Captionless Cartoons
Captionless Cartoons
Captionless cartoons are exactly just that…cartoons without the caption underneath. I’ve had a tendency to appreciate these kinds of single panel gag cartoons, simply because they explain themselves to the viewer and reader. I think a lot of people appreciate that. As a creative, I know I do…and the ideas have come relatively easy to me in this respect. Remember the comic strip Henry? I think you get the idea even better when I mention that syndicated cartoon feature.
Creating something that tells a story so to speak, seems to be much more fun to
create, from an artistic standpoint. Once I rough sketch a concept and look at it for a while and decide whether it has merit to continue, I’ll ink the cartoon in and then let it dry a little while and go back and clean up the image with an eraser and use white out to fix any excessive inked in areas and scan it into Photoshop.
Even a cartoon that shows something self-explanatory like the newspaper headline in the cartoon sample here, makes for an ideal type of no-caption cartoon.
So long as there isn’t a line underneath the cartoon that compensates for a character who has to speak in the cartoon itself, the captionless cartoon is one that stands on it’s own merits.
Various samples of captionless cartoons
I am also including a small sampling here to provide a better insight into what my favorite type of captionless cartoons are. One of them appeared in the Enquirer which I included in a previous ToonBlog and that publication liked that kind of cartoon.
Samples Of Captionless Cartoons Below!
No matter the slant or genre of cartoon I focused on selling, I have always made it a point to concentrate on creating these types of cartoons for the various editors I’ve submitted my work to. As I have said, they are a nice diversion and you will challenge yourself in the way yo craft the layout of your initial rough sketch and how to include the props and characters within the overall “visual” of the image.
This in turn, is a way of honing your drawing skills and managing to improve your drawing and style of cartooning!
