Cover Image: The Little Book of Cartooning & Illustration

The Little Book of Cartooning & Illustration

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Member Reviews

This is a book I could only review in ebook format whereas the book is clearly designed as a print book, having prepared pages for you to practice the very lessons which are taught here. nut 'lesson' makes it sound much more formal than it really is, and much less fun!

The book begins with some simple rules for drawing and then tells you how and when to break them! Can't argue with that! The first topic is heads and faces, and all that go with them: eyes, ears, noses, expressions. After this it moves on to drawing hands and feet and then whole bodies, and adding color. It goes on to discuss animals and inanimate objects, scenes and gags, and caricatures; in short, everything you'll need to get started - assuming you're willing to take the bit between your teeth, say 'the heck with detractors', and actually get started creating your own images!

The written advice is short, simple, and broken into easy-to-follow steps, and the steps are accompanied by drawings illustrating how the drawing will progress. I found this book illuminating and instructive, and I commend it as a worthy read for anyone interested in cartooning or art in general for that matter.

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Hmm...this is a book I can see buying for someone young that wants to start cartooning although it doesn’t really say how to make a cartoon strip it deals more with the basics with some step by step illustrations and practice pages. Maybe a beginner book for cartoonist wannabes.

Thank you to Quarto Publishing, Walter Foster and NetGalley – This is my honest review.

3-4 Stars

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A decent resource for starting out in cartooning. My 8yo daughter looked through it, but she hasn't had time to delve into yet. It'd probably be better as a print book, the pdf was hard to navigate.

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I was a little disappointed with the first 1/3 or so of the book. There was a lot of what I consider to be filler in instructional art book. Pages and pages or try your own here (useless in digital copies) and here’s samples of what we did. Useful for those who already draw in that style, not so useful if you need tips to get you to that level of an artist. I was about to put it down but I stuck with it and oh hello, pretty decent instructional pages. You’ll even learn to draw Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga. It’s not my favorite art book ever, but it is a pretty decent book for those who already draw at a basic level and want tips for mastering a cartoon’y style.

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The Little Book Cartooning & Illustration is a fun, easy to read and understand book. I read it and found a lot of useful techniques and advice. We enjoyed drawing little silly things too!
Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

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I voluntarily read and reviewed a copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Thanks to the author for providing a copy of this book via Netgalley

Doodling, drawing, sketching... My daughter likes everything about it. But with this book and some techniques i was surprised how easy you can do it! I’m not a gifted person, i cant put any good straight line, but i was pleasantly surprised i could doodle something cute also!
There are some practice sheets in this book! Everything looks very easy!

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This brief booklet is for novice artists and teaches by examples the basic of cartooning and illustration.

One star is off because it should be a little less "brief", anyway the book is worth its price.

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This is a great book for budding artists who want to have a go at cartooning. There is enough in there for a beginner to have a go. The focus is on expressions and people, and the style reminds of the old American cartoons. There is plenty of places and prompts to get you started and for you to try some pictures yourself. A good book for getting started, the instructions are easy to follow and the explanations are easily understood. Thanks

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If you knew nothing about drawing and wants to learn on how to, The Little Book of Cartooning is a good reading material to check out. Even though the content only tackles the basics, beginners could still easily grasped the lessons listed in this book. However, I just find that the lessons were explained a bit hastily and rather than having blank pages for the practice areas, there should have been more examples or guidelines.

Furthermore, there are other similar books that I was able to check out in the past and although this is not at par with those, this is still a good book to peruse by those who want to quickly learn about the fundamental techniques. Not the best reference but a novice could still learn something from it.

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I thought the book was decent,, with some good advice for artists trying to get started with the drawing aspect of cartooning. It wasn't the best experience as an ebook, but that's expected. I was hoping for a bit more advice about composition and coming up with ideas, but this just wasn't that kind of book. I still think it would be useful to some people, it just wasn't for me.

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This book shows aspiring cartoonists how to build characters by using the building blocks of facial expression, poses, etc., in a stepwise manner and with many examples. Even though the instructions start at a very basic level, and build from there, a reader without some basic drawing proficiency will probably quickly be left behind. It's great to see all the steps, but if you have trouble executing them, they won't help you. For an audience with sufficient skills, this book looks like it would be a useful introduction to conveying expression in cartoon characters. For the rest of us, it's more of a spectator sport.

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I’m, at best, passable with a pencil, but I would like to get better. As such, I’m always on the look out for instructional material which can help me improve. Thanks to NetGalley I got to read The Little Book of Cartooning & Illustration which looked very interesting.

The Little Book of Cartooning & Illustration bills itself as a collection of tips and techniques for drawing characters and expressions in a traditional cartoon/animation style. It definitely looks stylistically traditional to me, a novice and know-nothing.

The book begins with a brief overview of physical tools and materials, and an even briefer aside about digital ones, before getting straight to business. As a beginner I would have liked a little more handholding, but after a very short intro to the basics of drawing a human head, a page with a template follows for your own attempt.

Assuming you now have assimilated the rules, the book delves into how to break them for conveying emotion, character or motion cartoonishly. Quickly moving through drawing heads, body parts, emotions, and bodies, and adding colour, part 1 ends with a series of full step-by-step character drawings.

Part 2 concerns itself with animals and inanimate objects, and driving home the point that in cartooning, less really can be more. Part 3 spends about 8 pages on two step-by-step walkthroughs illustrating scenes and gags, respectively. Part 4 consists entirely of two step-by-step caricatures, spending about 5 pages per character.

I’m so happy I got to read this book, but ultimately it isn’t for me. I’m not interested in the style taught in this book, and I also found it a little intimidating as someone who isn’t proficient enough with a pencil to be able to simply draw a character. I need more info on the basics of how to draw characters, not just how to change the style or expressions of them.

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