Draw With Jazza - Creating Characters by Josiah Brooks Review: A Structured, Genre-Spanning Character Design Guide

A how-to character design guide rooted in one YouTube educator's self-taught system, this book offers a structured, genre-flexible framework for aspiring cartoonists and comic creators.

Draw With Jazza – Creating Characters is an instructional how-to guide — not a memoir, graphic novel, or art anthology — published by IMPACT Books on November 8, 2016. Its stated purpose is to give readers a repeatable method for inventing and drawing original characters for comic books, cartoons, video games, and related media. The publisher's synopsis frames this as an accessible system for anyone looking to design characters across a wide range of styles: sci-fi, steampunk, comic book heroines, action heroes, animal familiars, alien races, and beyond. The breadth of that list is a deliberate feature; the book positions itself as a genre-agnostic toolkit rather than a guide tied to a single aesthetic tradition.

Josiah "Jazza" Brooks is an artist and animator who built his following by sharing self-taught techniques for character design, illustration, and animation on his YouTube channel, Draw with Jazza, which he launched in 2012. As Barnes & Noble's listing notes, the channel grew rapidly as Brooks produced standalone educational content and artist resources alongside his entertainment work. That origin matters to understanding the book: its approach grows directly from the accessible, tutorial-style instruction Brooks developed for a digital audience, now translated into a print format published by IMPACT Books, an imprint with an established track record in instructional art titles.

The book is designed around a method Brooks describes as helping readers "invent and draw original characters time and time again" — the emphasis on repeatability is central to its instructional promise. Rather than presenting a gallery of finished character designs for admiration, the guide is structured to move readers through a process they can apply independently to any genre or concept they choose. That design intent — building a transferable skill set rather than teaching imitation of a fixed style — is consistent across all published descriptions of the book. The range of example character types named in the synopsis (from comic book heroines to alien races) signals that the framework is meant to stretch across wildly different contexts, which is an instructional ambition not every beginner art guide attempts.

Reader response to the guide has been strongly positive. BestViewsReviews, analyzing 32 collected reviews for this title, reported that approximately 100% carried positive sentiment, with around 0% reflecting negative reactions — a notably uniform reception. One reader quoted on Google Play Books noted that after returning to drawing, they purchased both the book and Brooks's companion app, describing both as "easily worth the money." That kind of crossover engagement — readers moving from the book into Brooks's broader ecosystem of tools — points to an audience that is already invested in his educational approach and finds it consistent across formats. The book is squarely aimed at beginners and intermediate learners who want structured guidance rather than open-ended inspiration, and at fans of Brooks's YouTube content who want a tangible, step-by-step resource to work from at their own pace.

The guide's greatest strength — its focus on a single, replicable method developed by one self-taught creator — is also the natural boundary of its scope. Readers seeking deep dives into anatomy, advanced comic book storytelling, or techniques rooted in formal classical training will find this book's ambitions deliberately modest; it is designed to be fun and accessible, as the subtitle plainly states, not exhaustive. Artists already comfortable with character design fundamentals may find the method's entry-level framing covers ground they have already crossed. Additionally, because the book's approach is so closely tied to Brooks's own voice and channel persona, readers who are unfamiliar with his YouTube style and come to the book cold may experience it differently than the existing Draw with Jazza community for whom it was clearly, in part, designed.