What The Hell Is Wrong With The Pancakes Cartoon: Inking and Composition

I actually liked Lucy's face in this drawing, but the inked version looks a little off

     I was completely ignorant of the idea of line work when I was working on this cartoon. In fact, it wasn't until earlier this year when one of my art school professors  pointed it out to me that I started to look into it.

For whatever reason, the original JPEGS are lighter than what showed up in the final cartoon

     All the lines were the same width, with no thought put into them. The construction was already flat as all hell, but the even line width only made it worse. Now having better line work won't fix a poorly constructed drawing, it's a good start. And if you do have a decently constructed drawing, it's a nice finish.

I made this for a shirt for one of my cousins for Christmas, but it won't come in until January. Thanks Walmart.

     Using the drawing from the last post as an example again, I really thought about how thick and thin the lines should be. The outlines of the form are slightly thicker than the lines that make the smaller features. The left arm has a slightly thicker outline than the right arm to show that the left arm is closer. Note that they're only a slight variation in the line widths because the figure's not too spread out, and it makes the image read as a whole, while still looking solid... But enough with this. Let's get back to some more self-deprecation.

Characters smack dab in the middle of the screen? Boring

     The composition was also an afterthought. I didn't think of how the characters related to each other or the background. They merely stand in front of the background and when there's multiple characters on screen,  they merely stand in proximity to each other.

Cramped areas surrounded by sparse space

     Backgrounds have always been my weakest subject, which is why I had Justin do them all (What a pal). What I was saying about positive and negative space in the last post also applies to composition. Looking at the still above, the shapes and forms of Harold and Tommy don't mesh together, they're just around each other. I should have zoomed in a little closer since there's no need for all that empty space above Tommy's head. The steps and the bushes have all been squashed to the bottom of the page with no idea of how the image would read as a whole.

An example of composition done right

     Using Ren and Stimpy (one of my favorite cartoons) as an example, the frame above does as good job of making the characters relate to each other on a 2d plane. Note how the arched man frames Stimpy, making them both easy to read. And the characters themselves make good use of positive and negative space in the designs. (Except for Stimpy's eye. I don't know what's going on there.) This makes whole image feel nice and balanced, which makes it interesting to look at.
     This is what The Pancakes Cartoon needed so much more of, and you can see that I experimented with it a little bit in my Final Judgement of Baghead comic (http://bubscartoons.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-final-judgement-of-baghead.html).
     And seeing how I mentioned that Justin did all of the backgrounds, I figure the next post would be a good place to talk about the collaboration that went into it. After all, he only did about half the work.