Famous Artists School Course Free Online Material

The undoubtedly great famous Artists School course material from the 50s/60s are now made available online for free by couple of folks. This is great, since these materials are very very hard to come by, and even if they do, they are not in good shape.


There is always going to be a question of copyright and stuff. If you do look at it from a broad angle this course is some sort of world heritage stuff. To be preserved for posterity. The lessons are so absolutely to the point, and practical and applicable , created by commercially successful artists of the time. And they were wonderfully packaged into a coherent course by the ever so shrewed a business mind, as great as an illustrator, Albert Dorne.

Albert Dorne, Norman Rockwell, Willard Mullin just to name a few of the faculty, was a dream team.

There were basically three courses paths the students could take: Commercial Illustration, Cartooning and Painting.

(1) Here is where you will find the entire course material for the Commercial Illustration Course:

The Complete famous Artists Course (1960) at onAnimation blog. Thanks to Daniel Caylor for this great job.

(2) Here is where you wil find the still harder to get Cartoon course:

The Famous Artists Cartoon Course at Comicrazys blog.

Enjoy while it lasts.

Big salute to Albert Dorne and Co. !

Book Review: The TOON Treasury of Classic Children's Comics

The TOON Treasury of Classic Children's Comics

Vintage "Comic" Comics



This is an awesome collecton of some of the nicest comics that one would have read and relished as a little kid.

First of all the book is very well put together physically.

* The size simply stuns you!... humongous book
* Stacked with page after...page after..page of full color comics
* Printed in an amazingly thick matt (non-glossy, non-shiny) paper
* Brings out the vividness of the pen/brush art and the true colors
* The soft off-white page color makes them as they appeared in the originals
* The binding is perfect, nice to grab and handle.
* There is enough margin space, and the author/story name is printed along

Other publishers should take a note from this book. The glossy/shiny papers that we have suddenly become fixated with, ruins the art.

This lovely collection includes comics from the 40/50s of
* Unca Scrooge
* Donald Duck
* Dennis the menace
* Little Archie
* Little Lulu
* Pogo
* Fox and Crow
* Captain Marvel

to name a few.

Each character is present in one,two or three stories max, and hence makes a nice mix of all the nice stories.

There are 67 stories in total grouped into five categories,
* Hey, Kids
* Funny Animals
* Fantasyland
* Story Time
* Wacky & Weird

This is a must for the oldtimers who want to get back in time to catch up on some of their best times, and this is awesome for newcomer kids(as well as adults ofcourse) to get introduced to some of the nice stories and comics of a simple, innocent and happy era.

Kudos to the editors and the publisher. we want to see more of these.

You can't go wrong with this one, that too with the steep discounted price!

This is an extract from my review at Amazon.com, You can find more of my reviews here.

Herge's Guide To Comic Book Compositon

This is an extract from the refreshing book on Herge's life , Herge: The Man Who Created Tintin.

1. Find a story line sturdy enough to hold for the whole course of the adventure. A simple chase connecting gags is not enough.

2. Find a story that is believable enough to seem true. Jot it down on paper, in twenty lines, maximum.

3. Divide up the story, panel by panel, plate by plate. Each page has to conclude with an element of suspense.

4. Penciling-in stage: sketch the figures with a cursory background drawn with 9-cm (3.54-in) squares on Steinbach paper measuring 51 by 36 cm (20 by 14 in) in size, within a useful format of 40 by 29.5 cm (15.75 by 11.6 in), which is to say twice as large as a book page. Divide the sheet into four strips of 9.5 by 29.5 cm (3.74 by 11.6 in ) each, separated by a blank space 6.5 cm 2.55 in) wide. (The blank areas were used as scrap paper, combining all the early versions. All sorts of notations were scribbled there: portraits, objects, landscapes, lists of names, addresses, and telephone numbers.)

5. Final drawings are copied square by square to offer a better selection and re framed and placed on another white page, which Will become the definitive plate. Touch-ups and final details are added. Copy is moved around. Herge ceaselessly sought simplification. is objective: hide the scaffolding.

6. Coloring stage: focus on the costumes and the background decor, relying on a solid base of documentation. Exactitude is required, as the settings (desert, sea, moon, jungle) aren't static.

7. The inking stage is done on Schoeller-Parole paper, with a Gillott's Inqueduct G-2 pen(made in England) of stainless steel, which can be cleaned in water and has a small ink reservoir. (Herge stocked up on these pens before the war. Thirty years later he still had a few. He used to sharpen them with a steel file to conserve them as long as possible.)

8. Photographed by the photo engraver, the black-and-white plate is transferred to transparent film accompanied by several proofs on blue-gray paper.

9. More coloring: the colors applied in flats do not take into account for bright colors, and, if necessary, gouache for opaque colors. (Herge established standard guidelines. For example, there were to be two superimposed layers for Tintin's sweater to bring out the color's full intensity.)

10. Set out the dialogues on the typewriter to gauge the exact number of letters for each vignette, to calculate, with the help of a grid, their position in the dialogue balloons. Draw in the letters. Lettering is delicate because it poses numerous problems. (At these times they also had to consider the English translators, who had to change the French Milou into "Snowy", the only acceptable name in five letters that would not exceed the line when Tintin spoke to his dog.)

11. Last, add the graphics of sound effects, which consist essentially of "Crack!" "Bang" "Bzzzz".