At this point your students’ minds should be buzzing with ideas. Now that they’re approaching the final version of their Gag Cartoon, it’s time for some more drawing lessons. Nothing terribly complex, but these simple concepts can make all the difference in the work of a neophyte cartoonist, both in visual appeal and readability.

Objective: Basic character design

Do Now: Try to draw a simple cartoon character

As always, circulate the room during the Do Now. Gauge the various skill levels of your students and use this as a guide in terms of how far to push this lesson (or indeed if you should skip it altogether and proceed to the next one—though in my experience, even slightly more advanced students like to see these simple approaches codified.)

Activities:

• Brief discussion based on the Do Now
• Teacher will demo, step-by-step, simple character design. Students will follow along.

Emphasize the utility of what you’re about to show them. At the same time remind them that this is only one approach. After today, they are free to use it or ignore it.

As with most representational drawing, we start with simple shapes, in this case an oval:

Followed by a trapezoid:

Then some half-circles:

And then these, um, things:

At this point, ask, “Who is this?” You will likely get the name of one of The Powerpuff Girls. Emphasize that is, in fact, all of them, because they all use the same formula. It just depends on what details you add.

(oh like Bubbles isn’t your favorite…)

I begin with this because it’s easy and gives everyone a chance at success. Next, a slightly more complicated character. Start with a circle:

Underneath that we’ll add a  neck:

Then, again, a trapezoid. Add a half-circle on either side for sleeves:

Next the arms. Now’s a good time to introduce the concepts of cylinders into the demo. When discussing the rendering of appendages (arms, legs, prehensile cybernetic tails, etc.) it is useful to think of them in terms of cylinders. It may not be readily apparent in this particular drawing, but it will be helpful later on. May as well get your students accustomed to it now.

Some fingers. (Don’t get too caught up in hands right now. Keep it simple. Students tend to find them incredibly frustrating.)

A rectangle, then two more cylinders:

Finally two half-ovals.

Who might this be? Some might say Charlie Brown:

The more attentive student may say it could be any of the Peanuts characters, depending on the details:

You may suggest that this basic formula extends beyond Peanuts. For example:

Now let’s add a wrinkle. What happens if we squash (term from the previous drawing lesson) this figure?

What if we stretch (also from previous lesson) the formula?

What if we do a little of both?

Without adding any details, which of these figures is younger? How can you tell? What makes the other one look older? What details could you add to emphasize this?

Exercise: Students will use the techniques learned today to create two unique characters.

Here are some student examples (Thanks Ashley, Joel and Paul!):

There will be a couple more drawing lessons before the students begin the final version of their Gag Cartoon. But tomorrow’s Friday, and that means: More Cartooning History!

Derek Mainhart is an art teacher at Deer Park High School and at the Usdan Center for the Creative and Performing Arts. He has taught widely at many institutions such as Molloy College, Boricua College and Hofstra, among others. He teaches cartooning workshops in the greater New York area. In addition, he was the first Vice President of the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA) in Manhattan, and was instrumental in the formation of its annual MoCCA Art Festival. He has organized and participated in numerous gallery exhibits in and around NYC. His self-published works include The Iraqi Tinies and W. He is married to web-cartoonist and fellow art teacher Ali Solomon. They live with their daughter in Forest Hills (not far from the house where Peter Parker grew up.) 

Read Derek’s comic book reviews at: http://imagesandnerds.wordpress.com/ 

This is the second of a two-part post where I walk you through the method I used to make a typical comics page. (for part I, go here). In part one I went over my way of doing thumbs and pencils and got through inking lettering and panel borders. This part is about my process of inking a comics page. There are tons of ways to create a comics page and this is just one of them, submitted for your approval, adoption, or rejection. It is also an excerpt from chapter six of Mastering Comics.

finished pencils with lettering and panel borders inked

I ink starting with lettering, then word balloons and panel borders. I usually use a Hunt 102 or 22 nib pen for lettering and a T-square and ruling pen to rule borders, but I may use different tools depending on the look I want for the story. For example, the panel borders we see here were ruled out in pencil but inked freehand with a brush.

Once the lettering and borders are done, I ink all the main line-work on the figures and backgrounds. This is often done with a nib pen, but sometimes I use brush as well. In the example, I mainly used a Hunt 102 nib, but also used a more flexible nib like a Hunt 100 or the Gillott 290 to get more lively lines on the old woman, which you can see in the finished page at the end of this post. (By the way, see our supplies Quickguide for information about these tools; see also DW&WP Chapter 8.)

The next step is adding tone and spotting blacks.

In this story, I decided to use only solid black and no tone to give the comic a stark look. As I am developing a new comic, I often look at other comics, art, film, and photography to find inspiration for an appropriate style. I did a post a while back on my personal blog where I shared some of my early studies for this comic, including this copy of a woodcut by the early 20th Century artist Felix Vallotton (sorry, it’s a little lurid!):

after Vallotton

I’ll often scan or photocopy my basic linework at a reduced size so that I can sketch out different ideas directly on the copies, as shown below. I tend to use a brush and ink, but marker or even Sharpie can work at this stage.

I drew on photocopies of my inked line art to figure out the placement and balance of blacks.

Once I’m settled on the balance and placement of the blacks, I’ll start working on the final pages (penciling in shadow lines and the like as needed). At this point, things pick up pace and cartooning feels fun!

I ink the blacks on my bristol board using a brush and india ink.

I then scan my pages (see Chapter 9 in Mastering Comics, as well as DW&WP, Chapter 14 and the Scanning quickguide) and do some last cleanup and correction on the files. Many people do all of their corrections on the computer now; some artists even do black-spotting in Photoshop. It’s certainly more efficient that way, but I like to have my original pages look as complete as possible.

This kind of method really works, and the great thing about it is that you can break it down into as many steps as you need to. It’s perfect if you’re someone who only achieves the drawing you want after a lot of tracing and redrawing. It’s also useful if you’re drawing complex spaces or strange poses. But it’s a lot to do; it’s a lot of steps, and it can be daunting. It also requires a light box and a computer and scanner, which you may not have available to you.

After doing some corrections on the bristol board with white ink, I do fine-tuning on the scanned file.

Whether you ever use a tracing-based complete method or not, take these tips home:

1. When you’re stuck, try sizing your thumbs up and tracing. That can jump-start you.

2. Start with loosely blocking in all your main figures, fore- ground objects and space, and lettering. Then tighten up and add background.

3. When you’ve got a tough background to do, try drawing it separately and tracing it in (just make sure your character is placed in it properly; i.e., standing on the floor, at the correct scale).

4. Have a friend pose when you can’t nail a gesture.

5. If your pencils get too worked over, trace them onto another sheet of paper to ink.

6. If you’re in a situation in which you are having a hard time making time to work on comics, you can divide the production of an individual page into many, many small tasks. Simply scanning, sizing, and printing thumbs is an important step, one that you could do in 20 minutes and know you’ve done something on your comic that day.

For more on tracing, and a step- by-step how-to, see DW&WP Chapter 8.2.

***

By the way, here’s that finished tier in the context of the whole page, it comes from a 4-page story called “Pantoum for Hiram” which has not yet been published:

page one of Pantoum for Hiram, copyright 2011 Matt Madden

Devilish details: Attentiveness, detail, consistency, research

When you make comics, you will encounter a variety of things that you need to draw convincingly. This is a nearly-invisible, but crucial labor of cartooning. Great cartoonists don’t simply tell stories well or draw dynamic characters; they also know how to add visual details that anchor us to the reality of the story. Whether the story is set in a Manhattan diner or on the beach in Thailand, we can identify it immediately. Though drawn on paper, the world feels fully three-dimensional. (This applies doubly to non-real worlds, as in sci-fi. In that case, you need to provide us with everything we know about the world, whereas in a story set in the world we know may get away with more elision of details.)

We talked a good bit about research methods and approaches to constructing a world in DWWP Chapter 12. This is just a reminder: A panel of a character walking down a New York street will call for, minimally, streetlights, cars, store windows, and signage. You may be working in a non-realistic style, but if the story is in New York, you’ve still got to put us there. Simplification of details is allowed, but random guesses from your head of what streetlights look like will generally not cut it. Look up some pictures on the internet, and incorporate details from the real world in your panel. It’s easy to do this right; slacking on your research is pure laziness and will come back to bite you in complaints during classroom crits, not to mention gripes that you don’t get to hear later on—the ones readers make in their minds while reading. It’s incumbent on you to create a fully realized, enveloping world for your story.

Longer stories demand a higher level of research, since characters are likely to spend more time in a given location, utilize it more fully, and return to it more often. If you just sketch it in at first, you’ll find that you have to go back and re-draw to make it function as fully as you’ll need.

Activity: the anatomy of doors

All objects in our world have certain rules. When you’re drawing a door, for example, you should think about whether it’s an antique wood-paneled interior door, an exterior steel security door, a swinging door, or a sliding door. Each of these kinds of doors has specific kinds of frames, stops, handles, and hinges, which relate directly to how they work. You can design all kinds of fantastic doors, or strip them down to the bare minimum, but if they have a few telling details that describe how they function, your reader will notice that on a subliminal level, and the door will feel more solid. The reader will be more likely to believe your world. If a door doesn’t have a stop, for example, it’s a swinging door.

The same goes for windows, cars, guns, and ships. Learn how things work, and why they have the parts they have, and you’ll be a stronger cartoonist.

Materials 

• sketchbook
• bristol board
• research sources (internet, library, the world)
• drawing tools

Instructions

Pick an object (or category of objects, such as windows) to research. Make it something you’ll need to use in your story. If you’re in a class or group, each person should pick a different object. Find reliable research materials on the object. Learn the names and functions of all the parts of the object in at least one version. Learn the parts of a .38 revolver, for example. Learn how they work, and why they’re there. Then you can look into how the parts of a 9mm Glock differ and are similar. Make notes in your sketchbook, and print, copy, or archive any relevant materials so you’ll have them to refer to later.

On bristol board, draw an authoritative diagram of one version of your object. Label all important parts, and write a short description of the function of those parts. If you’re in a group, make photocopies and distribute your diagram to your colleagues for their use.

Talking points 

This is a pretty straightforward exercise. Drawing style and skill are not at issue. Accuracy, however, is. Look at the diagrams, and compare with the research materials, Make sure you understand how the object works. If you don’t, the artist should revise until you do.

Ronin

Show your drawings and diagrams to non-cartoonists and see if they can understand what you’ve done. If not, revise until they can. Repeat this activity for as many everyday objects as you’ll need to understand for your story.

We plan to post this series approximately once a week. Follow us via rss, Facebook, or Twitter (buttons above to the right) to be informed when new posts go up. To search for all the posts by Derek, including all in this series, click here. 

Jessica & Matt

Day 1

One of the great things about teaching a full year is you have the time to really get to know your students (well, usually it’s a good thing). So in the beginning, it’s helpful to keep in mind that the school year is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. The first week is a good time to ease students into their new environment (your class) as they shake the summer cobwebs off (those beautiful, sun-drenched cobwebs) Use this time to set the tone. Accustom them to the structure and rules, but always remember to keep it fun and engaging (you’re teaching cartooning!)

A note on format: I’ll be presenting these as Lesson Plans with additional commentary added. For the uninitiated, Lesson Plans are precisely that: structured plans to be used as guides for your lesson. These can, of course, be adapted to your particular teaching situation or to fit the requirements of your school. To wit, the Objective (this is sometimes referred to as the Aim). This is the first piece of information that students see upon entering the room. It can be presented in the form of a question or as a stated goal to be accomplished by the end of class. (There are actual philosophical differences on this.) In any case, it gives the students an entry point into the material about to be covered. So on the first day, students entering my classroom will se something like:

Welcome to Cartooning!

Objective: Using comics to tell your story 

A useful way to actually start the lesson is a Do Now. This is a brief task to be performed by the students during the first few minutes of class. This serves a couple of purposes. It lets you take care of housekeeping (attendance, etc), but more importantly, it focuses the students on the lesson. As such, you should tailor the Do Now so that it feeds organically into your lesson—no busy work! The Do Now’s I use usually take the form of a drawing exercise or a question the students have to respond to in written or (more often) drawn form. Circulate as they’re doing it. If someone is doing something interesting, tell them! If someone is doing something that relates directly to what you’re about to teach, share it with the class. (I always ask permission first. Teenagers are bundles of nerves, especially at the beginning. I don’t want to inadvertently embarrass someone—If you embarrass someone, it should be on purpose!)

For the first day I keep it simple. I hand out index cards and ask something along the lines of :

Do Now: Why did you choose Cartooning?

Encourage them to elaborate as much as possible. Assure them that you will be reading each response. Students will only care if you do.

Activities (or Procedure, or the like):

• Class discussion based on the Do Now

After a few minutes, I elicit student responses. I then answer the question myself: I didn’t choose cartooning – it chose me. I show them some of my personal work (the ONLY time I do this) and talk about my experiences and background. Again, if they see that you’re serious, they are more likely to be. If you don’t have a cartooning background, tell them why you’re so excited to teach it. What comics do you read? What cartoons do you watch? I answer questions as they arise (I usually get “Why did you become a teacher?”)

• Teacher will introduce Class Expectations

Next I distribute a brief hand out that includes a general course description and my expectations of the students (including grading policies, etc – the boring, necessary stuff stuff). I then whet their appetites with some of the projects they’ll be doing over the course of the year – in my case, a fully-produced comic book, zoetrope strips, animation cels, etc (the fun, exciting stuff) The whole discussion / intro takes about 10-15 minutes max. I then have them complete a quick

• Exercise – Draw a cartoon about the First Day of School.

I tell them these can be funny, realistic or fantastic (i.e., the first day of Robot School). They can be single or multiple panels. (Take the opportunity to introduce your first vocabulary word—panels! I usually ask them directly, “What are the boxes in which all the action takes place called?” See what they know)

• Collect their work at the end of class.

Before they leave, tell them how excited you are to be working with them. Then check out their work. That’s the fun part.

Here’s an example from a student whom we’ll call Andy. Because that’s his name. Having some fun with my Do Now:

Derek Mainhart is an art teacher at Deer Park High School and at the Usdan Center for the Creative and Performing Arts. He has taught widely at many institutions such as Molloy College, Boricua College and Hofstra, among others. He teaches cartooning workshops in the greater New York area. In addition, he was the first Vice President of the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA) in Manhattan, and was instrumental in the formation of its annual MoCCA Art Festival. He has organized and participated in numerous gallery exhibits in and around NYC. His self-published works include The Iraqi Tinies and W. He is married to web-cartoonist and fellow art teacher Ali Solomon. They live with their daughter in Forest Hills (not far from the house where Peter Parker grew up.)

Here’s a gift idea for you friends/relatives/encouragers/enablers out there: a beginning cartoonist’s starter kit!

To get your special person started in comics, just use the following checklist to buy him or her the basic tools of the trade:

Drawing Words & Writing Pictures will explain how to use all of this stuff! You can buy the book online or check your local bookseller.

Download your gift shopping checklist here and take it to your local art supply store (in fact, a well-stocked office supply store will carry a lot of this stuff). There are also plenty of places you can order these supplies on line, for example Pearl Paint or Dick Blick.

Last but not least, you’ll find details including illustrations and links about all of the above items in our new Supplies section under our Resources tab. Print it out as well and bring it along to the store if you like.

“Shu Fa” or The Way of the Brush, which is what we call Chinese calligraphy and painting (the two are inseparable), goes far, far back in time, and it really is a lifelong apprenticeship. Two of my favorite artists are Bada Shanren and Shi Tao.I don’t think in this lifetime I can be any more than a loving dilettante in the vast, vast ocean of Chinese Calligraphy, but here’s a little from having dipped my toes in it…

Chinese calligraphy and painting are inseparable from the unseen worlds of Ch’i or energy or as Yoda would call it, the Force.

The posture of the calligrapher, often standing up, but sometimes seated too, is designed for the force to travel up the calligrapher’s spine, down his right arm, and down the brush. Feet are wide apart and flat on the ground. The spine is erect.

The calligrapher holds the brush itself with a strong tension in the wrist—hand pulled back.

Then there is the life of the line itself. With years of practice and mastery of characters and brush, one develops all kinds of deep and subtle sensitivities. It can take several years of practice to make a straight line alone.

Within each stroke, there is the movement of force. For instance, a straight line doesn’t just ‘die’ at the end abruptly. If the stroke goes to the right, the stroke begins towards the left, first; then goes right, then finishes off going left again, inside itself—the idea being that even in this straight line, the Ch’i is still flowing, in movement.

It’s astonishing when you start feeling some of these things. Or when you meet a master who looks at someone’s line without having met them and says “This is someone with grand ambitions but who is very shy in public. They are slightly overweight and may have thyroid problems.” And it’s accurate.

This is one of the most fascinating things I’ve come across in Chinese painting, this notion that what matters, even more than the skill of an artist, is the quality of being in them, at the time they do their work. It’s just a different focus than the Western mind tends to bring to appreciating art. Why is it some works are warming, or endearing, regardless of subject matter? While others make you want to take a shower. There’s more to all this, of course.

Here are four Chinese characters that I asked a calligraphy teacher (Chris Tang, at the China Institute in NY) to write out so I could copy them some years ago. They are in three different calligraphic styles. In the middle column, the beautiful running style calligraphy. These are four deep concepts, or rather four essences of art, in Shu Fa thinking. Definitions below are from my brother Alexis.

These are really four separate meditations for anyone working in any medium. There’s more to say about each of these separately, on other occasions…

氣 (qì) : BREATH. This contains the character for rice (米, mǐ) surrounded by air (气, also qì). It’s air, or breath, that carries nourishment (rice is so essential to Chinese culture that the verb “to eat” is literally “eat rice” – with rice in its cooked form of 饭, fàn) – hence the extended meaning of life-force or spirit.

理 (lǐ) : REASON. Reason, logic, management. It’s the character for jade (玉, yù), a metaphor for all things precious and valuable, associated with the phonetic element 里, composed of a field (田) above earth or soil (土). It’s reasoning or management skills that allow you to transform a raw material (soil or other) into a field that then produces something valuable.

意 (yì): IDEA. This means thought or idea. The components of the character give the meaning of establishing something related to the sun in your heart.

神(shén) : SPIRIT. A god or supernatural being. It’s the radical for spirit, 示 (shì), combined with the phonetic 申, which means “to extend.” So it’s a spirit that extends beyond the confines of a human body

Interesting, isn’t it? Imagine having an art appreciation that relates to these four things, rather than, say, “I like it, or I don’t like it.”

I love this stuff.

——Mark Siegel

A big wall for critiquing comics pages is a must

An architecture student from the Phillipines wrote recently asking what we thought the optimum set-up would be for a comics classroom/workspace. It occurred to us that there’s no real standard, primarily since such a beast is practically non-existent. As teachers at the School of Visual Arts we have managed to get a pretty good set-up for cartooning with the help of our co-faculty and our department head but there is plenty of room for improvement, especially in the realm of technology. As visiting teachers, lecturers, and workshop leaders we have an opportunity to compare set-ups at a lot of different institutions, from fine arts studio programs to museums and libraries. We have seen a lot of cool stuff but we can’t say that we have come across the Ultimate Comics Teaching Studio Environment.

So in the interest of throwing out some ideas at the beginning of this schoolyear and in the confidence that some of you will chime in with additions, adjustments, or criticism we offer a quick list of essential class/studio items based our experience as teachers:

IN THE CLASSROOM

• sturdy drafting tables with adjustable angles, ideally with tabouret attached (This table is similar to the model we suggested ordering for SVA)
• adjustable height chairs
• open wall area for posting/critiquing art
• blackboard/whiteboard
• A/V unit with projector and audio, ideally an all-in-one “smart classroom” set-up

ideally also:

• an in-class light table for tracing work
• slop sink
• opaque projector (Matt saw a digital version recently that was as small as a book light, something like this)

It's great to have a light box or table available to use in the classroom.

IN A SEPARATE STUDIO/WORKROOM

• as many Apple computers as possible, all equipped with, CS & Wacom tablets
• 2 or more large format scanners (11 x 17″)
• 2 or more light tables or lightboxes
• large, flat work area equiped with cutting mat, paper cutter
• laser printer or other high quality printer

ideally also:

• silkscreen printing set-up
• Wacom Cintiq or two

Teachers and students out there, what would you add to this list? What would you prioritize? What do you think is overdoing it?

Kevin Cannon is one-half of Big Time Attic, a studio he shares with Zander Cannon (no relation. Funny, right?). Kevin and Zander have collaborated on a number of non-fiction, educational comic books, including T-Minus: The Race to the Moon(with Jim Ottaviani), and Evolution (with Jay Hosler). This wouldn’t be unusual, except that they’ve developed an intensive style of collaboration, where each works on every stage of the comics, from conception to layouts (thumbnails), to pencils, to inks. Like French authors (who famously use a similar system) Dupuy & Berberian, they’ve evolved a consistent combined style where you really can’t tell where one’s work ends and the other begins.

Subscribe to our channel on YouTube for more videos and curated comics video favorites.

Watch for more from Hilary this summer, as she works with Other Awesome Intern JP Kim on a Social Media for Art Students project.

One aspect of our upcoming second textbook that was completely absent from the first? Webcomics. In fact, the only activity that will ask you to even touch a computer in DWWP is a simple scanning procedure that we teach in Chapter 14 (not so simple that most of my students don’t mess it up, though). So in the new book, we use the computer often, just as do most contemporary cartoonists. We even have a several-chapter-long “webcomics” project, but its pretty idiosyncratic: it’s designed to be a platform that you can use to test out and learn various inking, lettering, and coloring techniques on short-form comics. We don’t teach you to build a website (we just tell you you should), and we don’t teach you how to run a webcomics business.

I only realized how very much we don’t teach these last things when I read How to Make Webcomics, by Brad Guigar, Dave Kellett, Kris Straub, and Scott Kurtz, all professional webcartoonists, and all part of the halfpixel.com collective.

How to Make Webcomics doesn’t actually teach you how to make webcomics. While there are several very good chapters full of tips and advice on things like character design, formatting, lettering, dialogue, and writer’s block, you’ll be much better off reading (and doing) DWWP and our new book if you want to learn to make comics (that you can also put on the web).

What this book does do, and strikingly well, is it teaches you how to be a webcartoonist. From website design issues specific to comics, to personal branding, to dealing with fans (and making more of them) to preparing for conventions (checklists!) right down to setting up a shipping station for your merch, this is by far the most comprehensive, reasonable, serious guide to being a self-publisher that I’ve seen. And I chose that term advisedly: If your goal is to publish print, you’ll still have a web presence, and if you’re a web cartoonist, you’ll probably publish print, so pretty much all this book applies to all those independent artists who decide to make publishing their own work part of their job.

I love how blunt the authors are about this: they repeat over and over that the only model that has thus far worked for webcomics is “free-to-the-consumer, ad-supported content, that then trades on audience loyalty by selling books, T-shirts, merchandise, and original art.” And then they proceed to tell you what price points you want to hit, how to decide which merch to produce, and even how many T-shirts will fit in a 30″ x 30″ box. I mean, seriously. This is precisely the kind of info you need if you’re considering going into business as a self-publisher of any kind of comics. They even confront the elephant in the room: art versus commerce. How do you decide where to draw the line in terms of playing to (and placating) advertisers and fans? They fall on the side of art, of course, but acknowledge that the pressure is there to cater to the lowest common denominator, and that the negotiation of that line is constant and ongoing.

The one thing they don’t mention specifically is the Wife Factor: most successful (and male) self-publishers aren’t actually in it by themselves. They usually have a “wife” (usually an actual wife, occasionally another type of life partner) who runs a lot of the biz. Not across the board, mind you, but in many many cases. I’ve yet to hear of a female self-publisher with a Husband Factor, either. Nothing wrong with free help, but for those that don’t have it, it’s something to consider if you’re thinking about walking this road.

OK, but that’s not really the point. The point is this: I was reading How to Make [It In] Webcomics for research for my textbook, for which it wasn’t all that useful. But I found myself taking notes for my own life.