What’s this site about?

The purpose of this site is to help you choose the right books and resources to help you with your artistic growth. Over the last couple of years if have gathered over a 100 drawing books. On this website I share my opinions on these books, I also shoot flip-through videos of the books I review, because I think it is helpful to get a glimpse before you consider getting any of those books yourself.

Personally I am mainly interested in character design, cartooning and generally visual development for animated movies, games, comics and children’s books. So my personal heroes are Tom Bancroft, Stephen Silver, Ben Caldwell, Skottie Young and many more.

Who am I??

My name is Sebastian Stadler. I am an freelance illustrator, graphic designer and occasionally animator based in Vienna, Austria. Recently I also discovered a passion for hand lettering, which you should try for yourself. Besides being fun, it helps with craftsmanship a lot.

I love to educate myself with books on art, online and offline courses. Also I fool myself into believing reading comics helps a great deal with developing my skills stylistically. So, how am I qualified to give you advice on books art education or anything else?? Well that’s upon you to decide 🙂 I can only show you my portfolio and tell you what my experience has been so far.

Professional Experience

As of 2015 I have been working professionally for 7,5 years now. You do the math if you read this in the future. In this period of time, I spent 4,5 years in children television doing illustration, compositing, graphic design, 2d character animation and motion graphics. The last 3 years I worked as a freelance artist. Work included children’s books, mobile games and 2d-character animation. Whenever I don’t work for a client I design T-Shirt’s or work on my skills.

Education

I’ve taken 2 10-month illustration courses at illuskills.com.I attended several live drawing classes and workshops in the past years. Also I took the self-taught class on character design by Stephen Silver at schoolism.com.
I probably watched 1000’s of online tutorials (gnomon workshop, lynda, glenn vilppu, new masters academy, toonboxstudio…) and read a lot of books. At the moment as already stated above, I own over a 100 books, 106 if you want the precise number and I read at least 75% of them 😉

Final thoughts

It took me a long time to realize that education is in fact important, but the most important thing to grow is to practice and to be very conscious about what you’re doing. So it’s not necessary to buy a 100 books like me, get a few good ones, take one thing at a time and practice. Also before you get started reading reviews, always try to educate yourself on the basics. Fundamentals are the most important thing. Don’t you ever forget that 😉

If you’d like to see my personal work you can find it on artofsebastian.com

Peace, Sebastian 😉