Poser to Xtranormal and so on. More than just dabbled. Learned enough to want to learn more, and this book is the MUCH MORE THAN BASIC introduction I think I need to move up to the next level. As a librarian, I'd peg this as an excellent introductory text for basic design courses at the advanced high school or college undergraduate level. I've run across a lot of the concepts, but never had them so cogently organized and presented. This is NOT a standalone work for advanced artists (though I'd still recommend it to that crowd) and it is NOT for the casual (i.e., lazy) amateur. It's accessible if you listen to it.

And it's a fun book. Each chapter had a section called "Inspiration" penned by someone expert in the area being covered. Chapter 6, Color, has a wonderful mini essay by Richard Walker which could probably be made into a standalone artists book. "Historically, pink was a color reserved for the boys, then it became the color that dare not speak its name, and now it seems once again, real, red-blooded masculine men can wear pink again . . . but this time with irony." In addition to these "Inspirations," the writing comes across as very personal, which is no mean feat when you're writing about alpha channels in Adobe Photoshop (which I FINALLY understand).

Specifics. My favorite chapter was Chapter 5, Type. What can I say, I'm a font kind of guy. The examples of various fonts exhibiting font-like behaviors were intriguing. The bibliography is quite nice, broken down as references for each chapter.

So, this is all the stuff I should have learned in the first year of the art school that I never attended.

Note: A copy of this review is also posted at Amazon.com where the author received a free copy via the Amazon Vine program.… (mehr)