Cartoonography

Cartoonography

by Tim Slee

Car-toon-o-gra-phy: warping a person's sense of humour by teaching them the ancient and dishonorable art of cartooning...

This site is all about helping you find a way to get started in the 'business' of cartooning.

You can use some of my gallery of characters to put together your own cartoons on your PC, or you can go to the cartooning lessons and learn to really do it for yourself. There are also tips there on how to think up ideas, and then how to (gulp) sell them!

But first things first...

Cartooning kit

The quickest way to start is to use my drawings to make your own cartoons. Illustrate your newsletter, birthday card, or web page!

Just copy and paste the images from my Gallery into a page of your own; rotate, shrink, or enlarge them, then add your own caption. If you want you can colorise them yourself - they've been left deliberately B&W, with minimal detail.

If you're familiar with using Clip Art then this will be a breeze, and you can skip the next bit to go straight to the Gallery, but if not I'll show you how simple it is...

First of all you will need a paint or drawing program. Haven't got one? Download Paint Shop Pro.

In the Gallery you'll find a range of characters...

You can copy these characters into a paint program, place them so that they form a picture, give them captions and voila - cartoons!

What do I mean? Well let's take two unrelated drawings...

...stick them together using Paint Shop, add a few words and ...

We've made a cartoon! How hard was that?!

Want to see an example of a website where they have used some of these illustrations to liven up their site? Then check out the CAPER website...

Run that past me again!

OK, as I said, all the images are stored on the gallery page. You can quickly go there now if you like, and when you've finished looking it over, just close that window.

To the Gallery

For this example we will copy the images Animal1.jpg (from the Angry Animals collection) and Tribe3.jpg (from The Tribe collection) in the gallery.

You can do this on a PC using Shift + right mouse click. Save them into a new folder because you will need to be able to find them easily.

Now you need to open Animal1.jpg in your drawing program. It looks like this...

Create a new blank page, then select the Animal1.jpg picture with the Highlight or Capture tool of your drawing program, then Copy or Cut, and Paste it onto the left side of the new page. Done.

Now you'll do the same with Tribe3.jpg (it looks like this...)

...but place it on the blank page to the right of the dinosaur. Let's see what you should get.

Perhaps we should make the cavemen a little smaller (using the resize or rescale tool on your drawing program). Yep, much better scale!

OK, now the caption - that's the hard part, and it's all up to you! Here's one I quickly came up with...

Well, I'm sure you can do better! You can color or shade the illustration as you desire, and edit the image too. If the character isn't looking in the right place, just rub out their eyeballs and draw them again looking the right way! I've made the eyes nice and big to help with this. If a hand isn't in the right place, or isn't holding the right thing just erase it and draw your own.

Here' another quick example using three very different images from the Gallery, picked at random:

The idea is to combine some unlikely characters, imagine them as part of a scene, or story, and write some lines to suit. And that's often what cartooning is all about!

Ready to start? OK, go To the Gallery and start cutting and pasting your own cartoons!

A cartoon tutorial

Once you've mastered the Gallery and the art of cut & paste cartooning you'll probably be keen to begin drawing for yourself. For an explanation of a few of the basics of cartooning, click on

Cartooning lessons.

MAIL

I hope you enjoy playing around with these sketches. If you would like to get in touch with me you can do so at timslee@post3.tele.dk

This CARTOONISTS RING site is owned by
Tim Slee.

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Now the legalistic tiny print bit - I am a professional writer and illustrator and these characters are drawn from selections of my published work. The aim of this page is simply to encourage more people to take up cartooning. This site is and will remain non profit and non commercial. You are welcome to freely use any of these images for private or educational purposes, but not business purposes. I wish you every success if you pursue a cartoon career, but international copyright of these images remains with me. Developing unique cartoon characters and styles can be simple with a bit of thought, so go to it!

*Note, the following competition applies to Australian Schools only - sorry...but the site itself also contains links and resources for budding cartoonists so check it out!

Cartoonography

by Tim Slee

Car-toon-o-gra-phy: warping a person's sense of humour by teaching them the ancient and dishonorable art of cartooning...

This site is all about helping you find a way to get started in the 'business' of cartooning.

You can use some of my gallery of characters to put together your own cartoons on your PC, or you can go to the cartooning lessons and learn to really do it for yourself. There are also tips there on how to think up ideas, and then how to (gulp) sell them!

But first things first...

The quickest way to start is to use my drawings to make your own cartoons. Illustrate your newsletter, birthday card, or web page!

Just copy and paste the images from my Gallery into a page of your own; rotate, shrink, or enlarge them, then add your own caption. If you want you can colorise them yourself - they've been left deliberately B&W, with minimal detail.

If you're familiar with using Clip Art then this will be a breeze, and you can skip the next bit to go straight to the Gallery, but if not I'll show you how simple it is...

First of all you will need a paint or drawing program. Haven't got one? Download Paint Shop Pro.

In the Gallery you'll find a range of characters...

You can copy these characters into a paint program, place them so that they form a picture, give them captions and voila - cartoons!

What do I mean? Well let's take two unrelated drawings...

...stick them together using Paint Shop, add a few words and ...

We've made a cartoon! How hard was that?!

Want to see an example of a website where they have used some of these illustrations to liven up their site? Then check out the CAPER website...

Run that past me again!

OK, as I said, all the images are stored on the gallery page. You can quickly go there now if you like, and when you've finished looking it over, just close that window.

To the Gallery

For this example we will copy the images Animal1.jpg (from the Angry Animals collection) and Tribe3.jpg (from The Tribe collection) in the gallery.

You can do this on a PC using Shift + right mouse click. Save them into a new folder because you will need to be able to find them easily.

Now you need to open Animal1.jpg in your drawing program. It looks like this...

Create a new blank page, then select the Animal1.jpg picture with the Highlight or Capture tool of your drawing program, then Copy or Cut, and Paste it onto the left side of the new page. Done.

Now you'll do the same with Tribe3.jpg (it looks like this...)

...but place it on the blank page to the right of the dinosaur. Let's see what you should get.

Perhaps we should make the cavemen a little smaller (using the resize or rescale tool on your drawing program). Yep, much better scale!

OK, now the caption - that's the hard part, and it's all up to you! Here's one I quickly came up with...

Here' another quick example using three very different images from the Gallery, picked at random:

The idea is to combine some unlikely characters, imagine them as part of a scene, or story, and write some lines to suit. And that's often what cartooning is all about!

Ready to start? OK, go To the Gallery and start cutting and pasting your own cartoons!

A cartoon tutorial

Once you've mastered the Gallery and the art of cut & paste cartooning you'll probably be keen to begin drawing for yourself. For an explanation of a few of the basics of cartooning, click on

Cartooning lessons.

MAIL

I hope you enjoy playing around with these sketches. If you would like to get in touch with me you can do so at timslee@post3.tele.dk

*Note, the following competition applies to Australian Schools only - sorry...but the site itself also contains links and resources for budding cartoonists so check it out!