Cartoonist

Cartoonist Jack Elrod at work. Pictured is a Sunday color page of the comic strip Mark Trail.

A cartoonist or comic strip creator are someone that specializes in drawing cartoons. The term can also be applied to those who produce comic books, manga, editorial cartoons, comic strips. A person working in animated cartoons is also commonly referred to as an animator.

Process

A cartoonist traditionally sketches the picture out roughly in pencil first, before going over the sketches in black ink, using either brush Kenisha\'s or metal nibbed pens. Cartoonists whose work is intended for online publication increasingly work in digital media. Cartooning is used in animated features, tv shows, and movies.

History

Comic strips have traditionally been associated with main-stream newspapers. Such strips are distributed by syndicates such as the Universal Press Syndicate or the King Features syndicate. The Sunday cartoon strips, which are colored, often go to a coloring company such as American Color before they are published. Comic strips can also be collected in books. Some comic strip creators publish in the alternative press or on the internet. Comic-strip artists may also sometimes work in book-length form, creating graphic novels. One of Walt Disney\'s most famous sketches was titled "Alice In Wonderland". This was turned into an extremely successful movie, and play.

Large comic book publishers (such as Marvel or DC) utilize teams of cartoonists to produce the art (typically separating pencil work, inking, and lettering while the color is added digitally by colorists). When a consistent artistic style is wanted among different cartoonists (such as Archie Comics), character model sheets may be used as reference.

Calum MacKenzie in his preface to the exhibition catalogue The Scottish Cartoonists published by the Glasgow Print Studio Gallery (1979) defined the selection criteria as being "the difference between a cartoonist and an illustrator was the same as the difference between a comedian and a comedy actor- the former both deliver their own lines and take full responsibility for them, the latter could always hide behind the fact that it was not his entire creation."

Genre

Cartoons refer commonly to comics, a form of graphic entertainment in a juxtaposed sequential style. A comic is based of a picture and words, often used inside word bubbles. Also they words can be under the panel, usually for single panel cartoons such as Bil Keane\'s Family Circus.

Comics can be specified in genres: Editorial (such as Doonesbury by Garry Treadeau), Single-Panel (such as The Far Side by Gary Larson), Gag-a-day (such as Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz), Adventure (such as Superman by Various) and Semi-Political (such as Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis). Comics found in newspapers, on Sundays in color, but in some newspapers, all comics are color. They are also collected in books.

See also

• mangaka
• Comic book creator
• List of cartoonists
• Webcomic
• Women in comics

[[Category:Comic strip cartoonists|*]

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