John K's drawing school

John Kricfalusi, creator of Ren and Stimpy and one of the world's best animators, has been using Preston Blair's animation book as a textbook to teach people the art of cartooning online. (You can download the pages for each lesson from the Animation Art Archive.)

If you are interested in learning cartooning, this is the opportunity of a lifetime.

Here's a method to easily check your copies. Remember this word: PROPORTION

Part of what makes a character look like who it is, is its proportions. MANY characters can have the same construction, but they have different proportions-like Elmer Fudd and Coal Black and Peter Pan and Pinnochio-all those folks are the exact same construction! -THEY ARE MADE UP OF THE SAME TYPES OF FORMS-A BIG ROUND CRANIUM AND A SMALL BABY JAW.

1) Bring your drawings into Photoshop.

2) Bring Preston's drawings that you copied into the same Photoshop file.

3) Re-size the Preston drawings to match the size of yours.

4) Put the drawings next to each other.

5) Make notes of how your drawing differs from Preston's

6) Make a copy of the Preston drawing and lay it on top of yours on a layer

7) Make the layer transparent so you can see through it to yours.

8) Make more notes on where yours differs from Preston's.

9) Redraw your copy, this time trying to fix the mistakes you found.

This fella's copy is pretty good, so there isn't a lot to correct. Some other artists are less accurate.