Random cartooning preferences questions!

[Fabio Ciccone]

I find that my problem isn't with hands, it's feet. I have a helluva time making five look like the right number of toes...

The most famous cartoonist from Brazil, Maurício de Sousa, has the answer to that: he simply doesn't draw fingers in the characters feet. Actually, he has a rule in his world: if the character usually doesn't wear any footwear, he has no fingers; if the character does use footwear, he has fingers (when he's no wearing any). Kinda odd, but there're some great gags with this theme in his work. It's something like this:


He has fingers in his feet


He doesn't

[McDuffies]

Oh, I had some problems learning how to draw feet, because my first source of reference were disney comics where no character had properly shaped feet. I still have problems drawing shoes for that reason.

[Brigid]

Hands *and* feet are murder. Us humans have such funny looking appendages.

[Ten Kabuto]

1) Four-finger hands or five-finger hands?

2) To shade or not to shade?

3) Black or blue? Black if the character has black hair, blue hair if they have blue hair.

4) One of your characters just hit the other one in the crotch with a dead halibut...what sound effect would accompany such an action?
Battle Cry. Huzzzzzzzzaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh~!

[Kilre]

1) Four-fingered for the furry members of the cast, and five-fingered for the more traditional human members.

2) To shade! And I've got multiple ways to do so; if hatching looks too funky, there's nothing a little layer in GIMP won't fix.

3) Honestly? I flip a coin. I can't decide between the two best colors (even though black is simply a lack of reflected color).

4) That is an awesome question, and one that could lead into many a debate over what would be the proper sound effect for a halibut being used as a weapon against a crotch.

I would go with "OWNT", but that's me.

[Jackhass]

The story I've heard of is that back when the technique was used first, it was to cut costs. Four-fingered hand is somewhat easier to draw (at least so I've heard, I never bothered to compare) so if an animator saves five seconds on drawing four-fingered hand, when you add up all the images that had to be hand-drawn to complete a cartoon, it makes a worthwhile saving.

Costs in Animation are generally cut by elinating entire drawings and eliminating the number of frames, not by simplifying the pictures. Cheap shitty Saturday morning cartoons have some of the most "realistic" characters designs.

Anyways, to the folks above...I agree on the feet thing. They're much harder to draw than hands. Probably because we look at our hands all the time...by comparison you may go days without actually examining your feet for any length of time. I'm at the point where I can at least draw shoes well enough...but bare feet are still a giant pain.

[Ardra]

I don't actually draw my comic anymore. If you check out the early, pre-Trevor, pre-Fesworks stuff in my archive, you'll see why. If any of you thought you were clueless when you were starting out, think again. Now THAT'S clueless!

Anyway, when I've done the prelim sketches, or when I drew my own stuff back in the dark ages, here's how it went down:

1. Five. Keepin' it real. Interestingly, my current artist used to do four fingers for the characters in his own comic, but has since switched to five, I believe.

2. No shading. I'm too lazy, and not nearly a good enough artist to make it look good.

3. No blue. Brunettes, blondes, and redheads dominate my world. No Marge Simpsons or Blue Meanies in the Ardra universe. I might ask Fes to draw some punk-rocker-kid-in-a-crowd-shot type of character's hair blue at some point, though, just for the hell of it.

4. No crotch-hitting, we're family-friendly! A halibut to the head, maybe...or better yet, a large squid upside the cranium. There's a future comic idea right there. Comedy gold! And it would make a SPLORP! sound.

[Brigid]

Way to go family-friendly!

It's amazing what can be done with hair dye, isn't it?

[Ardra]

Well, I'm not exactly doing The Family Circus here...but I suppose it's rather tame by webcomic standards. PG-rated, for the most part. And about the only swearing comes when Della says "bloody hell" or something like that.

Hmm, could do a comic where Ardra tries to dye her hair, and it turns out blue...but she's probably too conservative to try something like that, anyway!

[Ardra]

Well, I'm not exactly doing The Family Circus here...but I suppose it's rather tame by webcomic standards. PG-rated, for the most part. And about the only swearing comes when Della says "bloody hell" or something like that.

Hmm, could do a comic where Ardra tries to dye her hair, and it turns out blue...but she's probably too conservative to try something like that, anyway!

[Brigid]

Heck, I have a family comic rated PG-14. (Mostly for the kind of bodily references that preteen to teenage kids run into. And diaper jokes.)

[Webkilla]

1) five fingers (although its not always apparent)

2) I shade if I can ass myself into it

3) black or really really dark grey

4) Depending on the situation it could be anything from a *PAIN* to a *catastrophicic sub-quantum energy detonation of skulls, doom, Lewis Armstrong and eternal darkness*

[ArcoJawa]

1) either 3 or 5, depending on a coin flip(let's just say the canon of my story allows for variation).

2) All white if I draw that way, it's usually just little jif comics, unnessary stuff I do when I can't focus on my main stuff.

3) Never had a character with black hair, I'll have to remedy that sometime...

4) It would play "Take Me To The River", fish like to sing that.

[PieceOfSkunk]

1) I go with five fingers.

2) When my comic was black and white, skin was white. I had one "ethnic" character appear in a couple strips, and her skin was also white. Then again, I never got around to mentioning her Hispanic last name, so no one probably noticed.

3) My main character's hair is straight black.

4) Clunk, because my character would be wearing a cup.