Posts tagged “cartooning”
I had the privilege of being asked to create the poster and postcard for this year’s Jay Kennedy Scholarship. The scholarship, named after the late King Features comics editor, is given out each year by the National Cartoonists Society Foundation at their annual Reuben Awards banquet.
If you are a student in North America who cartoons or draws comics, and you are heading to university or college (it does not have to be art school), you are eligible.
Previous years’ posters were drawn by Mutts artist Patrick McDonnell, editorial cartoonist Michael Ramirez, and MAD’s Tom Richmond. These guys are supremely talented, and tough acts to follow, but their artwork all had one thing in common — drawings of white men at drafting tables.
I decided to take a different route, and make the focus of my poster drawing itself. It’s a celebration of every student who spends most of his or her time doodling and daydreaming.
Visit the site for information on how to apply.
Everything you need to know about character design you can learn from studying these two guys.
I’m excited to have work on display alongside a pretty awesome lineup of artists as part of Seduction of the Idiots. The exhibit of cartoon and comic art runs from August 27th to September 12th here in Ottawa at the Canteen Gallery.
More info as the date nears.
Pixel Art and Cartooning
I’ve been toying with pixel art as a drawing exercise lately. There’s plenty in common between drawing with pixels and cartooning. Both are exercises in abstraction and simplification.
My online avatar has gradually been evolving, losing detail in each iteration, to increase readability at small sizes.
I don’t know if it will stay in pixelated form, but it’s difficult to want to revert back to something with more detail.
There are certainly artists who are experts at pixel art, and I am not one of them, but it’s an interesting and enjoyable exercise. And I think it’s great practice for being a better cartoonist. You have to make things instantly readable with very little visual information. And as for character design, the process of drawing with pixels, in a constrained grid, emphasizes the importance of distinguishing features, body shape, silhouette, colour, and costume.
There’s been a lot of Star Trek playing the house lately. And it’s proven to be a great well of characters to draw from:
I’ve been doing a few characters whenever I get a chance between jobs. It’s a relaxing process, trying to recreate a recognizable image using a limited set of building blocks. And it’s incredibly satisfying to see all these little familiar faces suddenly take form. The variations are particularly fun.
Here’s a bonus Kirk for the diehard fans:
Knowing how I am with complete sets, I imagine I will keep at this until I’ve done every character from each series. And my transformation into King of the Nerds will be complete.
I’m happy to answer, but I’m afraid it’s not too interesting.
Any cartoon-style inking you’ve seen is actually done in Manga Studio (or actual ink), and not Photoshop. Manga Studio often feels like half-finished software, especially compared to Photoshop, but its drawing tools are much better for cartooning (or at least mimicking dip pens and brushes).
My settings do not vary much from the default, but here’s a screenshot of what I use:
I have the buttons on the side of my Cintiq set up so that one of them alternates between black and transparent inks, and the other toggles the auto-correction to help smooth out large, clean arcs, which otherwise get a little wobbly.
Additionally, these settings will produce entirely different results based on the sensitivity settings in the Wacom preferences, and based on how much pressure you draw with.
So really, what works for me, might not work for you. It all depends on what kind of a line you’re trying to create, how you work, and how your hardware is calibrated. With any piece of software or art tool, experiment and find what works best for you. There is no right way.
I’ve always believed that pixel art is a form of cartooning. Over the past few days I’ve been playing with small pixel drawings for fun, between jobs, and it’s become a revelatory process.
It’s harder than it looks, but I think it’s a practice that makes one a better cartoonist by forcing the artist to relinquish style in favour of clarity. You can see my revised 8-bit avatar as an example of that abstraction process. I’ll post more examples soon.
