Creating Animated Cartoons with Character
August 28, 2023 11:06 AM Subscribe
Joe Murray created Rocko's Modern Life, Camp Lazlo, and Let's Go Luna!. He wrote a book a while back about animating for TV, web, or film. It went out of print. So Joe decided to make it available for download for free. "As payment, maybe you can donate to a food bank, or simply pay it forward somehow."
I was surprised and heartened to see the inclusion of a trans character in the 2019 sequel to Rocko's Modern Life, which ranked alongside the Simpsons as one of my favorite cartoons when I was a kid.
That 2019 sequel is still on Netflix, btw. Worth a watch.
posted by cubeb at 2:36 PM on August 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
That 2019 sequel is still on Netflix, btw. Worth a watch.
posted by cubeb at 2:36 PM on August 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
Countess Elena, I'm afraid this book mostly skips over that - it's very much about the stuff you will have to do to go from "decent cartoonist" to "has multiple show proposals circulating around the studios with a decent chance of one of them becoming a show", and on from there to "has actually run a show". There's a lot of great Joe Murray drawings throughout the book that you can certainly break down and analyze but it's really not a How To Draw book.
For getting to "decent cartoonist" I'll recommend Cartoon Animation by Preston Blair. This is one of the standard texts of the craft, it'll give you a solid grounding in drawing for animation, and in all the basics of making stuff move. "The Illusion of Life" by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston and "Animator's Survival Kit" by Richard Williams are also classics in the field; IoL occupies the same territory as Blair's work, but with a slightly different angle, while ASK touches upon stuff that neither CA or IoL deal with.
posted by egypturnash at 3:37 PM on August 28, 2023 [4 favorites]
For getting to "decent cartoonist" I'll recommend Cartoon Animation by Preston Blair. This is one of the standard texts of the craft, it'll give you a solid grounding in drawing for animation, and in all the basics of making stuff move. "The Illusion of Life" by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston and "Animator's Survival Kit" by Richard Williams are also classics in the field; IoL occupies the same territory as Blair's work, but with a slightly different angle, while ASK touches upon stuff that neither CA or IoL deal with.
posted by egypturnash at 3:37 PM on August 28, 2023 [4 favorites]
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posted by Countess Elena at 12:30 PM on August 28, 2023