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Cartoonist Jack Elrod at work. Pictured is a Sunday color page of the comic strip Mark Trail.

A cartoonist is an artist who specializes in drawing cartoons. Traditionally much of this work was, and still is, humorous, and is intended primarily for entertainment purposes. Many traditional print cartoons are of the single-panel variety, and are published in print media of various kinds, for example, in magazines such as the New Yorker and Punch.

The term cartoonist is also applied to those who create more serious editorial or political cartoons, as well as those who create comic strips, comic books and graphic novels.

The word is sometimes used for those who create animated cartoons including manga, although a person working designing the visual part of animated cartoons is perhaps more commonly referred to as an animator.

A cartoonist traditionally sketches his work out roughly in pencil first, before going over the sketches in black ink, using either a brush or a metal nibbed pen. Cartoonists whose work is intended for online publication increasingly work in digital media. Cartooning in the sense of animation is used in animated feature films, some television shows. It is also sometimes used in regular movies for special sequences such as dreams or fantasy scenes, or for the title sequence.

Comic strips have traditionally been associated with main-stream newspapers. Such strips are distributed by syndicates such as the Universal Press Syndicate, United Media or the King Features syndicate. The Sunday cartoon strips, which are colored, often go to a coloring company such as American Color before they are published. Comic strips can also be collected in books.

Some comic strip creators publish in the alternative press or on the internet. Comic-strip artists may also sometimes work in book-length form, creating graphic novels. One of Walt Disney's most famous sketches was titled "Alice In Wonderland". This was turned into an extremely successful movie, and play.

Large comic book publishers (such as Marvel or DC) utilize teams of cartoonists to produce the art (typically separating pencil work, inking, and lettering while the color is added digitally by colorists). When a consistent artistic style is wanted among different cartoonists (such as Archie Comics), character model sheets may be used as reference.

Calum MacKenzie in his preface to the exhibition catalogue The Scottish Cartoonists published by the Glasgow Print Studio Gallery (1979) defined the selection criteria as: "the difference between a cartoonist and an illustrator was the same as the difference between a comedian and a comedy actor - the former both deliver their own lines and take full responsibility for them, the latter could always hide behind the fact that it was not his entire creation."

Cartoonists working for the print media create single panel gag cartoons and comic strips. In the daily papers in the USA, cartoon work from the funny pages falls into recognizable genres or categories.

• Single panel cartoons ranging from The Far Side by Gary Larson to Bil Keane's Family Circus

• Comic strips that are solely humorous, including Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz

• Editorial comic strips such as Doonesbury by Gary Trudeau

• Adventure comic strips such as Superman by various authors and artists and Prince Valiant by Hal Foster

• Semi-political comic strips include Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis

For more information see comic strip.

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