The simple, colourful animation style known as “limited animation” made famous by the Hanna-Barbera and Filmation cartoon studios in the 1960s has enjoyed something of a renaissance recently. Limited animation was developed due to tight budgets and tight schedules, and contrasts with traditional animation by consisting of stylized characters utilizing the minimum of movement. This reduces the number of frames that are required for an animation, and thus reduces production costs.
This emphasis on simplicity over reality suits the demanding schedule of modern independent animation studios, and with the advent of Adobe Flash, many studios have revived this retro style, using modern technology to recreate limited animation techniques. Such cartoons as Ren and Stimpy, The Powerpuff Girls and Dexter's Laboratory are all examples of modern limited animations.
Cartoon Cool – How to Draw New Retro Style Characters by Christopher Hart offers instruction on how to design and draw this type of stylized cartoon character. The book contains 7 chapters, concentrating on particular aspects of the retro style as used in animation today:
- Retro Basics
- The Retro Family
- Cool Retro Action Poses
- The Retro Family Pet
- Cool Retro Teenagers
- Pretty Retro Women
- Cool Retro Scenes
Retro Basics
This chapter of the book is a primer on drawing the basic shapes that create the retro character. Hart starts with the head, and works his way through the facial features, expressions, body types and how to draw the character's hands and feet.
Hart also demonstrates the differences between the traditional mode of character drawing and the new retro style. This is a device he uses to great effect throughout the book, as the simplicity of retro animation and cartoon character design is often completely at odds with the teachings of conventional animation.
The Retro Family
This part of the book concentrates on the characters that make up a cartoon family, a trope used in many popular modern cartoons, such as The Simpsons and Family Guy, and in limited animation originals that inspired the new retro look such as The Jetsons.
Hart himself describes the dysfunctional retro family unit as: “The keystone of so many funny comic strips, animated TV shows, and comic books... Think of it as the quintessential 1960s sitcom family – but with each member suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder”. Highlights of this chapter include “The Persistence of Dad”, and “Danger – Mom Attempting to Be Cool”.
Cool Retro Action Poses
By far the most useful chapter to the animator, in this section, Hart explains through example the differences between traditional fluid animation and the conservation of energy and caricaturing of action inherent to the retro style. Of particular interest to those new to the retro look will be the use of introverted poses – distinctly frowned upon in classic cartooning as introverted poses make for poor silhouettes, but used commonly and to great effect in limited animation.
The Retro Family Pet
No cartoon family is complete without a pet, so Hart uses this association to cover drawing retro animals, again with useful comparisons to traditionally drawn counterparts. Hart's own skills as a new retro character artist are exemplified in this section of the book. From the cutest puppy to the most sinister Siamese cats, these illustrations demonstrate what can be achieved using Hart's basic drawing techniques.
Cool Retro Teenagers
Hart gives special attention to the new retro treatment of the teenager, as this is a particularly popular central character in many animations. The processes covered in the first chapter are refined here to flesh out the idealized form of the retro teen.
Pretty Retro Women
The new retro look tends to exaggerate the strange and over-emphasize features for comic effect. However, this can lead to difficulties when designing a retro character that is supposed to look attractive. In this section, Hart demonstrates how to draw appealing retro females by stylistically exaggerating the femininity of a character.
Cool Retro Scenes
In this final chapter, Hart introduces environments for characters to inhabit. This is not a step-by-step instruction as to how to construct a scene. Rather, Hart provides a number of different locations and scenarios and offers suggestions on how to recreate his effects, but not on how to fully recreate his environments.
While this could be considered a weakness in Hart's teaching style, it is actually Hart's great strength. Hart expects the budding cartoonist to use their own imagination, and rather than imitate other artist's work, to try new approaches and hone their own style. Cartoon Smart demonstrates ample practical examples to allow the student of new retro character design to absorb the required processes, and concentrate on making retro-flavoured cartoons instead of labouring for long hours over the finer elements of technique.
- Cartoon Cool – How to Draw New Retro Style Characters by Christopher Hart
- Available from Watson-Guptill Publications
- 112 Pages, Soft Cover
- Originally Published March 2005
- ISBN 0-8230-0587-9
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