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PRINCIPLES OF CARTOONING 2008/09 - CID 2030 C
Tom Hart
hutchowen@gmail.com
http://www.tomhart.net//teaching/sva/
Wednesdays, 12:00 noon ; 2:50 pm
Room 407A, East 21st Street Building

CLICK HERE TO SKIP TO SEMESTER 2

WHO I AM (1MB in PDF form)

e-mail me : hutchowen@gmail.com

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course description
semester 1
semester 2
rules/ grading and glossary

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

This class will look at cartooning as a powerful medium for all kinds of storytelling and idea exploration, from creative self-discovery and drama to social commentary and personal expression. Beginning with a focus on the basics and mechanics of panel, page and scene composition, we'll emphasize keeping sketchbooks, organized notes, stories and studies as the basis for generating work that will be refined later. Students will learn the basic tools of visual and narrative arts, including juxtaposition of images, narrative transitions, light and dark, clarity, rhythm and the psychology of drawn images and cartoons. A wide variety of cartooning and sequential art will be examined and studied.

Required Reading:

• McCloud, Scott; Understanding Comics
• Suggested Readings:
• Mamet, David; On Directing Film
• Eisner, Will; Comics and Sequential Art
• Janson, Klaus: The DC Guide to Pencilling Comics

Semester 1

• Weeks 1-5 ; Icons, closure, camera distance, drawing
• Weeks 6-10 ; Inking demonstrations. First inked projects, storytelling, page design, etc.
• Weeks 11-15 ; Composition, characters, stories. First semester final project.

Semester 2

• Week 16-20; Further exploration of idea generation,
• Week 21-30 - Begin final large scale project. Work

Week 1 - Sept 3

What we did: Intro exercise (silent introduction comic). Looked at silent comics and diary strips. Looked at all the first week stuff. Did a diary exercise.

Homework:

PART 1

6 (SIX) 4-6 panel strips/stories in your sketchbook.

• •  AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL – Treat it like a diary; tell something that happened during the day. Do one a day. (You don't have to draw yourself like how you really look!)
• •  Use a full page for each one.
• •  Pencil only is fine.
• Three of them   must be:
• •  SILENT! (NO WORDS!)

COPY 2 of THE 4 attached drawings from Hank Ketcham (Dennis the Menace.)

Why Dennis the Menace?

Things to look for:

•  Hank Ketcham's amazing sense of WEIGHT . Watch how SOLID the characters look and feel.

•  Great line and efficiency of line. Watch the variation in the line.

•  Great sense of real depth . Watch the use of the various PLANES (foreground, middleground, background.)

•  Great use of evoking what's outside the PICTURE PLANE.

•  Pencil only is fine.

PART 3

• QUALITY OF WORK
  
• QUALITY OF EFFORT
  
• PARTICIPATION IN CLASS
  
• IMPROVEMENT AND UNDERSTANDING

If you don't finish your assignments, you damage your grade and bring the class down. Please finish your work.
HOWEVER, SHOWING UP FOR CLASS WITH NO WORK IS BETTER THAN SKIPPING CLASS BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T FINISH YOUR HOMEWORK. SHOW UP FOR CLASS!!!!!!!!!!

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT!

1. 4 Absences is a failure. Exceptions due to lost limbs, trauma only.
   
2. 3 absences is a grade lower.
   
3. No parts of Epic stories, unless it is a self contained whole unit in itself. TO GET TO THE EPIC, YOU MUST CONCENTRATE ON THE MOMENT. THIS IS AN AXIOM OF REAL LIFE, NOT JUST THIRD YEAR CARTOONING.
   

GLOSSARY

SYNOPSIS ; Refers to paragraph or two of text that describes the action to be depicted on the page. A reader should not need a synopsis to understand what is going on in your pages however.

THUMBNAILS ; This refers to initial drawings of complete pages in reduced format, to think through ideas of how to compose a page and tell a story. Do thumbnails for this class in your sketchbook or on 8 1/2 x 11 paper.

ROUGHS ; Refers to larger sketched versions of page before penciling. Still searching for solutions and storytelling ideas/composition ideas, etc. Some people use "thumbnails" and "roughs" interchangeably. Roughs for this class are on 8 1/2 x 11 paper. (You can rough on your final boards if you like, though I don't recommend it.)

LOOSE PENCILS- Somewhere in between roughs and tight pencils (see below.)

TIGHT PENCILS- Refers to full-size, on Bristol board penciled version of your page.

INKS ; Refers to finished work, with lettering, of above page.

STORY ; Usually refers to whatever your final work is. I prefer "PIECE" to describe the work you hand in. "Story" to me, describes the underlying narrative "arc" that is the raw material you are working with in your piece.

For instance, you may be telling the story of a man's life, birth to death, but your piece is only 10 panels long. Thus you make lots of choices in how to work with your "story", having created a piece of work from it.

SOME APHORISMS TO KEEP IN MIND:

• FINISHING IS BETTER THAN ABORTING A LESS THAN PERFECT PROJECT
  • You always learn more by completing a project, rather than failing to finish something because it is less than perfect.
    
• DON'T LET THE PERFECT GET IN THE WAY OF THE GOOD.
  • If you get caught up on making something perfect, you may fail to realize it is working well enough.
• STRIVE FOR EXCELLENCE ANYWAY
  • Strive for perfect, settle for good, and move on.
• LEARN TO DRAW BY DRAWING.
  • Bernie Wrightson, who created Swamp Thing used to say that you could become a good artist only after you've drawn 1000 pages (or a stack of pages as tall as you- I forget which.)
    
• COPYING OTHER DRAWINGS IN YOUR SKETCHBOOK OR IN YOUR PRACTICING TIME IS GOOD. COPYING TECHNIQUES ON YOUR FINAL PAGES IS ESSENTIAL.
  • Learn to LOOK at professional artwork for techniques, solutions, thoughts and decisions beneath the surface. Copying other work will help do this. You can then implement similar solutions or thinking in your own work later. Style emerges when you make informed decisions.
    
• CONCENTRATE ON THE MOMENT, AND THE EPIC WILL UNFOLD.
  • I am only interested in your epic story if the individual passages are good and complete. This is true of any reader. No unfinished sections of large stories will be allowed. You will be forced to find a way to complete the story (this can always be done, by thinking of story in new ways.)

Some Resources:

Archive of many amazing stories by amazing artists HERE
including: Jack Kirby | Harvey Kurtzman | Jaime Hernandez | Samm Schwartz | Peter Arno and more

Scott McCloud UNDERSTANDING COMICS Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 6

Some Diary Comics

Some Biography Comics

Some Examples of Location, Place and Environments

Some recommended books

• 9 part interview with Tom Hart here on You Tube

Andy Bugpowder's Early Comics Archive

Making your own comics

Printers and printing your own comics

Some pics by Eduard Muybridge here

Tom's 2004 tutorial from notion, inspiration and theft to idea development to final inks and scan. (7 MB PDF)

Tons of links on my webcomics class link here

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