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[Unosuke]

So I'd like to try my hand at being a cartoonist, but I can barely if at all) draw. Any advise as to how I should go about learning?

[jarska]

I dunno, but I've been told, that you draw, draw, draw, and then draw some more, untill you don't suck anymore. (Not you you, but you, in general sense.) Proper tools help, too.

[tomselleck69]

-look into learning about anatomy, perspective, foreshortening, light and shadow. there are books you can buy! stuff by andrew loomis is a good place to start, if a little intimidating. avoid "learn how to draw superheroes in 5 easy steps" or "how to be a professional super kawaii manga-ka even though you are amerika-jin" - type things.

-draw! ALOT! at LEAST once a day. practice is essential.

-go somewhere and draw your surroundings. people, places, things, whatever.

-avoid anime like the plague. it may be tempting, but it's an awful, terrible place to start if you're legitimately interested in learning how to draw.

-most importantly: enjoy yourself. or at least tell yourself you're having fun.

[Lines]

Find what you like, such as a certain artist or style, and study the hell out of it. I personally do not recommend tracing, but measure it out, say into square centimeters and then try to copy it as closely as you can. (As in make a grid over an image and then make a grid on the paper you're going to draw on and go square by square.) And yes, draw draw draw draw draw. If you want to do it, practice and do it a lot. Make one drawing a day. Once you get your technique down and familiarity with different media, then pick what you like and start developing your own style.

Also, books are a great resource, even if it's just a book of a particular artist you admire. Read them! They are your friends!

Good luck!

[magnanimusman]

get your butt to a place where many people pass fairly quickly.  Buy a #2 pencil and a book without lines and a pencil sharpener and a nice Mars-Stadtler Eraser.  Then Spend as long as you possibly can in that busy place trying to capture the essence of the individuals passing by as opposed to the details.  Just keep doing this.  Whenever your just hanging out with friends just draw them.  don't ask them if you can just keep doing it.

[NealsonLewison]

just draw... alot.... and keep drawing.. if you stop, your skills will fade away... even doodling when taking notes, or sitting in a waiting room or anything, it helps alot

[rasufelle]

I don't wanna hijack the thread, but I have a question, plus some info for the poster:

When I was learning to draw people, I found a site.  Now, this site, www.bakeneko.com, is mostly abandoned now, but it has some very good tutorials on getting general body forms down- even if you don't want to draw in the anime style like the tutorials are designed for, they are good generalized proportions in most cases, and simplify the body's muscle mass allowing you to figure out positioning easily.  Right now, I'm studying Hogarth's Dynamic Anatomy to help me improve on muscle mass and structure, and highly recommend it.

Now, for my question.  I prefer to draw by hand, and scan images into my computer to modify for the comics I'm preparing to use.  However, here's my problem: I can't afford a Wacom tablet to use for 'retouching' my artwork, or anything like that, but I want to be able to fix things with my compy without doing it pixel by pixel with my mouse.  Are there any quick tips for essentially removing the minor variations from my work without all the hassle?  I mean, I've tried modifying the gamma, reversing colors, contrast, everything to try and make the images straight black and white but there's still the little contrasts that make color fills almost impossible and jaggies a constant worry from the over-pixelated images of my artwork.

[tomselleck69]

How many dpi are you scanning with?

I scan my lineart at 300 dpi, in greyscale mode and adjust it in photoshop with levels (Apple+L or Ctrl+L.) Find the right balance and levels gets rid of everything unwanted (aside from seriously grievous inking errors, but attending to those with the brush tool is no hassle.)

The key is to work very large. 300 has been fine for what I'm doing, but lots of people scan at 600 and 1200 dpi. Using levels will still leave the small cushion of grey pixels on the edges of your lines that keeps them from looking blocky, but once you reduce the image to a smaller, final, easily viewable size, the color fills should appear to touch the lines uninterrupted.

I once read a tutorial about a process where you select the lines themselves, make a new layer and just fill in the selection with black, giving you uniform black and white. Again the key here is to work big. I will look for the tutorial, although I fear it may be gone.



ALSO on the off chance you are already doing all of this stuff and still coming up short, then I am sorry for wasting your time. I do not know that much about photoshop and make no effort to hide the fact.

[rasufelle]

Does this work with Gimp as well?  That could be the answer to my problems- I'm not that good with the editors to begin with, so a tutorial would be helpful.  Thanks!

[jarska]

Oh, one can find some pretty nice tutorials from Deviantart. Just search for "tutorials".  (No idea why I put that afro there.)

[rasufelle]

You don't need a reason: the afro smiley is awesome.

[tomselleck69]

I do not know much about the gimp, although i think you should be able to adjust the dpi with whatever application that comes up when you fire up the scanner.