Cartooning 101- It all starts with Emotion

Cartooning 101- It all starts with Emotion

Today boys and girls we are going to learn some cartooning fundamentals. Just a short list of materials before we get started:

1. Pencil
2. Paper
3. Eraser
4. Imagination- optional
5. Patience

My favorite thing about cartooning is that there are no real rules. Everything counts from stick figures to realistic drawings. There is one major rule to cartooning…. Emotion. Emotion is the key to the cartooning world. There are reasons all cartoons look the way they do, like actors they are playing a part, they must make you believe. You have to understand what the character is doing without reading a word. I could give you a whole list of emotions drawn out with a character but I have come to find that those types of reference don’t help very much, as a matter of fact they seem to hurt the creativity of making it genuine.

If your using a humanoid type figure like anything that stands on 2 legs has 2 arms and a head at the top, then emotion is all in the body language. Cartoons are for children (well not all the time) so they act a lot like them. Study how children react either in movies or in person, all their movement is an exaggeration of adult emotion. Children have all the same reactions as cartoon. (ok so their eyes don’t pop out of their head, but have you ever seen a kid on Christmas…. They almost pop out)
　
Your imagination should take over from here but if your looking for some lessons a little more formal those lessons will begin soon so stay tuned cartoon lovers!!!