Stephen Silver has been a professional working artist, character designer, and teacher in the industry for over 30 years. He developed intellectual properties for some of the largest media companies in the world; such as Disney, Warner Bros., Nickelodeon, Sony, MAD Magazine, Reel FX, Bento box, Hasbro, Universal, DreamWorks, and more. Stephen is responsible for the visual character development and design of some of animation’s most iconic shows; including Disney’s Kim Possible, Nickelodeon’s Danny Phantom, and Disney’s Clerks: The Animated Series, to name a few.
I believe this is one of the greatest books for breaking down and understanding the emotion and simplicity of construction. I love that it offers a variety of animals and humans to draw from and it can save you so much time by teaching you the basic fundamentals of drawing cartoon faces that will guide you throughout your career.
By following the lessons in Cartoon Animation with Preston Blair, you can make any character—person, animal, or object—come to life through animated movement!
While animators must first know how to draw, the animation process involves much more than just good drawing skills. In this new edition, acclaimed cartoon animator Preston Blair shares his vast practical knowledge to explain and demonstrate the many techniques of cartoon animation. Learn the knowledge and skills animators must have, including:
How to construct original cartoon characters by developing a character’s shape, personality, features, and mannerisms
How to animate movements such as running, walking, dancing, posing,…
I had been an exhibiting painter and an editorial cartoonist for years, but never a graphic book artist. Not until A Revolution in Three Acts. I was fortunate to have great guidance: my buddy David Hajdu (Positively Fourth Street, Lush Life, The Ten Cent Plague) wrote the words, did the research, and created the blueprint of every page and panel. My job was to lock myself up in my studio and draw, draw, draw. I think David and I did justice to three amazing figures of the American stage who dealt with the shifting societal forces of race, femininity, and gender: Bert Williams, Eva Tanguay, and Julian Eltinge.
This is the backstory of Spiegelman’s two-volume masterpiece.
What was the impetus for MAUS?
How did comic creatures find their way into a Holocaust narrative? What were the reactions to such a unique
merging of cartoons and historical horror? How has Spiegelman dealt with the
book’s tremendous reception?
The book answers these questions with many interviews,
photos, explanations, and reflections. Even agent and publisher rejection
letters are included.
NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD WINNER • Visually and emotionally rich, MetaMaus is as groundbreaking as the masterpiece whose creation it reveals.
In the pages of MetaMaus, Art Spiegelman re-enters the Pulitzer prize–winning Maus, the modern classic that has altered how we see literature, comics, and the Holocaust ever since it was first published twenty-five years ago.
He probes the questions that Maus most often evokes—Why the Holocaust? Why mice? Why comics?—and gives us a new and essential work about the creative process.
Compelling and intimate, MetaMaus is poised to become a classic in its own right.
Documentary Comics are this genre of comics in which you can make a community visible, denounce a crime or expose yourself to the world. Being able to dialogue with the world while dialoguing with the reader is amazing. The elements you have to take into account the things you can hide in the silence of a drawing, compelling the reader to read again, to find the easter egg about that thing you really want to talk about. The ways of telling the truth in drawings. All those things are the things that I love about documentary comics.
Virus Tropical is a Latin American Book, a Colombian book, an Argentinian Book, an Ecuadorian Book. Virus tropical talks about the nineties, if you are from Colombia you recognize the towns, the T-shirts, the music, the buses. So many peripheries mixed up and telling you about the coming of age of the main character. So many important things touched while touching on the most vapid-everyday things. The accents, the way the characters interact, I was able to identify with all of this while reading this graphic novel. Virus Tropical is a great book, I’m glad it was translated into English.
Vírus Tropical é uma saga familiar divertida e descolada, repleta de personagens cômicas e alopradas: um pai sacerdote que dá missas clandestinas em casa, uma mãe que lê o futuro nos dominós, uma irmã mais velha depravada, outra totalmente beata…
No meio dessa trupe, a caçula Paola tenta encontrar seu espaço e sua identidade. Com um traço fino, expressivo e cheio de detalhes, Power Paola nos mergulha no âmago dessa singular família colombiana.
Dividido em capítulos curtos e temáticos, e escrito num estilo ritmado e com muitos diálogos, Vírus Tropical consegue emocionar e entreter associando o melodrama ao humor.
I’m a comic fan first, then a comic creator. I grew up on the classics—Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side and excitedly watched as new comics popped up online. I love comic strips and have rows of collections lining my bookshelves. The coolest part of starting my own series has been becoming a member of a cartoonist community that I have always been a huge fan of.
I immediately loved Jake’s comics. The art style and humor is right up my alley.
They’re a perfect intersection of print comics like The Far Side and online ones like The Perry Bible Fellowship.
The internet seems especially suited for timely comics that don’t always age well, they’re scrolled past and never read again, but this collection is perfect for print because the comics are timeless and worth repeat reading.
The Book of Onions is a collection of darkly funny comics from Jake Thompson, creator of the celebrated bi-weekly webcomic "Jake Likes Onions."
Ranging from the relatable to the utterly nonsensical and bizarre, The Book of Onions focuses on themes of loneliness, desperation, and failure. And misplaced optimism. And perverted talking fruit. Sort of like Gary Larson's "The Far Side," if Gary were way less accomplished and suffered from depression.
I wanted to go to the sea ever since I can remember. In the hope of having the nonsense knocked out of me, my father sent me at the tender age of fourteen to the ‘Indefatigable’, a tough sea-training school. This only strengthened my resolve for a life at sea, and I joined the Royal Navy at 15. My family emigrated and I transferred to the Royal Australian Navy and saw service around the world. Although I no longer have an active involvement with the navy, I sail in my imagination through my sea-faring novels.
I’m greatly drawn to the caricaturists and satirists of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. In the days before the internet they were often vehicles for witty, sometimes very pointed, commentary on all aspects of society. This book, with prints from the National Maritime Museum, focuses on the Royal Navy during the later eighteenth and early nineteenth century.
Broadsides explores the political and cultural history of the Navy during the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries through contemporary caricature. This was a period of intense naval activity - encompassing the Seven Years War, the American War of Independence, the wars against revolutionary and Napoleonic France, and the War of 1812. Naval caricatures were utilised by the press to comment on events, simultaneously reminding the British public of the immediacy of war, whilst satirising the same Navy it was meant to be supporting. The thematic narrative explores topics from politics to invasion, whilst encompassing detailed analysis of the context…
I’m an Eisner-nominated and award-winning graphic novel and comics writer, editor, and book packager. I've worked on staff at the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, Disney Publishing, DC Comics, Nickelodeon Magazine, and Platinum Studios. My sequential art book, The Bramble, won the 2013 Moonbeam Gold Medal for Picture Books, and I created a new way to read comics with BirdCatDog, a 2015 Eisner Awards nominee, that received the 2015 Moonbeam Spirit Award Gold Medal for Imagination, and was chosen by Kirkus Reviews as one of the best children’s books of 2014. SheHeWe, the third book in the series, was a 2016 Eisner Award nominee for Best Publication for Early Readers.
The subtitle toMaking Comics is: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga, and Graphic Novels. In this book, Scott gets practical, and shows you how to apply what you learned from his previous volumes. In his introduction, he writes, “The comics industry is changing fast. Old formats die and new ones are born. Whole industries come and go. But these storytelling principles always apply. They mattered fifty years ago and they’ll matter fifty years from now.” To quote Stan Lee, ‘nuff said.
"Magnificent! The best how-to manual ever published." - Kevin Kelly, Cool Tools Scott McCloud tore down the wall between high and low culture in 1993 with Understanding Comics, a massive comic book about comics, linking the medium to such diverse fields as media theory, movie criticism, and web design. In Reinventing Comics, McCloud took this to the next level, charting twelve different revolutions in how comics are generated, read, and perceived today. Now, in Making Comics, McCloud focuses his analysis on the art form itself, exploring the creation of comics, from the broadest principles to the sharpest details (like how…
I am the author of eleven children’s books, including Double Pink, My Mom is Trying to Ruin My Life, and No Go Sleep! As a dog lover, many of my books are about dogs or feature dogs. In President Pennybaker, illustrated by Diane Goode, a dog become president. In The Problem with The Puddles, illustrated by Tricia Tusa, a chihuahua and a Great Dane, both named Sally, get separated from their family and have a rollicking adventure trying to get reunited. When I write, I try to find clever approaches to universal themes and enjoy making children laugh. (I am also the event producer for Islanders Write, a writer’s festival on Martha’s Vineyard Island.)
As a lifelong doodler and a dog lover, I am a fan of James Thurber’s simple lines that say a lot and his witty whimsical way with words. Thurber was a celebrated writer and cartoonist—he died in 1961—who had a wry take on human nature and our idiosyncrasies. While much of his work feels dated now, in my opinion, his dog doodles are evergreen.
I’ve loved comic strips since I was a kid, so children’s books that had cartoon art in them were the ultimate for me. That love drove me to research and write about the career and life of Jack Kent. Books by cartoonists tend to have the whole package: They tell a story visually, they’re funny, and they use language economically but memorably. The limitations I placed on myself in choosing this list were 1) the creator had to have both written and drawn the book, and 2) they had to have been established as a professional cartoonist before moving into children’s books.
A fact lost in their massive success in children’s books is that Stan and Jan Berenstain started as cartoonists.
In the 1940s and 1950s their work appeared in the likes of the Saturday Evening Post,Collier’s,and McCall’s, and they had a series of best-selling “cartoon essay” books. Their famous bears debuted in 1962 as part of Beginner Books, a line created by Theodor “Dr. Seuss” Geisel, Helen Palmer Geisel, and Phyllis Cerf.
With 1978’s The Spooky Old Tree, The Berenstains created the quintessential early reader, using repetition and predictability, prepositional phrases, rich visuals, and high drama to captivate their young audience (and their parents). “Do they dare? Yes. They dare.”
Join the Berenstain Bears on a spooky adventure in this classic children's book perfect for learning to read!
Climb the Spooky Old Tree with the Berenstain Bears! This classic children's book makes great use of rhyming and repetition of phrases to encourage children's reading, and the spooky story will delight young and old!
Bright and Early Books are designed to encourage even 'non-reading' children to read. Some Bright and Early Books are simple stories, others are hilarious nonsense: both types have been designed to give children confidence and make them want to go on reading. Perfect for both boys and…
I’m fascinated by what people make of political events at home and abroad. The rapid expansion of public opinion in later eighteenth-century Britain, in tandem with the explosion of the press—newspapers, books, sermons, plays, poetry, novels, magazines, and cartoons—makes it a wonderful period to explore. People in the past were no less complex and sophisticated than we are; they simply lived in different circumstances, opportunities, and constraints, with different assumptions and priorities. My British Visions of America, 1775–1820 (2013) also deals with the British trying to understand foreign affairs, while The Wodrow-Kenrick Correspondence, 1750–1810, eds Fitzpatrick, Macleod and Page is full of events at home and abroad.
What’s not to love about eighteenth-century cartoons?! They are a brilliant way to understand at least some strands of public opinion on all kinds of issues, and I’m all about trying to understand what people were thinking and why.
This is a wonderful book, which contains a wealth of colour plates of graphic satires by James Gillray, Thomas Rowlandson, and many less well-known names. Their subjects range from political crises and the monarchy to fashion and manners to the role of the crowd.
It’s not just a catalogue of images with captions, though: it’s a really substantial discussion of the emergence and role of the genre of pictorial satire in the reign of King George III (1760–1820) and how to ‘read’ these images.
The late eighteenth century in England was the first great age of cartooning, and English caricature prints of the period have long been enjoyed for their humor and vitality. Now Diana Donald presents the first major study of these caricatures, which challenges many assumptions about them. She shows that they were a widely disseminated form of political expression and propaganda as subtle and eloquent as the written word.
Donald analyzes the meanings of the prints, applying current perspectives on the eighteenth century about the changing roles of women and constructions of gender, the alleged rise of a consumer society, the…
I am an illustrator of books, comics, and various other things, but no matter what I illustrate I can’t seem to keep a certain darkness out of my drawings. For most of my life I have been attracted to the macabre. This attraction first emerged out of fear but later out of amusement. Itis rather comical to see the amount of effort people are willing to expend in order to avoid thinking and talking about death. I find it far more healthy to acknowledge it everywhere whilesimultaneously having a good chuckle.
It would be impossible to create a list of morbidly whimsical books without including Edward Gorey, the uncontested master in this realm. While virtually any of Gorey’s books could be added to this list, his Amphigorey treasuries are the most efficient way for new readers tobrowse through his books. Since I must make a choice, however, I am selecting Amphigorey Too since this was the volume that introduced me to Gorey’s work when I was seventeen. Furthermore, it also contains a couple of my favourite Gorey tales: The Beastly Babyand The Inanimate Tragedy.
This follow-up to the darkly humorous Amphigorey is wittier, more macabre, and more wondrous than ever. Master illustrator and iconic gothic storyteller Edward Gorey gives his fans 20 more nonsensically and mind-bending tales that draw fans and unsuspecting newcomers into a world only he can create. Gorey’s pen-and-ink drawings spur the imagination and satisfy fans of art and the good storytelling.
Some of the 20 stories in this collection include: “The Beastly Baby” “The Pious Infant” “The Evil Garden” “The Inanimate Tragedy” “The Osbick Bird” “The Deranged Cousins” “The Abandoned Sock” “Story for Sara” “A Limerick”
