cartooning

“What is “Emanta”? And were you cursing?!” No, those are Grawlixes, and think emoticons. Emanata and Grawlixes are symbolic icons. They are just two names for a few examples, of a wide array of symbolic little cartoon elements and various other parts of comics, described thoroughly in the satirical but also utterly […]

Emanata & !#@?$%!

I’ve posted about the writing side of inventing characters, with comics of course the visuals are just as important, and by extension, often the world you set around them. If your comics take place in the now, then you don’t have to think as hard about it, just pick locations around you. […]

Character and Design

For the first few weeks as we study the structure and formalism of Sequential art, we’re also going to start keeping diary comics. And to keep focused on short narratives, while also forcing students to think about how to express their ideas in a limited format. There’s a strong tradition […]

Haiku, Senryū & Tanka

What defines Cartooning as a medium is ironically often not really well-defined, we just associate it with something emblematic of idea in our head and take it for granted. It’s drawing of course, but a particular kind! How in particular? What makes one drawing a cartoon while another is called illustrative […]

What is Cartooning

Cartooning and caricature is the use of simplified forms and lines to represent people, animals and things. Modern cartooning is diverse, I see it as having three major families or styles, falling along a spectrum from most abstracted to most representational, and on to idealized. All popular styles will fall somewhere along this […]

Noodle Arms to Bigfoot: A Cartoon family

Collaboration has been a central part of sequential art, comics & cartoons, since their reinvention as a mass Pop media during the heyday of the American Newspaper. As soon as Comics became a central feature of any self-respecting newspaper artists were hired in bulk to work together in some way or another […]

Comix Jams!