Cartooning - How I Draw My Cartoons
By Ron Coleman
I'm frequently asked how I draw the cartoons that appear on my websites; that is, the techniques I use.
I've decided to address that in this article.
When you read this you will probably be thinking, "This guy is nuts! That's too much work!" And you're
probably right. What I do is pretty time-consuming, but it gives me the results I want.
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I usually start by mentally breaking down the drawing I need. Frequently your gag idea calls on you to
draw something you've never drawn before, and you need to have an accurate idea of how it looks. For
example in the cartoon above I needed an electric car. Since I didn't know what an electric car looks like
exactly, I had to do some research. I looked on the internet for photos of electric cars. Using those
photos as reference I was able to come up with a cartoon drawing of an electric car.
Next I sit down at my drawing board which is an animation light table. I do a pencil rough of the cartoon
which actually goes into quite a bit of detail. Then I follow one of two procedures, depending on how
much work I want to put into the cartoon.
If I am pressed for time or the drawing is extremely complicated I may just ink it on paper. I use a felt
tip pen and my favorite is the Micron 08, which is manufactured by Sakura. It doesn't smear like some felt
tip pens and it comes in different nib sizes. Size 08 is the largest and gives me a good thick line. In
inking I put a clean sheet of typing paper over the top of my pencil rough and using the lightboard, I trace
it onto the page. Then I scan the drawing into
Adobe Photoshop.
Photoshop is an expensive program but a
very good one for cartoonists to own. I scan the drawing at 300 dpi, which is a suitable resolution for
print work. Invariably when I scan the drawing picks up minute pieces of dust which I need to remove from
the drawing. By blowing up the view to about 200 percent I can easily see these spots and delete them from
the drawing by selecting them and deleting. Once the drawing has been cleaned up I will color it. In another
article I will give more details about how I color using Photoshop. I save the drawing as a jpeg file at
300 dpi and it is ready to submit. If I want to use the drawing on the internet I make a copy of it and
reduce the file size to 72 dpi. The internet needs the lower resolution because of the memory the graphic
uses.
One problem I have with Photoshop is it tends to make a muddier drawing and the pen lines are not as clean.
Photoshop is a rastar imaging program which works with a series of tiny pixels to form images. For a crisper
image one wants to work with a vector imaging program such as Adobe Illustrator or Macromedia Flash. I never
could master Illustrator, so my preference is Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash). Flash is also an
expensive program, and was actually designed for animation, but it is also an excellent program to use
for drawing. You can't scan into Flash, so here is the process I use if I want a really clean drawing
and am willing to spend more time to produce it:
Instead of inking my pencil rough, I skip that step and scan my rough into
Adobe Photoshop.
Again I usually
scan at 300 dpi. I save the file as a jpeg file. Then I open up
Flash.
I import my rough into
Flash and adjust the page size to fit the drawing. The next step is to trace the drawing, which is the
equivalent to inking it. Sometimes I use the pencil tool and other times I use the brush tool.
For straight
lines, or neatly curved lines I use the line tool and then bend the lines by dragging on the center
point.
I also use Flash tools for creating square boxes or round circles when needed. Through practice I've become
quite adept at drawing with a mouse (takes a lot of practice). It helps to blow the picture up
large in your
view window and work on small sections at a time. Recently I invested in a
Wacom graphic tablet
which makes
the job a little easier but it also takes practice to master that program.
With Flash you can work in layers, drawing one element at a time and shifting them as needed.
When I'm done
I delete the layer containing the rough drawing, and save the balance. I export the image I have created
as a jpeg file at 300 dpi. Next I will open up that file in Adobe Photoshop and color it.
That's the process I use. I add captions and other lettering such as signs using cartoon-style fonts
which you can download from the internet. The drawing on this page was done using a combination of Adobe
Photoshop and Flash. One other thing I suggest: I back up all of my drawings by burning copies on CD's.
That way you won't lose them if your computer crashes. It also makes them easier to file and to find.
The programs mentioned in this article, Adobe Photoshop and Flash, as well as the Wacom graphic tablets
can be purchased at the following websites:
Comp-U-Plus
CompUSA.com
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Websites By Ron Coleman:
*Colemantoons
*Belvedere Cartoons
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