Cartooning For Everyone - Basic Skills
Simple techniques to help anyone and everyone draw acceptable cartoons. If you can draw a straight line, a circle, question mark and the figure '3', you can draw cartoons. This video will show you some simple techniques to get you started.
Step 1: Get drawing
Hi there, I'm Waldorf, William Freeman. I'm Waldorf, I kinda draw cartoons amongst other things, with pen, pencil, whatever I've got. I'm gonna show you one or two little techniques here. You could see a lot of what I am gonna say on my website, WaldorfCartoons.com. And you will see examples of cartoons and some ideas and tips on how you can draw them for yourself and indeed make money from them.
Step 2: Anyone can draw
Well there we have the famous straight line that people say they can't draw. You don't see too many straight lines in cartoons. But you see quite a number of circles. And you probably see a few question marks although you probably don't recognize them as such. And the odd number three. And a bit of a cloud now and again. An occasional funny scribble. And if you can do those things you can probably draw some cartoons.
Step 3: Drawing a face:
Question mark, that's the basis of the nose so I'll put some eyes on it.I'll put a circle on there because there's a head. There's a three. Couple of ears. We'll give him a smile. I'll put some eyebrows on. And maybe a bit of a cloud. Funny looking person.
Let's try that again slightly differently. Here I've got a question mark, it looks quite severe. Maybe that's a mouth. Eyes like that. I'll do a little spikey hair this time. I'll still do my number three. And we've got the basis of a face. Put on a bow tie, I do a lot of that because it's easy to draw. And there we've got a face.
Step 4: Drawing cartoon figures:
To draw the figures, complete cartoon figures, I tend to start off with pencil, sometimes. Although I am getting rather bold without it. But I deal in blobs really. If you draw sort of, you may not be able to see that, blobs, a head, a body, top of a leg, bottom of a leg and a foot. Top of a leg, bottom of a leg, and a foot. Top of an arm. You've got to get these going the right way of course. Bottom of an arm and a hand, top of an arm, bottom of an arm, and a hand like that. And you've got somebody running. Let me put it in a bit of ink so that you can see it a bit clearer. That's a kind of question mark nose. I'll give him a somewhat slightly worried look because he's a bit puffed. There's the head, I hope you see. He's slightly porky, this man, but I'll.. If I follow that through, there's the hand. There's the other arm going down those blobs. Give him some shorts. See this is just loose scribbly stuff. Oh he seems to have some knee-length socks. Alright I'll fill those in. Maybe he's a footballer now, chasing the ball. But that all starts with blobs, to give you the rough idea. And if you practice like that, you can produce acceptable figures. As he's moving we'll give him a few sort of movement marks.
Step 5: Doesn't have to be perfect!
Well that's not a great cartoon drawing, but it's a good enough rough. And if I sorted it out in light pencil and went over it with ink then it might be acceptable. And remember cartoons aren't necessarily about perfect art.
Step 6: Thanks for watching.
If you look at my website. You'll see the kind of examples of cartoons that I've done and things that I do using the techniques that I've just mentioned to you. You'll also find details about there's a DVD that you can get, "Making Money From Funny Ideas". That isn't just about cartooning. It's about cartoons, it's about strip cartoons, it's about illustrations, it's about greeting cards. There's a huge market in making money from greeting cards. You can sell copy, lines for greetings cards. Twenty words that could net you a hundred pounds. And that's good fun. I've done that a few times. So if you are the kind of person that's got lots of ideas or can think of ideas, this DVD, or here's the front cover of a soft copy book which you can get sent to you, will tell you how to generate ideas. How to turn them into cartoons, how to turn them into sketches, or indeed how to turn them into greeting cards. So have a look at the website WaldorfCartoons.com. You'll see some of the stuff I've done and hopefully you might be interested in that book. You'll see that too, one or two sample pages. Anyway, have fun with your pen, pencil, ink, or whatever. Thanks for watching.
