The Complete Cartooning Course (Paperback)

Everybody loves cartoons, but not everybody realizes that a good cartoonist needs special training. This attractive, heavily illustrated, easy-to-follow volume is a self-teaching course for beginning cartoonists. At the heart of the book is instruction on drawing faces and figures that spring to life -- facial expressions that show the full range of emotions, gestures that dramatize body language, clothing that indicates social and professional status, face and body shapes that indicate age, and much more. Cats, dogs, and other animals are shown too, with tips on making them appear either comically human-like or naturalistic. Aspiring cartoonists are introduced to the equipment and materials they'll need for both color and black-and-white cartooning, and are provided with research and reference sources, including many that are available on the World Wide Web. The author also presents background information on cartooning art, and discusses the trends in comic strip art, advertising art, and political cartooning. In addition to instruction, budding artists will find advice on getting their work into print, and information on career opportunities.