How to Draw and Paint Crazy Cartoon Characters

About this book

Aspiring cartoon artists comic book collectors and nostalgia buffs will discover a happy combination of cartoon history and practical instruction in this color-illustrated book. It teaches art students dozens of ways to simplify exaggerate and distort the people animals and objects in their illustrations to achieve hilarious effects. An overview of cartoon history showcases humorous characters as they appeared in nineteenth-century satire in childrens books in cartoons of the 1920s in Hollywood animation of the 1940s and in todays manga and anime cartoons. The author shows how to create cartoons using a wide range of media from pen and ink to paint and pixels. Art students will get tips on making their cartoons interesting with funny props and laughter-evoking backgrounds. Most important are the comic character types that they place in their illustrations foregrounds. Heres how to create stock types--the idiot the cutie-pie the comic hero the evil genius the loyal sidekick the straight man and the heavy. Here too are imaginative ways to costume different characters give them funny poses and dramatize their emotions through facial expressions such as fear anger boredom amusement or surprise. A final chapter advises beginning cartoonists on how to build a portfolio present their work create a web site and find an agent and steady work. More than 300 illustrations.