Greetings fellow cartoonist!
Whether you are a student scribbler or a more dedicated doodler, I hope that there is something in this guide for you regardless of how long you have been cartooning.
It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been drawing anyway, it’s the journey through the wonderful world of cartoons that counts anyway.
In this article I’ll explain some different techniques to help you with your cartooning.
I’ll show you some examples using my own cartoons, and then explain the exercise so that you can try it out for yourself.
The ‘over to you’ section is where you follow along.
I highly recommend drawing along while you’re reading this if possible.
Here’s what we’re going to cover:
Some principles
Spot colour
Exaggerate
Add an animal
Guiding the eye
Complex and simple
Spot colour
Add an animal
Guiding the eye
Recycling
Repurposing
Everyday situations (make them bizarre)
Contrast
Ideas from a hat
Meet Gerald the Goat
Gerald is taking some time off eating the neighbourhood’s flower beds so that he can help illustrate this guide.
Some Principles
This is a skill you can learn - not magic
When someone pulls ideas out of thin air it’s pretty amazing - and also a little intimidating at the same time. We might wish that we could do that too, that it’s alright for those born with the talent to do that. This can prevent us from even trying in the first place if we think that this is something we’re given, rather than something we’ve earned.
Well, talent is overrated.
Drawing cartoons is a skill. And like any other skill is something we can learn, even if we are starting from scratch.
The Idea Muscle
One of the key features of this course is the idea of the ‘idea muscle’. Thinking up ideas is like building muscles, it takes some skill and application, but the more you do it the better you become.
Just like when you first go to the gym, or try anything new for the first time, you don’t see a lot of progress at first but if you keep sticking to the system you’ll start to see results.
Step by step, you’ll slowly start to build up your own ‘cartoon idea muscle’ as you try out new ideas and techniques, and practice them. The trick is to keep at it and work the system, the same as you’d follow a routine at the gym.
Don’t compare your beginning with someone else’s middle
We all start at different levels. The aim is to work on improving your idea generation skills based on where you are today, rather than compared to everyone else.
It doesn’t have to be complicated...or always simple...
The ideas in this book apply whether your drawing style in minimalistic or more detail-orientated.
For an experiment to get insight into your own style, and into drawing styles in general, try drawing a few pictures in a completely different way. So if you’re a fan of doing simplistic illustrations with a minimum number of pen strokes, try adding more detail, whether to the characters or to the background.
On the other hand if you love doing highly complex drawings rich in detail, do the opposite - try to convey the same idea but in as few lines as possible.
I love doing both simple and complex drawings and find that by doing so I get insights into both styles.
You could even try redrawing one of your existing cartoons in the opposite style.
Spot Colour
Spot colour really draws attention to a particular area of the drawing that you want to emphasise.
It can be even more dramatic if the rest of the illustration is monochrome - a splash of colour will immediately grab the viewer’s eye and lead it to the spot you want to emphasise.
For this one the Idea was to portray the group of pelicans ganging up on the woman and her measly catch.
As you can see below, I’d originally drawn the fish grey and it certainly doesn’t stand out at all.
When doing the initial rough sketch I had the dog in a standing position.
Dogs don’t naturally have their paws on top of their heads, but in this case appointing a human mannerism to an animal really helps to get the point across.
Here’s the cartoon as it first appeared.
To draw attention to the fish, I coloured it orange, and so as not to draw attention away from it made her fishing outfit more drab by swapping out the yellow mac for a grey one, and the bright green boots for black ones.
Remember that the aim of a cartoon is to get an idea across - it doesn’t always have to be done in a completely realistic way.
Over to you:
Look back over some of your own cartoons. Is there any place where you could add spot colour to enhance the cartoon? Perhaps there is an area where you want to draw the viewer’s attention to.
Exaggerate
If you’re going to go over the top, go over the top completely
A cartoon really gives you license to stretch things a bit. Because it’s a cartoon, people often expect you to do so, rather than to try and recreate a completely accurate rendering. If people were looking for a 100% realistic image, then they wouldn’t be looking at a cartoon in the first place.
My initial sketch for this cartoon had the woman in a not very dynamic pose, and the dog looking on from the riverbank.
Even though the rod is bent over, it doesn’t really give an idea of the size of the catch, and I wanted to show this, without physically drawing in a fish.
So I came up with new version, with her kneeling down in the water, oblivious to getting a soaking due to battling the fish, and with the dog now in the water helping out by tugging on the tail of her jacket. I also had her hat flying off and her hair blowing about.
That’s two fishing cartoons so far. You may be wondering if I have a particular interest in angling, but to be honest It’s something I only portray on paper or tablet. I was asked to draw a couple of fishing cartoons a few years ago and discovered that I rather enjoyed it, particularly as it gave me the opportunity to work on natural backgrounds, and developing sky and water techniques. Since then I’ve kept drawing them from time-to-time.
Why have a woolly mammoth when you could have a woolier one instead?
Try going a bit more ‘over the top’ with your cartoons, you can always reel them in a bit afterwards.
Do you remember some scenes from classic animated cartoons, such as Tom and Jerry?
There was plenty of over-exaggeration going on there. Try it out and see how it feels.
Over to you:
For this you could either look back over previous cartoons or try drawing something new. Either way, choose an aspect of the cartoon and really exaggerate it. It might be the character’s action or part of their appearance. Have fun playing around with it, you can always reel it in later.
Add an animal
People love cartoons of animals whether pets or more wilder stuff. At last estimate there were 139,467,444 million cartoons of cats and dogs.
It’s also popular to have an animal being put into a human situation. Probably the most well-known example of this is The Far Side by Larson.
I’ve a big fan of big cats, leopards in particular, so here are a couple of cartoons featuring the creatures being a bit less shy and elusive than usual.
Don’t forget that animals come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes you can create an interesting effect just by the incongruity of having an creature do a certain activity.
And of course, adding animals to a human situation immediately makes it unnatural, so why not try something completely bizarre?
Over to you:
Look over a previous cartoon, either one of yours or someone elses’. Try swapping out one of the existing characters for an animal. You could also try keeping the existing characters as they are and addin an animal.
You could also think of some common cartoon scenes, such as in a restaurant, a couple on a date, a job interview and play around with putting different animals into the scene.
Guiding the eye
It’s useful to be able to guide the reader’s eye towards a main detail of the cartoon, especially if it isn’t immediately obvious at at first glance. This is a trick that has been used by artists for a long time.
Let’s look at how I helped guide the reader’s eye in the picture below.
1. The tree branch points towards Nessie.
2. The mountains in the far background form a ‘V’ shape, guiding the eye to what’s beneath.
3. The red spots on Nessie help catch the eye.
4. The fishing rod, catch net handle (5) and dog (6) all point towards Nessie.
It’s useful to be able to guide the reader’s eye towards a main detail of the cartoon, especially if it isn’t immediately obvious at at first glance. This is a trick that has been used by artists for a long time.
Let’s look at how I helped guide the reader’s eye in the picture below.
For this one I wanted to draw the reader’s attention to the dog pouring water into the boot. The simplest and quickest way to do so was to colour the boots bright red. Spot colour, as mentioned earlier, is a quick way to catch the reader’s eye.
This is a picture I drew for a ‘word-of-the-day’ challenge. The word featured was ‘charging’, and the idea of using an electric eel came into my mind.
I wanted to connect the eel and the fisher together. One way I did this was to have the red of the belly of the fish connecting with the red of the fisher’s boots.
For this one the character’s are on the left hand side of the cartoon in drab colours, with the brightly-coloured kite on the right hand side. The cartoon is divided into two halves, with the kite string connecting them.
Over to you:
Look over some of your previous cartoons. Are there any elements you could add that would help to guide the reader’s eye?
Recycling
You may have recognised one of the characters and the setting from the preceding image from earlier in the guide.
This is an example of how I recycled the cartoon to produce another one. All of the subsequent cartoons where based on the following background.
Extra tip: You can save backgrounds that you like in a folder for future reference.
I have kept one of the main characters, the woman, the same throughout the different cartoons. However, I could have swapped her out for a different person or animal.
I could also use her again in a different setting.
I could have added other details to the background, added or removed props, changed the weather etc.
Over to you:
Take one of your existing cartoons. Try swapping out the characters for new ones, or change some of the details. You could also take a character and then place them in a completely new setting.
You don’t even have to draw to play around with this idea. For example, you could try asking how would a business person on the beach, in a sauna, bungee jumping etc.
Repurposing
In repurposing, you are trying to think about how you can use one object to do a completely different task to the one it’s intended to.
One good example fo this is how in the Flintstones cartoons they are always using different dinosaurs and animals to carry out different tasks and to substitute them for technology.
Over to you:
What every day objects could be used in a completely different way? Have a quick look around wherever you are sitting at this moment, does anything come to mind?
You could also have fun trying to think up Flintstone-esque alternatives for modern technology.
Everyday situations
Many cartoons are most effective when they are making some sort of commentary about the everyday world around us. This is the world that we are most familiar and comfortable with, and also usually the world that we are amused or annoyed by.
By thinking more about situation we routinely encounter, we can come up with new ideas for cartoons.
Try putting a twist on a situation. So for example, if washing the dishes is a drag, then how could you think of a more creative way to do so?
Over to you:
Choose an activity that you do every day. Here are a few suggestions:
walking the dog
making coffee
ironing clothes
walking to the train station
Are there any twists you could put on the situation?
Contrast
Creating a strong contrast between the characters and the background or other elements in the picture can have a powerful impact.
The preceding picture was another cartoon from a ‘word-of-the-day’ challenge. As the word was ‘visible’ I was playing around with idea of the ships being visible to the aircraft, and also the aircraft itself being highly visible due to it’s bright colours. The contrast between the drab colours of the sea and the brightness of the airplane immediately catches the eye.
For this one I wanted to set the geese, or one of them at least, against the black of the domino.
Over to you:
Look over some of your previous cartoons. Would a bigger contrast between any of the elements improve the cartoon? If you work digitally, then this is easy to play around with.
Ideas from a hat
Ideas from a hat is an activity that gets you into the habit of trying to think up some random ideas for different situations.
This was originally an idea to help people come up with on the spot jokes for improvisational comedy workshops.
Tear up a bunch of small pieces of paper, or alternately I’m sure there’s some sort of app that will be able to provide you with random ideas. Write a different prompt word on each piece of paper. Now all you need is a hat or other container
The examples in this section are all from a cartooning forum that I’m a member of. For several months now we have been participating in a word of the day challenge, all of the words featured being adjectives.
For your own prompts you could try adjectives, or you could common household items, different animals etc. Everyday, draw out a different piece of paper and try to think up an Idea fo a cartoon based on the prompt.
Over to you:
Grab a hat….and some pieces of paper….jot down a word or phrase on each one…and away you go!
Thanks for reading!
I hope that these techniques have been useful for you. Have fun with your cartooning!