(suspenseful music) - We're traveling back in time to when dinosaurs roamed the earth.

This is "Cartoon Academy".

Stay tuned.

(dinosaur roars) We're gonna draw two dinosaurs: an apatosaurus and a pterodactyl.

Stay tuned.

We're gonna start with our pterodactyl.

It's gonna be drawn in the upper right hand corner.

We're gonna start with the eyes.

First, an oval.

Right next to that, we're gonna put a letter C, a line across for the eyelids and then the pupils, one and two.

Now for the beak.

Starting from the base of this eye, we come out and up to a point, back in and add a dash.

Down, back in.

And now we're gonna follow that, we're gonna come out, in and down, up and then around to add the neck right there.

we're gonna go back up to the top of the head.

Starting right between the eyes, up and back in with a curved line.

Now for the cheeks.

Down and out, and in.

For the neck, curved line and a second curved line.

Now we're gonna add the body.

Come down, around, out and in, and then up.

For the wings, up, and then we're gonna add a talon or claw.

One, two.

Down, point, up and then in and connect back to the body.

I'm gonna add the membrane.

That's a little skin that forms over the wings so he can fly.

It's just a letter M. The other wing is sort of tucked right back behind it, right here.

We come out, add that talon and down.

Now to add the legs and feet.

That's a lesser than symbol, and then we'll repeat that.

We do it one more time.

Now the talons.

Out, point, down, point.

It looks like a letter W. And then add one more.

Down, point, letter W, out and in.

Now we're gonna shade in the mouth and add a little bit of the tongue there, right like that, and then shade in everything else.

Lastly for our pterodactyl, we wanna add the eyebrows.

There we go.

Now we're gonna give 'em a friend.

We're gonna add an apatosaurus.

Apatosaurus is a very long neck dinosaur, so we have to think about our composition.

Composition is where we place everything on the page.

We have to be able to place this long neck, large body and long tail.

So we have to work out how we're gonna place everything very carefully.

Since it's a long neck, we're gonna start up very high on our page.

We're gonna start with the eyes.

An O shape or oval, and a letter C backwards shape.

Add a pupil here and a pupil here.

And now for the nose and snout.

Down, round and up, and stop.

A little curved line for the cheek.

One, two lines right here.

And then the nostrils, one and two.

Let's finish up the head.

We're gonna add the lower lip and then a jaw line.

Now the brow.

The brow is the part above the eyes.

And that's gonna lead right into the neck.

We're gonna pause right there.

So this gives us an idea of the scale of the dinosaurs.

Scale is another word for size, and there are lots of ways to measure scale.

We might measure the size of something using inches or meters or yards.

In cartoons, we measure by the size of the head.

That tells us how tall the character is.

So for example, our pterodactyl is two heads tall.

One, two.

Our other dinosaur here, the apatosaurus, is going be about one, two, three, almost four heads tall.

So that's how we measure the scale.

It gives us an idea of the size and the characters in relation to one another.

So let's add the neck.

Down and then curve up slightly.

Let's follow that.

We're gonna come down, and this time we continue down just a little bit further.

Now for the back.

We arch up, down, add a little line right there.

Next we're gonna add the legs.

Letter V, down, around and out, up and in, and add a little crease or fold right there.

The other leg, we're gonna actually see the bottom of it.

That shows us a little bit of depth and perspective.

Come down, and then we add a zero, and then follow that back up.

Good.

Now for the hind legs or back legs.

There's that letter V again, down, over and up.

Don't quite connect it, 'cause we need to add the tail.

The underbelly is a line across like so.

Down, out, in.

The toenails is the letter M. One, two, three, four.

Now for the long tail.

We come up, around, point and then follow it back in, and it just connects right to the dinosaur like that.

I've often wondered how long dinosaurs live.

It turns out it's about the same as short dinosaurs.

This is a very long dinosaur.

We then add a little bit of our ground surface, just some grass like this.

And then because our dinosaur is so big, he casts a little bit of a shadow here, just like so.

That's it.

There are your dinosaurs.

Sign your name.

Take pride in your work.

I hope you enjoyed learning how to draw a pterodactyl and apatosaurus.

I'll see you next time, so stay tuned.

(dinosaur roars) (majestic music)