Different cartooning styles… and developing your own. Hmm, I get so many questions about this, so here’s a quick insight via a recent Q & A…
Q: “Sometimes I hear about different cartooning styles. I know of manga, but there must be more different styles. For example: Guust (also known as Gaston); what style is that? Or Snoopy by Charles Schulz? How can I recognise the styles? [Is it even important?]”
A: There are so many different styles of cartoons. There are particular characters that many people that I work with recognise, but anyone’s cartoon exposure varies a lot depending on time periods, geographical areas and cultures.
Obviously US cartoon characters were ‘early to market’ in commercial animated films and syndicated strips, so many of us recognise characters from various Disney movies & Looney Tunes, Hanna-Barbera cartoons like Tom & Jerry or The Flintstones, the different Superheros, Hagar the Horrible & Garfield from the newspapers… the list goes on and on.
I grew up in Southern Africa with British ancestry, so I have memories of English cartoons like Giles and Rupert the Bear as well as Asterix and Tintin from Europe. I certainly recognise Guust as being created in what I think of as the “European” style of the time, which is dynamic and crisp with beautiful variable width outlines.
I don’t even know if there are specific names for those cartooning styles— proof that I am not an academic cartoonist 😉
In my experiences, different cartooning styles names aren’t terribly important
What is important is exploring and discovering what you like.
Ultimately, we each want our own unique style, and your own style evolves over time, much like a musician’s style.
I’m a huge Adele fan and when you hear her speak about her musical influences that shaped ‘developing her own voice’ she lists them by name (not by genre!) — The Spice Girls, Lauryn Hill, Gabrielle, Jeff Buckley, Etta James, Dusty Springfield, Roberta Flack, Amy Winehouse…
The list is long and while I’m clueless about music genres, even I know there’s a wide variety of ‘categories’ in there. She was absorbing ideas and building a love of music starting from what she listened to with her mum as a tiny child to what she discovered herself through her tween and teen years.
The bottom line is that over time, just like a musician finding their voice, your cartooning will pick up what you love from many different cartooning styles. You will mix and match influences (just like a musician does) and come up with your own unique look.
So that is my A to the Q about different cartooning styles, how to recognise them (or not) and why I think they are only important in so far as they inspire you in some way.