Catch Carlos Castellanos on YouTube

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1. Ted Slampyak

   This is really nice. A lot of fun. But it should say “aldo artist Carlos Castellanos has posted a video of him TRACING Baldo on YouTube.” the entire drawing is already laid out very lightly — you can see it on the first frames.

   You see this a lot on so-called tutorials about drawing. The prep work is done first, so the artist can get to the “glamor” part of putting it all together for the audience — like a cooking show where all the basting and marinading have been done beforehand.

   But speaking as a professional cartoonist myself (I draw the Little Orphan Annie strip — http://www.comicspage.com/annie/annie.html ) I think the real heart of the creative experience comes in those early stages, where you decide who should go where, how to construct a pose that conveys what you need in the space you’ve got. That’s the exciting part!

   Guess I need to make my own video…

2. Carlos Castellanos

   Hi Alan, thanks for the post and your great site.

   Cheers,
   Carlos

3. Mike Lester

   I don’t read the strip but I do know that most characters don’t have 6 fingers.

   ML

4. josh

   Great post.
   I am curious, Carlos: why do you sketch out characters, if you’re using a computer? You wouldn’t be able to erase the “pencil” line when you do your final drawing. Or do you use layers in Photoshop? Sketch it out on layer one, then final line on layer two.

5. Carlos Castellanos

   – Hi Ted,
   Thanks for your response. For clarification, this wasn’t intended as a “tutorial”, it was just a quick and fun response to readers who had questions of what it looked like drawing on my computer.

   I agree with you, the truly fun part is the initial ironing out the layout, blocking out scene and characters. I’m working on a more detailed video of my approach to that process.

   This clip used only one camera angle, and I ended up with just one recording. The most I had to do with it is speed it up a tad.

   In the more in depth video tutorials I’m working on, I’m trying to incorporate multiple angles, which means many more clips to string together and edit. This whole video thing is new to me so my biggest hurtles are time and the learning curve. But they’re a lot of fun to do and I look forward to sharing more of them soon.

   BTW- I love your work, and I for one would like to watch your working process captured on video.

   – Hi Mike,
   Holy smokes! I’ve watched The Princess Bride once to often. : )
   BTW- I’ve been a fan of your work for years. truly great work!

   – Hi Josh,
   Yes, I use PS, sketch on one layer and finalize on another. Lately I’ve been playing with placing my PS sketches into a Illustrator document and using the brush tool for final line art. It gives a smoother natural line flow without the little jitters I sometimes get in PS. Just depends on the look I’m after.

   Cheers,
   Carlos

6. Garey Mckee

   Interesting comments here. I always prefer initial sketches and roughs to the finish product. Try as you might, spontaneity and some degree of emotion is lost when you clean up a drawing. It’s that subtle flick of a line that can say more than volumes of text ever could. That’s why I love cartooning.

7. Rich

   Carlos, I like your style and characters. The music goes with it well too. Nice clip. You accomplish a lot with very simple shading as well. I like that effect!

   PS is a great tool for this sort of thing. Do you do your original sketch in PS or scan it in?

   Not to knit-pick, but did you get copyright permission to use the music or is it in the public domain? It does fit well with the pace of the sketch.

8. Ted Slampyak

   Carlos:

   Sorry if my first post was a bit of a vent. Your video was great, and you’re right, it’s not meant to be some tutorial. I’m just greedy, and whenever someone shows me an artist at work, I want more!

   Thanks for your kind words for my work. Yeah, now it’s on me, isn’t it? Now I have to do the video I said I wanted yours to be. Rats. I hate it when I can’t get away with double standards! Okay, I’ll have to get on that.