John K on Character Design

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“John K” (short for Kricfalusi) is the creator of Ren and Stimpy, and a prolific blogger. I’m not a big fan of Ren and Stimpy, and John’s abstract drawing style (shown above) doesn’t really appeal to me. But his blog is terrific! His posts about art, animation, and cartooning are very thoughtful and filled with great images and clips that support his point of view. He has a lot of opinions and is not afraid to ruffle a few feathers. I don’t always agree with him, but he always makes me think. I recently added John’s link to my list of Art Blogs over to the right. (The abundance of images makes his blog slow to load, so be patient.)

Last month John did a great little post about what (in his view) makes for good character design. Well worth reading:

Character Design Primer

I decided to do a search of the rest of his blog looking for other posts about character design. After typing in the keywords, here’s some of the results that came back:

Ed Benedict Article From Animation Blast

Stock Disney Charactes – The Bland Lead

What Makes a Character a Character? (Part 1)

Stock Disney Characters – The Gay Arabic Villain

When Generic Is A Good Thing

Constructing Bugs Bunny

Ramjet Construction

(EDIT: Here’s more John K on Character Design.)