Read Drawabox Lesson 0 and adopt the 50% rule. Buy a fineliner pen and cheap paper.
Begin Phase 1 at two short sessions a week, always splitting time with fun cartoon doodling.
Order Brunetti’s Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice, Barry’s Making
Comics, and Mateu-Mestre’s Framed Ink now (~$70 total) — you won’t open them
for a while, but shipping takes time.
Start Lynda Barry’s 4-minute diary this week — it needs no drawing skill and runs
alongside everything else, for the whole course.
How you’ll know it’s time to move on
Past Phase 1–2 — your lines are noticeably more confident and a box or
cylinder “sits” believably in 3D. Don’t wait for perfection.
Cap your Drawabox investment at Lessons 0–2 plus a partial box challenge.
If boxes are killing your motivation, stop around 50 and move on.
Spend the bulk of your years in Phases 4–6 — gesture, character design,
comics. This is what actually makes a cartoonist.
Adjust as you go
Dreading practice? Increase the play half, drop the most tedious exercise, draw more of
your own characters.
Figures feel stiff or floaty? Double down on gesture (Phase 4) — the highest-leverage fix.
Already drawing confident shapes? Compress Phases 1–3 and jump toward gesture and
character design faster.