Cartoon-Style

Before you make your first stroke, you have to think about the look you will go for. After many discussions we decided that a cartoon style was the best choice. But there was one problem: I never ever did something like that in my life.  Until now I have been doing realistic oil paintings and charcoal drawings (here you can see some of them).

First of all, I tried to figure out how cartoon characters should look like. It’s baffling how you always watched cartoons but so little of them you can picture. Few questions lingered my mind when I started drawing:
1. Should everything have a black outline?
2. Must it be a black outline or can it be in any other color?
3. How thick should the lines be?
4. Can shades and gradient coexist?

This site was pretty helpful for my researches, it contains tons of tutorials and step-by-steps for cartoons, mangas and also some realistic drawings.

So here are my thoughts about those questions:

1. We don't have to outline everything, to outline the object contours and texture boundaries is absolutely enough! (see my alien-example)

2. The outline is in many cases NOT black! Its color should harmonically correspond to the object color (so in my alien-example it is dark green)

3. The stroke width does not have to be the same everywhere. It looks much better if it varies depending on the importance of the outlined detail: large strokes for outer contour, thinner ones for texture borders insight of the object (e.g. by clothes)
4. It is very hard to represent depth without using gradient! So I decided to use it.
5. NEVER forget the shadows under your objects, otherwise they appear to be flying...

To be continued....