Random cartooning preferences questions!

[Jackhass]

A few random questions...let the heated discussion begin.

1) Four-finger hands or five-finger hands? Do you go with old-school cartoon tradition and only draw four fingers, or do you strive for *realism* with your cartoony pictures and put 5 fingers on the hands?

2) To shade or not to shade? This one's mostly for folks who work in black and white. In B&W comics, the standard thing to do is to simply leave your character's skin blank white, even though not even an albino would actually be that pale. But what about when you're drawing a black character (or any other darker skinned visible minority)...do you shade in their skin, or do you leave it blank and simply let the character's features clue you into what race they are?

3) Black or blue? Here's one for colour comickers...you've got a character with black hair, do you actually colour it black, or do you go with the old comic standard and and colour it dark blue (or a combination of dark blue and some black)?

4) One of your characters just hit the other one in the crotch with a dead halibut...what sound effect would accompany such an action?

[Kirb]

1. Five fingers.

2. For B&W? Not shade. Unless of course, it's for actual shading. But for skin tone, no.

3. Doesn't really work for me, as I've got people with naturally dark blue hair. So I
color black hair as black.

4. SHWUUAWP!

Followed by a paralyzing cry of pain, presumably.

[Kemmy]

1. Five fingers. Four-fingered hands look freakish to me.

2. I shade very dark skin but not moderately dark skin 'cause I haven't found a good way of doing it yet. I am not really satisfied with my method here.

3. I also have a character with blue hair (only discernible in the colour strips, of course. In the black-and-white strips, she looks like a black girl with white hair), so...black hair is black.

4. *Fwump*

[Jekkal]

1) Five, but only for certain species. Fun with Furries == not all species have the exact same hands! Yippee!

2) I'll shade, but it'll only be a little more than I would for a 'white' character.

3) I go with whatever color looks good. Lately I've been partial to shading blacks with reds/purples. It works kinda nicely.

4) SHHHLACK!

[Dutch!]

Four fingers. I don't really know why, but it's how I started. I can't really change their anatomy now, eh? Although I was thinking really early on about having a classroom science experiment go wrong and they get an extra finger... but that idea is lame.

I'd go with no shading in general.

Their dark hair is a shade of black. My dark haired kids get 75% black for their hair. Nobody has blue hair except old grandmothers.

PHISCHT!

[LibertyCabbage]

1) Five, though I'm still working on hands so I prefer to draw a "normal" hand than a deviation. Four fingers does make the character look a little more cartoony and simplistic, though, so it's useful for achieving that effect.

2) I would just color the skin gray. Even in a B&W comic, there's some room for the odd grayscale here and there =/ If that's not an option, though, then I'd just focus on the facial features.

3) I'd do black, at least because it's not all that strange for a character to have blue hair so it minimizes confusion.

4) KLUPTH!

[Adobedragon]

1. I would draw five, but as a reader (viewer), don't mind four, as long as it still looks like a hand (e.g., The Simpsons).

2. When I was doing gray scale, I shaded skin. Dunno how to handle the matter in pure black and white, though.

3. I use a dark gray as the base colour and shade with blue.

4. Thwaaap!

[Jackhass]

As for my answers...

1) Four fingers. I find five fingered hands often look cluttered...and oddly...un-natural compared to four fingered hands. Plus they're easier to draw. If there's a close-up on a hand or a panel that really focuses on the hands I might do 5.

2) I'm not sure on this one...heck, I drew a black girl in my most recent comic I'm working on now I'm not sure what to do. I usually go the leaving blank route though.

3) Mostly black...I like the effect of a nice solid block of black sometimes. Black hair, a black piece of clothing...whatever.

4) HaliBAKOOOM!

[Garneta]

1) Four-finger hands or five-finger hands? Do you go with old-school cartoon tradition and only draw four fingers, or do you strive for *realism* with your cartoony pictures and put 5 fingers on the hands?

I go with five fingers.

2) To shade or not to shade? This one's mostly for folks who work in black and white. In B&W comics, the standard thing to do is to simply leave your character's skin blank white, even though not even an albino would actually be that pale. But what about when you're drawing a black character (or any other darker skinned visible minority)...do you shade in their skin, or do you leave it blank and simply let the character's features clue you into what race they are?

Well, my comic's color...but I do shade.

3) Black or blue? Here's one for colour comickers...you've got a character with black hair, do you actually colour it black, or do you go with the old comic standard and and colour it dark blue (or a combination of dark blue and some black)?

Neither...I go with a dark dusky brown, then shade it to make it even darker.

4) One of your characters just hit the other one in the crotch with a dead halibut...what sound effect would accompany such an action?

I'm just gonna have to draw it and see...

[Black Sparrow]

1) Five fingered. I draw in a pseudo-realistic mock-manga style, not in the classic Bugs Bunny sort of style.

2) Shading is niiiice. I'll admit, however, that it takes too damn long. My upcoming project is flat unshaded black and white. I'm making up for the shading thing by putting in plenty of detail. The fact that all the main characters are drow influenced this... if I shaded all their skin, many of the features would be lost... so I leave it up to the reader's minds to fill in the detail.

3) Blue. Or dark grey, actually. That's an anime infleunce, I think, for me. If I color it black, all the detail gets lost. I hate losing detail.

4) ... um... "shwack"?

[RobertBlake]

1) Four. Although, if I'm going for anything in the realm of realism (such as a comic book superhero), I'll use five.

2) Since most of the characters in my comic are animals, I don't have to worry about shading skin. I usually go with features or attire to clue the reader on what the character's ethnicity is.

3) For black hair, I use black.

4) WHUPOW!

[Robin Pierce]

1) Five. Do I LOOK like I'm in the simpsons!?

2) No shadeif I'm doing straight b/w but then the black usage is VERY heavy.

3) Black for BW, Black with blue highlights for colour.

4) TONK. It was a frozen fish.

[Lunar]

I draw mittens, in which fingers appear as necessary. Although if for some reason a full fingered hand needed to appear I probably go with the full five fingers.

I'm actually just learning to shade things so I'll have to get back to you once I figure out what looks best.

Black probably

"Fish to the groin!" or THWACK!

[[geoduck]]

1. My human characters have four fingers. This started out as artistic convenience, but for those who pay close attention, it's turned into a minor plot point.

2. I draw on my computer, so smearing on shading is fairly quick and easy, even in black and white.

3. Black.

4. whap.

[Axonite]

1. On the rare occasion Emmit appears and doesn't have his hands in his pockets, I'm pretty sure he's got 4-fingered hands. (And everyone else has tentacles, flippers, claws, branches, etc. anyway)

2. No shading.

3. Black.

4. I don't know... Fishy-thump?

[Rkolter]

1) I have no fingers on my characters; if I did, there'd be five because four would... bug me to draw.

2) Shading all the way.

3) Black hair, black with shading.

4) SPLAPLAP! *AUGH!* MY TESTICLES! THEY BLEED!

[Mercury Hat]

1. Five fingers. Even in my more simplified cartoons, there's still five.

2. Character features. Hairstyle, facial shape, noses, and mouths can all give you enough visual clues. The old comic book thing of just shading part of the forehead or something just looks really silly.

3. Depends on the person, really. Caucasians usually have black hair that's really a dark brown and has brown highlights. Some Asians have dark hair with dark blue highlights and some have dark brown highlights. Some people have black hair with a dark grey highlight. Right now, I have a character who's half-Taiwanese and his hair is black with brown highlights.

4. Splutch!

[Joel Fagin]

1. Five. I'm a realist.

2. Shade, definitely. I can do it pretty fast and my art is bad enough that shading makes a big difference.

3. Black is black. Heck, why not draw red hair green?

4. Halibuts not available in comic's world.

- Joel Fagin

[Jackhass]

As for the 2nd question...I decided to live dangerously and shade!

http://thezoo.comicgenesis.com/d/20070427.html

[Perk_daddy]

1) Four fingers. I think I actually tried five in a couple strips and it just looked too weird. No five-fingered freaks for me!

2) Little bit of shading, and I like to rely more on features than color for race differences when working in B&W

3) NO BLUE HAIR. I just think "Marge" whenever I see it

4) SPLORP!


Good discussion questions! (I especially like the fourth one)