With plentiful illustrations and instructive text, this book teaches its readers how to begin drawing cartoon figures, as well as how to animate them, bringing them to life with movement and expressions shown in their faces and body positioning. This is a great little book for beginning cartoonists!

'Cartooning: Animation 1 with Preston Blair' from Walter Foster is a kind of classic from a company that puts out excellent art instruction books.

Preston Blair was an animator in the classic days of animation and worked for the major animation studios like Disney and MGM. Here he shows the steps to creating loveable characters, starting with how to construct the head, then moving on to facial expression. Squash and stretch and line of motion are covered as well as movement.

It's called Animation 1, but I think the reader should know that this dives in pretty quickly. I think figure drawing could be learned from this book, but some rudimentary figure and shape drawing is probably a precursor. His example characters have a familiarity, and I understand that his early versions of this book included likenesses from the studios until he was told not to use them. It's a solid instructional book and I'm glad I got to read it.

I received a review copy of this ebook from Quarto Publishing Group - Walter Foster, and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this ebook.

Sehr schön gestaltet, stufenweise aufgebaut, um die Entwicklungsschritte zu sehen und nachzuarbeiten. Allerdings nicht für Anfänger geeignet.

This book would be really helpful for all beginners and amateur cartoonists. I thought the book would introduce actual digital animation, but it was about drawing cartoon characters.

The book covers basically everything you need to know about cartoon animation sketching. As always, I was glad for the tools information in the beginning. I am really grateful for being introduced to line of action approach to drawing, it has made my sketching a lot more easier. The figures and steps are easy to follow. I wish there were more techniques though, like how to actually construct the basic blocks of a figure instead of just telling us that we should.

Either way, I found this book really useful. The drawing samples cover every possible aspect of a character's features cartoonists would encounter. Rather than focusing on just figures, we get to see all possible perspectives; from movement to facial expression of all types of characters. I really enjoyed drawing along and would definitely read more of Blair's work.

A variety of examples on the different topics - line of action, facial expressions for example. Help with how to draw movement and building your character. this one is more of a step by step book from Walter Foster.

Great breakdown of materials needed, etc. Definitely an intermediate level book, but also very topic specific (appropriately). An excellent resource for anyone interested in cartoon or animation drawing.

A great book of techniques but none of my attempts ever come out looking as lifelike and animated. I guess you've either got talent or you haven't. I think I remember seeing some of these techniques and pages in a lot of Disney's animation books as well as Christopher Hart. But it is a lovely book and one well worth adding to your shelves.

This is a short book, just 46 pages, but a lot of practical information is packed in. It covers how to make expressions and depict movement as well as getting feature ratios into traditional cartooning perspective.

A few familiar characters show up among the drawings as well as some basic animal character shapes and variations. Altogether a very good resource for the beginning cartoonist.

This book is a really good resource to learn how to bring a character to alive on paper. The author breaks down the ways in which the underlying frame shapes change when a facial expression changes or when you are depicting movement. There are breakdowns of different types of movement, different ways to draw a character to appear in a certain way (pugnacious, cute, screwball, goofy).

There is a section on movement of 2 legged and 4 legged creatures to help you work through it. Two particularly interesting parts were how to make a face look when saying a certain letter, to help with matching voices to speech and a page on drawing hands. The good things about the book is that it really focuses on what brings an image to life.

Unfortunately for me, the bad thing is there is not a lot of detail drawing steps. Most of the samples jump from the basic "round shapes together" image to a completed character head. I am not capable of making that leap yet, but i might come back to this book after some more practice. You can see by my attempts in the photo!

That is probably a good thing for more seasoned artists who can skip the beginner steps, if that is you this is your book!

Thanks to the publisher and net galley for a digital ARC of the book to review.

Cartooning: Animation 1 with Preston Blair is a great book for beginners or school classes. It offers good information and techniques.

This short yet complete book on cartooning animation, after a short introduction, goes directly to the point with several practical step by step single page example, like The “Goofy” Character, The “Pugnacious” Character and The Walk & The Run.

I received a copy of the book as Netgalley reviewer

This is an excellent addition to the drawing step-by-step range. It has all the basics, so it works as a stand alone, but some artists may benefit from the whole collection.
Being a book about animated characters, this would lend itself to someone wanting to develop their computer skills.

Cartooning: Animation 1 with Preston Blair
Learn to animate step by step by Preston Blair is a book I requested from NetGalley and the review is voluntary. I like to try to draw realistically but for stress relief I love books like this! No, I am not trying to get into cartooning, I just want to have fun! This book is sure to provide both! It teaches the ways of cartooning and fun!
There are lots of step-by-step tutorials and added information on facial expressions, learning the cartooning body language, and much more! A fun book and great starting point for beginning cartoonists!

The book is detailed but I don't think it for beginners. It does provide a brief explanation of tools and techniques to use when drawing cartoons. The illustrations are lovely but like previously stated rather advanced. It was very informational. It provides how to create basic shapes but not how to create details in the drawings.

Cartooning – Animation 1 by Preston Blair
Learn to Animate Step by Step

I remember watching cartoons and hearing about how they were created one frame at a time and how meticulous and accurate the artists had to be to string those frames together in a way that would create action. Reading this book reminded me of that but also made me realize that there is a lot more involved that I had not thought of. Sure, we think of facial expressions to show thoughts and feelings but to think of making the mouth shape accurate for what is being said? Hadn’t thought of that at all. I learned a new way to show faces from a variety of angles, how to use circles in creating characters, how to...well...there were many tips and tricks as well as terms that were shared in this book and I learned a lot and enjoyed reading it. I would love to have this book available to use should I ever take up cartooning!

Thank you to NetGalley and Quarto Publishing Group – Walter Foster for the ARC – This is my honest review.

5 Stars

This is a great primer for anyone looking to learn how to draw cute, classic cartoon style characters in motion. I haven't done any drawing in the last five or so years, but following along, I felt I could master a lot of the techniques presented. While I was hoping for more on actual character design instead of "cute" and "pugnacious" archetype pages, I did find a lot of use in the detailed and fascinating motion studies of different cartoon bodies. Running, jumping, sneaking, movements of two-legged and four-legged bodies...the book covered it.

I'd recommend for artists who are either just starting or who are picking up drawing after an extended break.

My Review

Cartooning: Animation 1 teaches you the basics of cartoon animation. It shows you how to create shapes, movement and features true to cartoons.

Wow, was this a great book to learn how to draw cartoons. As the book promised I learned to bring my drawings to life. Since trying several of the projects I have shared my final designs with friends to their delight.

Very easy to follow instructions, and especially enjoyed the side-by-side comparisons. This helped me clearly see where I could easily make mistakes.

Although I know necessary, the only thing I found a little too long was the beginning introduction.

Overall, I loved this book and anyone interested in learning to draw cartoons should definitely purchase this book.

​I was provided this book for free in exchange for my honest opinion.

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this book for anyone who loves a good, well-written tutorial for drawing cartoon. 📕👍🏼

I GIVE IT A 5 STAR: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Cartooning: Animation 1 with Preston Blair is a tutorial guide to series line drawn cartoon style characters. Released 7th May 2019 by Quarto on their Walter Foster imprint, it's 40 pages and available in paperbound format. Artist/inspiration Preston Blair's iconic style will be instantly recognizable to anyone who has ever watched a classic cartoon from Disney, Tex Avery's MGM, or Hanna-Barbera. It's very nice to see his work being presented in an accessible format to a new generation of art students.

Roughly 10% of the page content is used in the introduction and techniques chapter. There's a general tools and materials intro which leads directly into the unit chapters showing how to draw different units (heads) as well as tutorials for changing the basic shape and perspective (squashing, elongating, facial expressions etc).
The tutorials show action and position through simplified line drawings in sequence, animation style. The artist provides helpful diagrams showing both the incorrect and corrected positions to illustrate movement and follow through. I found those very helpful. There are times when the student knows that a drawing isn't quite right but can't put their finger on exactly what is wrong. These side by side comparisons help.

The simplified series drawings are followed by several character type tutorials showing different positioning, anatomy, facial expressions and ratios for 'pugnacious', 'cute', 'screwball' and other characters.

Approximately 25% of the page content contains 'flip book' style series drawings showing range of movement, with characters sneaking, skipping, running, walking etc. This includes 2 and 4 legged characters. These series are packed in 4 or more per page and are very simplified. There are also several specific step by step tutorials that cover several pages showing individual characters sneaking, running, etc.

There's also a very useful tutorial on mouth and face anatomy while speaking. Different mouth and face positions are shown for individual letters and words.

The book is clearly aimed at students of animation, but I can see it being very useful for anyone who wishes to learn to draw in that classic animation cartoon style.

Five stars, lots of info here.