Perhaps you've thought of a clever cartoon, political or otherwise, but hesitated to take the leap for fear your characters or drawing prowess wouldn't measure up. Well, pixton.com, an online cartoon-creation outlet, should alleviate these concerns. It gives your creative instincts almost free reign to breathe life into the characters and comics that until now have only come to life in your mind. While several online sites allow you to create your own cartoons, I'll take you through cartoon creation on pixton.com, one of my favorite sites, and provide details on user friendly cartoon creation.
Instructions
1. First go to www.pixton.com, then click "Sign Up" at the top right of the screen. You'll need to choose a screen name, enter your email address and agree to the Terms and Conditions (which includes not making obscene gestures in cartoons).
2. Once you've finished the sign up process, you'll go to the Pixton home page. Choose "Create" on the left hand side of the screen. To begin your comic, you may either select "Quickie" or "Advanced." Selecting "Quickie" will let you jump right into the process. It allows you to select among several different three slide cartoon options each with a different background.
3. Once you select a scene, you may swap out the characters by choosing among a preset list of character options, including a variety of distinctive individual looks. Add characters like "liberal," "conservative," "psychiatrist," "Canadian," "ski bum" and dozens more.
4. After your characters are selected, you'll return to the comic slides where you can modify the character's movements, change their clothes, skin color, hair and other features. To do this, you select the box on the left hand side of the comic panel that allows you to alter the character and change facial expressions. Double clicking on a character will allow you to reposition them in a variety of preset poses (which you may then modify).
5. With your characters and scene selected, you may now add text to your comic strip. All you do is click inside the text bubble above the character's head. You can detach text bubbles from characters, reposition them or revert to thought bubbles all by double clicking on the bubble. After your text is in place, all you need to do is click "Publish" at the bottom of your comic. From there you will be able to share your comic with others via email or embed it on another website.
