You probably grew up watching cartoons on Saturday mornings while shoveling sugary cereal into your mouth. The first section of the paper you ever learned to read was probably filled with Calvin and Hobbes, The Far Side and Family Circus. Cartoons have left an undeniably joyous impression on many people. This inspires some to learn to create their own cartoons so that they can share this joy with others. Cartoons are wonderful because they can take place in any setting and be as complex or simple, as the artist prefers.
Creating the Frame for the Character
The first thing that any cartoonist needs to do is to create a basic shape for the character they are bringing to life. Use simple shapes to create a frame for the character. Most cartoon characters have round heads and fairly normal bodies, however you can create a character with a triangle, square, or even an octagon as a head.
Draw the basic shape for the head first. Attach the neck with a vertical line below the head. Create the body with an oval shape. Add eyes with small ovals, a nose with a curved or slightly triangular line and a mouth with a curved line below the nose. Draw eyebrows with curved lines above the eyes. Add ears with curved "C" shapes to the side of the head.
Coloring the Character
A colored cartoon is far more visually interesting to look at than a basic black and white picture. There are a variety of ways to color your cartoons. One of the easiest is to use art markers. If you use art markers color the medium range colors first. This is because you can only add darker colors on top of marker. Add shadows using darker versions of your medium range colors. Place shadows in areas where light is not shining such as underneath the chin, just below the nose and just below the bangs. Let your markers dry and add highlights with colored pencil. Use lighter versions of your medium range colors to create highlights. Only place highlights on the parts of your character that are exposed to the most light. This is usually the top of the head, tips of the nose and ears and the shoulders.
Creating Expressions
Expressions are essential to creating a compelling cartoon character. A great exercise in creating expressions is to trace your character so that you have three versions of your character on a page. Erase around the eyes, nose and mouth of the character. You can create an angry expression by squinting the eyes, pulling the eyebrows down and turning the mouth into a frown. Heighten this effect by making the third drawing an extreme example of the emotion you are drawing. Add red to the nose and cheeks to show the character flushed with anger. A happy character can be done in the opposite way. Open the eyes, turn up the eyebrows and pull the mouth up on each side into a smile.
