on May 17th, 2006John Kricfalusi Wants To Teach You To Cartoon
John K. the creator of Ren and Stimpy wants to teach young artists how to cartoon right, and he’s giving away the lessons for free on his blog.
John has perceived rightly that much of the groundwork of great animation that was laid during the golden era of animation (1928-1960) has been lost. Most notable of these is drawing characters with true 3-dimensional form and volume. This is absolutely true. While I consider the dialog and story of today’s cartoons to be more sophisticated (in some ways) than that of the Golden Age cartoons you have to admit that the art is really ugly.
Animation studios have substituted flat characters and environments for real living breathing characters and environments and called it “beautiful ‘design’” or a “new style.” However, labeling something “style” doesn’t un-uglify it.
Just as renaissance painters laid the groundwork for creating realistic art by portraying 3-d in a 2-d environment using techniques like foreshortening, perspective, chiaroscuro etc… So did early animators build on those rules and create their own rules for creating 3-d-esque motion films using a 2-d media.
And it all started with a certain approach to drawing the characters.
John K. is seemingly one of the last animators that works consistently in that fully rounded volumetric style of animation which is why his cartoons are so great compared to his contemporaries, and he wants to teach you the rules of that animation.
Working from the text of his favorite animation book, Preston Blair’s Animation John is going to expound on the principles and teach you how to use them.
Here are the relevant links: