Sergio Aragones Quotes

In the case of 'Sweet Tooth,' and in the case of a lot of stuff I do, it all starts with the image. It may be something I sketch in my sketchbooks - something that reoccurs in the sketchbooks. Eventually, a character or story line starts to grow out of that.

You can write a script, but that's just a starting point as a cartoonist. The heart of the process comes when you start to draw it, and you work out how to lay the page out, how best to tell the story.

On the 'Tom and Jerry's,' Joe and I would sit across a desk from each other and develop the story. Joe would do the storyboard and I'd do the timing and the direction of the animation.

Cartooning really is just designing.

One of the things you have to be able to do, as a comic strip artist, is to draw things repeatedly from a variety of angles, so you need references, and you find the best picture you can.

My drawing, like that of most cartoonists, is intended first of all to be functional: to create believable space and communicate information. My strongest point in drawing has always been my ability to show characters' nonverbal communication through facial expression and posture.

Throughout my career, when I was finished with the drawing for one film I would go up to the story department and help develop sequences. Sometimes these were for scenes that I would animate later on.

I'm a big illustration and comic book fan. In my eyes, comic books and illustration are the same kind of art forms.

I always start drawing any job by planning out to some degree the locales and trying to nail the characters. If they're existing characters, I'll draw them several times on rough paper just to get a feeling for them. The ideal when you're drawing a comic is to have everything in your head, not to have to refer to notes.

For a long time I wanted to be a comic strip artist but when I started doing them in my teens they were getting really elaborate with tons of poses and a lot of information.

Making cartoons means very hard work at every step of the way, but creating a successful cartoon character is the hardest work of all.

Cartoonists' dirty secret is that we tend to come up with stories that involve things that are really fun to draw.

In terms of animation, animators are actors as well. They are fantastic actors. They have to draw from how they feel emotionally about the beat of a scene that they're working on. They work collaboratively.

I thought about trying to do a strip. I even tried to do it, but I felt I didn't have the voice. Even though I liked that form, I didn't think I thought in the form of the three panels.

Doing graphic novels is cool! It's fun! You get to write something, and then see it visually page by page, panel by panel, working with the artist, you get to see it fleshed out.

Usually when you're doing concepts for a character, you just try a couple different things to see what sticks.

Cartooning at its best is a fine art. I'm a cartoonist who works in the medium of animation, which also allows me to paint my cartoons.

The other thing that I started doing for myself was, I went through my diary of ideas that I keep and made sure that the translation of the comic to the movie was good.

Traditionally, the only way I come up with cartoons is by sitting at my desk and thinking.

I am quite convinced now... that the actual training of drawing cartoons - which is, of course, my style - led to my producing Spot. Cartoons must be very simple and have as few words as possible, and so, too, must the 'Spot' books.

A lot of the time in animation is spent getting the story right - that's something you can't rush.

If it's just brushstrokes wrestling around, it isn't much of a picture book, is it? There still has to be a picture. And maybe it needs to be a picture of a dog named Daisy or a little girl riding a bike. So I have to be careful before I get too carried away in the manner itself.

I've heard that Alfred Hitchcock said that by the time he was ready to shoot a film, he didn't even want to do it any more because he'd already had all of the fun of working it out. It's the same thing with these Frank comics.

Costume design is so important and really helpful, and I really love that aspect of character development, just figuring it out.

Beetle Bailey is actually me, in uniform. I've got about 20 characters, and they're all after friends of mine.