Comic Strip Artist’s Kit
Carson Van Osten’s Comic Strip Artists’ Kit is like Elements of Style for cartooning. It’s a seven page Disney comic that describes the basic rules of staging and mapping out a comics page that’s done in an enormously entertaining and easy-to-comprehend style.
There have been low-res versions of this gem on the internet for at least a couple years. But recently, Van Osten emerged and sent animator, Mark Kennedy, 11×17 versions of the tutorial. Kennedy is generously sharing hi-res copies of the instructional booklet on his blog.
Van Osten explains the origins of the tutorial:
It started as a slide presentation for my boss to show at the Disney meeting in Frankfurt. It went over so well that he asked me to expand on it when he returned. They printed 2000 copies and mailed it to all the Disney offices.
Mark Kennedy’s blog, by the way is a vast learning resource for illustrators. Check out his recent posts on rhythm, proportion, and (a personal favourite) offset curves.
[Link]
See also: 22 Panels that always work
wow – mark kennedy’s blog is full of good stuff!!
what an excellent resource!
i’m going to start printing out his tips and lessons right now.
sweeet.
THESE PAGES ARE GREAT FOR AN ASPIRING CARTOONIST SUCH AS
MYSELF, BUT I WISH THEY WERE BIGGER (EVEN AFTER HITTING “ENLARGE”)THEY’RE A BIT HARD TO READ. LOOKS LIKE GOOD STUFF THOUGH.
yeah
What an incredible BLOG.
Endless informative information….
I’m hooked
[...] Your Drawn! link of the day: multiple links posts on Mark Kennedy’s weblog, including a post containing hi-res reproductions of a “how-to” strip on comics cartooning by Disney artist Carson Van Osten. [...]
This is SO cool. I think a few panels of this were in the Disney Animation : The Illusion of Life book.
Awsome! This site is full of useful tidbits!!!
Thanks for this! I’ve pulled the pages into a .pdf and posted it here:
http://members.socket.net/~newbuck/CSAK.pdf
8.5×11, 1.2mb, will directly download.
i got this from one of my cartooning teachers back in the day and actually gave copies to all my students last year, everyone got something out of it fantastic
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Thanks, Buckley!
[...] Link (via Drawn!) [...]
I’m not sure about the part where he mentions avoiding unusual perspective shots because they’re hard to draw–but with more iconic cartooning, I think too much camera fancy stuff can violate the “stage” too much, and maybe this is more of what he means. It’s certainly not for his own lack of ability. Otherwise a lot of this stuff is very useful, and even though you’d think some of it would be obvious, many of these tips weren’t obvious to me.
This is also on the less aggressive side, when it comes to how-to stuff like this–there are no “never do this”s or “always do that”s, which I appreciate.
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