Maury Aaseng, Clay Butler
With this guide, dozens of tips from the pros will help you find the materials and tools you need to develop your own unique style. A combination of creative step-by-step projects and open practice areas offer encouragement and invite participation for those artists who want to put their newfound skills to immediate use.
You’ll learn all the cartooning and animation tricks of the trade, including:
- The squash and stretch principle
- Exaggerating details
- Rendering faces and expressions
- Anthropomorphizing inanimate objects
- Creating original characters
- Mastering body shapes and movement
- Writing gags and jokes
The Little Book of …series focuses on delivering fun, approachable, and interesting art instruction in a fresh, portable format. With its contemporary design, open practice pages, creative exercises, and prompts that encourage interactivity, beginning artists learn the fundamentals of their craft, often with immediate results.
Also available from the series:The Little Book of Sketching, The Little Book of Lettering & Word Design, The Little Book of Manga Drawing, The Little Book of Rock Painting, and The Little Book of Drawing Dragons & Fantasy Characters.
Maury Aaseng has always been excited about drawing and art. After graduating with a BFA in graphic design from the University of Minnesota—Duluth, Maury began an illustration career, and his freelance work has spanned a variety of subject matter and illustration styles, including cartooning, medical illustration, natural sciences, patient education, and watercolor. An avid nature enthusiast, Maury lives in northern Minnesota with his wife and two children. Visit www.mauryillustrates.com and maurymedicalart.com.
Clay Butler is the creator of the weekly alternative political comic strip Sidewalk Bubblegum, co-founder of Claytowne Productions documentary video production company and creator of the online PC Technology humor magazine Pctyrant (an oldie but a goodie), A darn good illustrator, cartoonist, graphic designer, web designer, concert photographer and writer, Clay has been working professionally since 1984.
Jim Campbell is a professional comic-book letterer, one-time writer (perhaps again in the future) and occasional artist—although his enthusiasm rather outstrips his actual ability. He knows more about print production than mortal man was meant to know and has scanned more images than you’ve had hot dinners. Unless you’re 90 years old.
A native of the United Kingdom, cartoonist Alex Hallat has never had any art training—just a limited attention span, a love of comics, and a tendency to doodle in lectures at college. She started cartooning full-time in 1999 and was immediately hired as the cartoonist for Brighton’s daily newspaper. In 2003, Alex immigrated to New Zealand but currently lives in the leafy bayside suburb of Elwood, Melbourne in Australia. She has clients in the UK, New Zealand, and Australia and works with the American syndicate King Features, who distributes her comic strip, Arctic Circle.
