Humongous Book of Cartooning [Paperback]

I have two students who are really interested in drawing cartoons. After reviewing at least 20 books on Amazon.com I decided to wait for this book to come out and pre-ordered a copy.

I now have it in front of me and believe it will be an excellent book for both students so I just ordered another one.

The instructions are clear and the examples are simply fantastic.

I personally have never been able to draw anything but even I now believe I could draw a cartoon character.

This book is strongly recommended as THE starter book. Even for students who can not read it would not take much time for a parent to read the instructions to the student and then let the student take it from there.

This would be a great book for any home school student interested in cartooning.

This book does not, and does not pretend to, discuss anything about story lines or how to "make it" in the cartooning world. It does exactly what it should do - get a person started drawing the characters, background and everything else needed to communicate a concept.

Chapters include:

Drawing Cartoon Characters' Heads starts on page 8

Drawing the Facial Features starts on page 30

Drawing the Entire Figure starts on page 48

Designing a Character starts on page 62

Costuming a Character starts on page 80

Conveying Body Language starts on page 106

Designing Basic Layout starts on page 128 (nice discussion about setting the stage for the primary characters)

Special Characters: Robots starts on page 150

Special Characters: Animals starts on page 166

Special Characters: Fantasy Creatures starts on page 208 and ends on page 223.

I would normally not go into this much detail but the publisher has not yet made it possible to see the table of contents and I really appreciate all of the comments others have made on various books that have really helped me select the best book for the job that needs to be done. Hope this is helpful to all those who want to get started in cartooning.

I preordered this book when amazon sent me the notice it was coming out and i saved about $8. U can't go wrong buying drawing books from Christopher Hart. This guy is a master cartoonist. This is how I learned how to draw all my cartoons. Thanks to his books and outstanding instruction, I no longer copy his works, I create my own cartoons right outta my imagination. Heck, for $15 what's not to like? He covers everything: Character construction, different styles of cartooning, animals, layout principles, it's all here. This book only adds to my drawing skills so needless to say I got my money's worth.

I blame myself for buying this book. It's not really what I expected. It's very basic (even though it is a couple hundred pages long), and not really useful, unless you're a complete beginning when it comes to drawing cartoons.

It does have a lot of examples of different cartoons you can draw, for example: typical teen girl, the know it all type, the cool nerd, lovable viking, cute robot, dog, etc. The final chapters seem to have been added just to make it look more complete and "humongous". I mean, for example, why dedicate an entire chapter to robots? While cool, I don't think they are more special than other subjects like plants, or humans, or dogs, or cats, to have their own chapter.

Table of contents:
-From the Author
- Drawing Cartoon Characters' Heads
- Drawing the Facial Features
- Drawing the Entire Figure
- Designing a Character
- Costuming a Character
- Conveying Body Language
- Designing Basic Layouts
- Special Characters: Robots
- Special Characters: Animals
- Special Characters: Fantasy Creatures
- Index

Do yourself a favor, if you're trying to learn how to draw cartoons, you don't need this book. Just draw, grab comic strips, or art from the internet and copy it and copy it until you develop your own style. And if you really want something that teaches you how to draw, grab a more technical book that teaches you about anatomy, and perspective, and character development. I think that books about animation are very useful, even if you're not planning to animate your drawings, because they teach you one important lesson: for your drawings to be good, they have to have personality.

In conclusion, I don't think you should buy this book. There are better ones out there.