Apparently these were big back in the 60’s; FAMOUS ARTISTS CARTOON COURSES! I discovered this website today which is happily scanning lots of vintage comics for our viewing delight.

So far my favorite post is HOW TO DRAW PRETTY GIRLS.  As somebody who struggled to draw pretty girls all though adolescence imagine my delight! These vintage drawing lessons even have real photographs of pretty girls incorporated into the lesson.  HOW TO DRAW THE MARVEL WAY, had nothing like that (Don’t get me wrong, I love HOW TO DRAW THE MARVEL WAY)!

Even so, other important CARTOON COURSES from the site I found interesting:

• Famous Artists Cartoon Course Lesson 6 Anatomy
• Famous Artists Cartoon Course Lesson 8 Action and the Figure
• or just browse the entire category of CARTOON COURSES yourself!

Hey while i’m sharing cool stuff I found on the internet, I recently RSS subscribed to a site called FFFFOUND! It is prettymuch a constant stream of inspirational design and photography.   It’s like Drawn.ca but without the boring parts and updated every second.

Excelsior!

Science is truly a boon to the modern cartoonist.  Today we learn how to make own own TRUE TYPE FONT in a matter of minutes using the free services of yourfonts.com

You can do it in two ways. Print the font generator templates, write in all the letters with your favorite pen, scan & upload to the generator OR do what I did by downloading the template as a gif, bring into photoshop and write in all the boxes with your wacom tablet.  Check out the font I made in about 10 minutes:

So yeah you don’t have to use that lame comic book font you and everybody else has been using in their webcomics; you can afford to be original!

Download the RR Anderson Cartoonist Font AS SEEN ON C.L.A.W.!

Whether left in a stack in your favorite coffee shop or ’stuffed’ into a library book, these little comic books (or zines) can be super fun.  The No-Staple, method is nice because all you need to do is print, cut and fold.  Avoiding to use a stapler saves lots of time, especially if you’re churning out a crap load of these little suckers!

The Method

In the schematic below, please note location and orientation of FRONT COVER (F), BACK COVER (B), and PAGES 1 – 6.  You’ll need to shrink and orient your pages in photoshop.  It works best if you have a laser printer.  You can just print out one (1) copy and then duplicate the rest in photocopier if you don’t want to waste your own toner.

Assembly Instructions:

Cut along the dotted line between the two marks “X” (pictured above) .  Now Fold the paper the long way (fig A). Next fold the pages taking care to pop out the middle (fig B).

And that’s all there is to it!   If you want to get tricky with it you can print a MINI-POSTER on the REVERSE BLANK SIDE of the paper, giving people the option to unfold the comic and hang up after reading. Excelsior!