(This excerpt is from the Pose Drawing Sparkbook, a super-charged sketchbook designed to help you put more life and personality into your drawings. Think of it as acting exercises for your sketchbook.Read other snippets here and here.) Don’t limit your acting to just the face and hands. The head makes up less than ten percent of a person’s body. […]

(This excerpt is from the Pose Drawing Sparkbook, a super-charged sketchbook designed to help you put more life and personality into your drawings. Think of it as acting exercises for your sketchbook. Read other snippets here and here.) Action Reveals Character (Excerpt) Once you decide who each character is, you need to find ways to introduce them to the audience. […]

One of the best-kept secrets in the freelancing community is the HOW Creative Freelancer Conference. I’ve attended it several times and always come away with my head swimming with new thoughts, ideas, and advice on how to work smarter, treat my clients better, and as a result boost my income. It’s not an exaggeration to […]

As I write this, independent creatives from all over the country are gathered in San Francisco for the Creative Freelancer Conference, which is part of a larger event known as HOW Design Live. I’ve attended several times and it’s always been worth my while. I’ve learned a great deal, made some valuable connections, picked up […]

Got some money burning a hole in your pocket but nothing to spend it on? I’m here to help. First, I’ve just updated my Cedric Hohnstadt Recommends store on Amazon.com. Lots of books, DVDs, and other resources that I give a big thumbs up to. Full disclosure: You don’t pay any extra by buying through my […]

A popular exercise for cartoonists and character designers is to randomly pick from a list of characteristics (occupations, personality types, animal types, emotions, etc.) and then sketch a cartoon character based on them. Some artists, such as Chris Ayers, actually keep a Ziploc bag full of little slips of paper with such traits written on […]