It’s been some time since I’ve written about working out. Actually weightlifting and bodybuilding have been a big part of my life for over 5 years now, every since I saw how fat and out of shape I was at age 36 and decided to do something about it.

My trainer, Ryan Branson, left Lifetime Fitness a little less than two years ago and after a year or so of being part of an independent co-op sort of gym just opened his own studio in Eagan, MN. It’s a smallish space right now but there are plans to expand when another tenant next to him vacates their part of the building in a year or so. Ryan is a great trainer, who has kept me focused on my goals and kept me from injuring myself by working around my various ailments and past injuries. No mean feat as I have bad knees, a partially torn rotator cuff and I.T. band, barbed bone spurs in my AC shoulder joints and tendinitis in my wrists and biceps tendons. Despite all that, we maintain a 4 days a week rotating periodization program that changes frequently to keep the body guessing and continues to make progress.

Here are some pics of Ryan’s new studio, Renegade Personal Training and Fitness:

The equipment is necessarily a little limited right now due to space, but it’s got all the important stuff. We have to be creative in order to do some things, but that can lead to new gains as you use angles and movements that your body has not gotten used to or even attempted before. I did front squats for the first time last week, and I’ve got the bruises on my front shoulders to prove it.

Right now we are at the end of a mass building phase, one of three or four I undergo every year to bulk up and build new muscle. That usually involves heavy weights and lots of big, compound movements, as well as a lot of calories. It must be working, as I am currently weighing in at 242 lbs… my all time heaviest. I wish I could say it was all muscle, but there is always a certain amount of fat gain as well when you bulk up. I’ve got a little more muffin-top than 6 pack right now, not that I ever get cut enough to have a 6 pack anyway. I hate dieting. We will probably follow up with a short transition program of two weeks or so before doing an endurance phase where I will drop a lot of bodyfat and some muscle as well, but the net gain will be a certain amount of permanent muscle (at least as long as I continue to work out) and hopefully less bodyfat overall.

Here’s an example of a workout from my current routine that I did yesterday. This was a chest/back/triceps “push-pull” workout where we superset (doing one exercise immediately after another with almost no break) a “push” movement for chest with a “pull” movement for back. I’ve got pictures of some of the movements.

Superset:
- Bench Press: 4 sets x 8 reps
- Pull Ups: 4 sets x 8-12 reps

Flat bench press

Pull up at the top of the movement

Superset:
- Dumbbell Incline Press: 4 sets x 8 reps
- Lat Pulldowns: 4 sets x 8 reps

Incline Dumbbells using a decline ab bench!

Nice face, Popeye!

Lat Pulldown- top of movement

… at the bottom. Looks like I am leaning too far back.

Superset:
- Dumbell Flys on Ball: 4 sets x 8 reps
- Bent Over Dumbbell Rows with twist: 4 sets x 8 reps

Dumbbell Flys on the ball… good core movement as well as for chest

Bent Over Dumbbell Rows- Bottom of movement. The “twist” is when I pull
the dumbbells up to my chest. I start with my knuckles toward the mirror,
then I twist my hands so I end up with my knuckles facing out to each side.

Superset:
- Tricep Rope Extensions- 4 sets x 8 rep
- Overhead Tricep Dumbbell Presses- 4 sets x 8 reps
- Dumbbell Shrugs- 4 sets x 8 reps

I usually do deadlifts as well on back day and do some abs at the end but I had to cut out after an hour today to get some work done for a deadline. I try to never skip a workout but I do sometimes have to compromise them to limit my time spent in the gym if I am up against the Dreaded Deadline Demon.

Weightlifting is a passion and a way of life. You have to be committed to put up with the pain and soreness that is inevitable if you want to make gains. I find it both rewarding and a great stress reliever.

Tags: bodybuilding, weightlifting, workout

Artwork © E.C. Publications and MAD Magazine

Will Elder, one of the defining artists of the early MAD comic and long time collaborator of Harvey Kurtzman, passed away Thursday morning of unspecified causes at the age of 86. Elder had been ill for some time battling Parkinson’s disease and had difficulty signing his name let alone drawing, according to a communication I had recently with a friend of Will’s. It goes without saying that a true pioneer of cartooning left us yesterday.

All cartoonists get asked about who their major influences are, and among the usual suspects it sometimes surprises people when I name Will Elder near the top of my list. The reason for the surprise is that there is almost no similarity in my work and Elder’s… at least not on the surface. His influence for me was more about his humor and his approach to it. He used all manner of tools to create multiple layers of humor in everything he did. He could “sell the gag” like no other, making the written jokes funnier with his storytelling and imparting of the essential information in a way that rang clear with readers. He crammed his panels with multiple background gags and visual humor, some related to the story and some total non-sequiturs, that required readers to reread a story several times to make sure they didn’t miss any gags. That technique, coined the “Chicken Fat School of Art” (apparently so named because in the depression era chicken fat was added to many a dish to make it more filling) became a staple for MAD. More than anything, Elder just drew FUNNY. His drawings all by themselves could make you laugh. He had a way with expression, action and energy that created drawings that were just plain hilarious.

Elder was not only a master cartoonist but also a fantastic illustrator, and some of his best pieces for MAD were the parodies he did of famous magazine and other print ads that were expertly executed in various styles. He could draw anything, and it showed in the composition and layouts of even his more “simple” cartoons.

I often think of Elder’s work when I am laying out parodies or other cartoon art for MAD and other clients. I try to bring the multiple “Chicken Fat” layers of humor especially to my MAD work, but I also try and make my individual illustrations stand on their own in the funny department. If the image itself is funny, then it only makes the humor of the writing and story that much more effective. Elder wrote the book on that, and if I can one day be considered a pale shadow of his skill in cartooning, I will consider myself successful beyond measure.

There will be many, many tributes written on the internet in the comings days. I’d point you to this one by comic writer and blogger extraordinare Mark Evanier, who had the pleasure of interviewing Elder twice, I assume once being for his excellent book “MAD ART”. He also got to meet him in person, something I will never now be able to do. I’d also point you to this article from Journalista!, which has some great stories about Will as well as a lot of links to other tributes and sources of information about his life and work.

Coincidentally, my buddy Keelan Parham sent me this link a few days ago to an about to be released slipcase collection of the complete run of the rare HUMBUG Magazine, which features Elder and Kurtzman, as well as Jack Davis, Al Jaffee and Arnold Roth. A definite must for the bookcase.

Tags: MAD, tribute, Will Elder

Going through some old files the other day I came across these illustrations from an old job I did for Topps candy company:

They are a good example of how odd product and advertising jobs can be, and how you can go all the way to final and yet never see the results get printed. Plus there are two funny stories related to my trying to get reference for the job that I thought would be worth sharing.

These are three of a set of seven or eight (can’t remember and could not find any of the others) that were meant to be part of the labels for a new kind of candy product manufactured by Topps. They were going to wrap around a plastic cylinder with a pop off cap that contained a flavored candy powder… basically colored sugar. The art direction was to do exaggerated (but not too exaggerated) 8 to 10 year old kid’s heads buried in the sugary powder with energetic and varying expressions… Big eyes, lots of energy. Varying in race and gender. These are not digital, but airbrush and mixed media.

I thought it was a weird, kind of drug-like image concept that kept reminding me of “Scarface” when Al Pacino’s face was buried in a huge mound of cocaine, but whatever the client wants! I thought I’d do the kid’s faces in a fish-eye lens sort of perspective, which naturally makes the eyes big and gives them the kind of look I thought they were looking for.

Working on the job I did some web surfing for references. Since they wanted various races and genders, I was thinking “white boy and girl, black boy and girl, hispanic boy, etc.”. With that in mind, I did a google image search for “young asian female”…

MY EYES! MY EYES!!! IT BURNS!!!

Hooo boy. I don’t think I could have brought up more porno image results had I specified certain anatomical parts of the reproductive system in my search. My computer instantly burst into flames, and several men in dark suits and radio earpeices screeched up in a black sedan and began banging on the front door.

Okay that last sentence didn’t happen but I am sure I’m on a government watch list somewhere after that.

That was not going to work, so I figured I’d do better to just snap some pictures of some of the neighborhood kids and my kid’s friends. With that in mind, I called my daughter Gabrielle’s friend Szumei’s house, as she had an older sister of just the right age and was Asian. I’m sitting in the kitchen with The Lovely Anna nearby and my conversation with Szumei’s father went like this:

Me: “Hi, this is Gabrielle’s dad.”

Szumei’s dad: “Hi, how are you?”

Me: “Good. Listen, I was hoping I could come over and take some pictures of your daughter.”

Szumei’s dad: “…..”

Me: “Hello?”

Anna looks at me in horror, covers the phone’s mouthpiece and says “THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU JUST SAID!”

The rest sounded like an uncomfortable Ben Stiller routine. Eventually I got the explanation across and even got my reference pictures… fully supervised of course.

After all of that, the job got finished and the client was quite happy with the results. However the candy itself was never actually produced. That happens quite a lot in the product development world. These kinds of things are made as a prototype, test marketed and then sometimes never see the light of day. It’s amazing the money companies waste on that kind of thing. I was paid a fair amount of money to do that artwork, which never made it past the development stage.

Ah well, the check cashed just the same, and I think after a certain amount of time you get removed from government watch lists… at least I hope so.

Tags: airbrush, freelance illustration, product illustration

This week’s sketch is of Harrison Ford, the aging star of the new Indiana Jones movie, “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull“.

Am I the only person in the world who has zero interest in this film? I’m old enough to be able to say I sat in a real theater as a fifteen year old kid and watched with my jaw hung open as “Raiders of the Lost Ark” exploded on the screen in 1981. The other two movies were also enjoyable (although they had their problems as well) and worth making and watching, but nothing will ever be able to match the sheer fun and excitement of seeing Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones in that first, unforgettable film.

Do I really want to see a Harrison Ford that looks more like my dad than Indy creaking across the screen in an attempt to recapture the magic? I don’t think so. Maybe 10 years ago they could have pulled it off with a story about an aging Indy who goes on one more adventure, but Ford is WAAAAAY past the age of being a believable action hero now. Just watch “Firewall” or “Air Force One” if you don’t believe me. It’s too late to do another Indy film. They should have left well enough alone.

Ford himself seems to be getting tired of hearing about his age. I read a quote the other day in an interview where he responded to the length of time since the last Indy movie with a little profanity: “Yeah, I’m 19 years older. You’re ^%$#&@ 19 years older too!” That’s right…. I am. However I am not trying to convince the world I can swing across a gaping chasm on a bullwhip, crash through the windshield of a speeding truck and shrug it off with a smart ass quip. At age 65, Ford probably has to get up three times a night to take a piss, much less survive that without breaking his hip. Suspension of disbelief is a part of action films, but come on.

Maybe I’m being too hard on the team behind the new Indy. They might have a brilliant script that really does the characters justice and makes everything make sense. I hope so. I’d hate to see this movie being a final sour note in one of the most beloved film series of all time.

Tags: caricature, Harrison Ford, Indiana Jones, sketch

Lots of big projects all coming to a head at once right now…

• MAD Movie parody- Working hard on that right now. Pencil rough stages.
• Super Capers- Titling images nearing the final stages, movie scene image next and then wrapping up the “turnarounds”. This job is much more involved than I originally expected it to be.
• Website Gaming Images- Still in the concept stages on this one, but progressing.
• Workplace Poster job- My usual assignment.

I also did a couple of very quick and simple illustrations in the last week or two for other clients that I can probably now share here, as they are either in print or nearing production:

This is an illustration that will be incorporated into a logo for a moving company.

A small spot illustration for Scholastic.

These last two demonstrate how some jobs are just very simple and quick projects to suit a client’s specific needs. I do a fair amount of these kinds of jobs, fitting them in when I am waiting for reviews or approvals on other, more involved projects.

Tags: cartooning, freelance, illustration