Been feeling a little stuck, so tried some exercises in a random Kindle Unlimited book on cartooning. It was short and not that great, but I did pick up the pencil, so I decided to move on to one of the more highly recommended books.
Tried Modern Cartooning by Christopher Hart, but I found it entirely underwhelming. The whole book suffers from Smurfette-syndrome. There are multiple body-types of which female is a single variant, and all the female characters (save the “low-rent Trailer Mom”) are described as “pretty”, “feminine”, “attractive”, “cute”, or my personal cringe-fest “even harmlessly seductive.” WTF does that even mean and why would you say it about a child character.
He does spend more time drawing female characters than many cartooning books, but they are all variations on the same cookie cutter theme, which he tries to pass off as a feature.
Change her clothing, hair, and accessories, and you’ve practically created a new character.
Christopher Hart, Modern Cartooning
Pretty sure the Mattel marketing department had the same conversation in ’63, before they released Midge.
It’s an all too typical end result – here’s how to draw men doing stuff and women looking pretty. Boys being mischievous or funny or villainous, and girls being cute. Nerdy guy, muscle head, husky dude, stylish chic with impossibly tiny waist.
By Hart’s rules, Velma would never exist, and that is not a world I care to cartoon in, so I ditched his book after the third chapter and practiced my Hanna-Barbera’s instead. I may get back to it some point, but I doubt it.
While it was a good kick to get the sketchbook out, it mostly made me appreciate how much better 3d total Publishing’s Fundamentals of Character Design is. I put it down because it felt too advanced, but I’d rather struggle with something that includes theory and actual character diversity than create clones of Hart’s style while skimming past the unending stream of juvenile humor.
