So I got a pretty late start -- I had been trying to make it as a comic book artist for a few years but not making any real mo..

Not making any real money. I was making indy comics, and I was fortunate enought to get spotted by Ren and Stimpy director Bill..

Bill Wray. He liked my comics and asked me if I ever thought about going into storyboarding! The rest is history ^_^

I didn't want to go to college to get an art degree...I just wanted to make comics. Then I found out about the Joe Kubert School

I attended Joe Kubert school from 1983-1985. When I finished there I tried to get a job as a storyboard artist, ...

but I was so inexperienced that they didnt think much of my portfolio. Unfortunately I got discouraged and gave up temporarily ..

..from 1985-1988. In 1988 I created a bunch of comic book pages and went to the San Diego con looking for work...

I got my first gig there drawing California Raisins comic books!

I continued making comics for small publishers and self-published stuff until I met Bill Wray in 94

Since I've been in animation , I have still been able to make comics for Nickelodeon magazine. Until it shut down this month

---comics and animation, but I never considered myself to be a character designer, per se.

I created that book as a general guide to cartooning and drawing , but when it was done, ---

---the publisher thought it should be called "Character Design." When I look back at the material, I have to agree that the tit..

..le is appropriate. It's really all the basic principles I've been taught by various mantors over the years.

I am especially influenced by the simplicity of the classic Hanna Barbera characters.

For the SpongeBob movie, I created the design for Princess Mindy...she's smart and pure of heart, so---

---so I gave her glasses and freckles and a little heart on her shirt!

Another charater I worked on qwas Sandy the Squirrel. I didn't design her from the start, but I started drawing her uniform wit..

---with an acorn patch instead of the season one design of just three dots.

I try to feel out who the character IS and doodle freely to exoplore where that will go.

One of the MOST important things when designing characters is to try at least three completely different approaches. ---

---Dont just stop at the first attempt! Keep pushhing at it until you get something that is not only good, but something that s..

---something that surprises you!

I have to beg the designers to give at least three...for the reasons I just mentioned. There is no studio standard...

the number of design roughs required is usually up to the director.

..versions... THEN I like to scan the pencil roughs and tweak the sizes and shapes in Photoshop. Then I will submit roughs for ..

..approval. When I clean up a drawing, I always try to keep the originl spontenaiety of the line. That's what's nice about inki..

..inking digitally...you can be freer with the inking because you know you can always hit UNDO

After the cleanup is done, there will often be many small rounds of adjustments. But it's important to know when to stop fiddli..

It's important to know when to stop fiddling with it!

I have a whole series of videos showing my inking process with Illustrator at my Cartoonsnap blog. www.cartoonsnap.com

I don't think any cartoonist needs to learn how to use a crowquill pen or a sable brush. Markers and brush pens work great.

But using a sable brush to ink comics taught me a lot about using Illustrator's freehand brush tool

BTW, those inking tutes are at http://bit.ly/11iLBV

..character. It's like reverse engineering a master cartoonist

John K has lots of great things to say on his blog about studying construction. That's how I learned when I started on Ren and ..

..Stimpy. When I started there, they just wanted me to spend the first few weeks of employment ---

---studying the way the characters were drawn. I filled up countless stack of paper getting to know those characters and princi..

...characters and principles.

Number one with a bullet is that the STORY must be the main thing in every panel and every drawing...

Too often, an artist will lose track of the overall story and focus too much on the particular panel at hand...

...that will result in good drawings that fail to tell the story. Storyboards are all about communication, not pretty drawings.

If a storyboard clearly tells the story and evokes the emotion and interest of the audience, then pretty drawings will ADD to t..

..the effect

For good communication, the scenes should be drawn with clear staging and easy-to-see silhouettes.

A basic understanding of perspective is a must, but only because it helps the viewer to underastand what you've drawn.

Clear communication is KEY. Everything else is gravy

I was lucky to have some fellow artists that were patient enough to explain the ropes.

I will never forget those guys and gals. Now I try to do the same for others when I get the chance.

One trick we use is to draw the first panle in a scene very clearly and with all the details of clothing etc...

But in subsequent panels, you can draw much loose because the details have already been established in the first panel.

I will try to post some examples of this difference on my blog soon.

A clear stick-figure drawing is better than a fully-rendered drawing that you can't understand.

but not in 3D animation or reels.

The artists should demonstrate the ability to draw different kinds of characters in many different situations.

One of my first challenges I was given was to draw a character doing something simple like opening a door....

Everyone likes to draw big Tex Avery style poses, but the more naturalistic poses - even for cartoony characters- are important

Roy Crane's work is not very well known now (he worked from the 1920's thru the fifties), but he sort of created the adventure ..

..strip in the 30's. Superman was based on his Capt Easy character. Roy Crane's drawings are cartoony and realistic at the same..

.. time. His work can be found in reprint volumes of his "Wash Tubbs and Cat Easy" series

Later he did another comic strip called Buz Sawyer. My favorite years of Cranes art are the Wash Tubbs comic from the 1930's

It would be called, "I gotta be a cartoonist 'Cause I can't do anything else!"

..a struggling cartoonist the same way guys like Bill Wray and Bob Camp did for me.

.. your guest ^_^