Bruce Von Stiers

Do you want to draw funny faces? Or perhaps, you have an inkling to draw one of the characters from the Dragon Ball Z anime series. If you want to do these things but lack some instruction on how to do them, then have I got a book for you. It was written by Arnold Wagner and Shannon Turlington. The title of the book is The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Cartooning. It was published by Alpha Books.

The book has 254 pages, 6 parts and 28 chapters. It has a foreword from the creator of the Baby Blues comic strip and an Introduction about how the book is laid out and the extra tip text boxes strewn around.

Each chapter is bracketed with items that will be covered and what was learned. In the listing for chapter 2 you find that it covers humor through the ages. The ending segment of each chapter is called The Least You Need to Know. If the case of chapter 2, one of these Least things is that “the practice of drawing funny pictures that tell a story” is older than dirt.

The first part of the book is called The First Frame. Here you will find all of the background information on drawing from its humble beginnings to where it is now. We learn the difference between a caricature artist and a cartoonist. Chapter 1 even supplies a section called “But Is It Art” that argues whether or not cartooning is a legitimate art form. The authors make sure we know about the history of the humor magazine and how comic strips in newspapers got started. And chapter 4 shows where the future of cartooning is heading, at least in the opinions of the authors.

Chapter 5 is Tools of the Trade. Here you will learn what types of pens should be used for drawing cartoons. You will also learn why rulers and T-Squares are important tools to have around. Chapter 6 tells you about some of the inks that are used in cartooning like Iron and Nutgall Ink.

The 7th chapter details the materials and structure of your studio, should you decide that one is necessary. According to the authors, a studio is not essential to the cartooning process. They tell a story of a well known cartoonist who used a night stand and a drawing board in his bedroom to create his masterpieces.

In Chapter 8, the authors will have you make some of the basic shapes like cylinders and rectangles to get into the mode for drawing. With the 9th chapter you will learn about keeping your characters in the proper perspective, size wise. You learn about proportions in hands, feet and other body parts when you draw. Unless there is an exaggeration, the proportions need to be just as if the characters were real beings.

Moving on to Chapter 11 (no, not bankruptcy) the authors show how to measure perspective on a drawing and have a cartoon element with two-point perspective. A building in shadow is a good example of a two point perspective.

Later chapters cover things like editorial cartooning and putting cartoons in a strip. There is a chapter on comic books and animation. A chapter my son really liked was on Manga, the Japanese style of cartooning. You will learn about how important the story is in a cartoon and how character development can go a long way towards keeping an audience. The authors even delve into some of the legalize like copyrighting a cartoon and what things like “work for hire” means.

Throughout the book there are cartoons and illustrations that are examples of the information the authors are trying to convey. Some are pretty funny. The one in The Elements of Style chapter that has a male cat in a suit and a female mouse in a conversation at a party.

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Cartooning gives you a lot of the basic information about how to draw cartoons. It is not an art instruction book, nor was it meant to be. It covers some of things that a person needs to know and do when trying to become a cartoonist.

Look for this title at your favorite bookstore. It has a list price of $ 18.95 U.S. You might also want to check out the Complete Idiots web site at www.idiotsguides.com.