How to Learn to Draw Cartoons

Draw people, animals or objects and add personality and a story to create a cartoon. Animation is bringing those characters to life by making them appear to move. There are different ways of creating a cartoon. Follow the tips below.

Things You'll Need

• Paper
• Cardboard
• Pencil
• Pen
• Markers, paints or colored pencils
• Scissors
• Glue

Instructions

1. Create a complex cartoon character. The character must have personality, and details such as facial expression, clothing, posture and body shape are really important to bringing life to a character.

2. Draw the character. First use pencil until a good character is drawn, and then blacken the outlines and color. Remember, main features of cartoon characters are often exaggerated, and small details are left out.

3. Place the character in interesting settings. This is done by placing the character against backgrounds. The background must be fitting to the story. Place animal characters in a jungle, superheroes in big cities or a mad scientist in a lab. Consider the qualities of the background, such as round curves for a peaceful setting, or sharp and jagged curves for a frightening setting.

4. Put the characters into a cartoon strip. A strip is a series of frames or pictures put into a certain order to tell a story. The story is told by captions beneath the frames, and dialog spoken by the characters in dialog bubbles in the pictures.

5. Create a zoetrope. A zoetrope is one of the earliest forms of animation. It is basically a cylinder with a series of pictures inside, which is spun around and is viewed through a slit in the front.

6. Put a bunch of drawings together to create a flip book. Each drawing should have slight change in position of something, like a ball bouncing. The pages are flipped through fast, and movement is created.