MAD artist Hermann Mejia has finally gotten a website up showcasing his incredible work. Check it out here.
Hermann has been working for MAD for quite some time now, and from the beginning his art was something special. He used to do a feature called “Celebrity cause of Death Betting Odds”, where he illustrated a tombstone with a crazy caricature/statue integrated into it to accompany the odds of various ways the celebrity might met their end. That was a great little feature and made greater by Hermann’s fantastic art. Eventually he started doing parodies of films and TV shows as well as just about anything else MAD might throw his way. He is unbelievably versatile, working in pen and ink, watercolors, digital panting and other mediums. In the last “MAD 20″, he did sculptures for a chess set featuring the players in the Iraq war, the Donald Rumsfeld above is from that set.
Hermann is a native Venezuelan who had to have his first jobs from MAD translated for him, as he spoke little English. He did some work for DC on some LOBO titles early in his career. Hermann got his start in MAD thanks to a gentleman named Charlie Kochman, who saw his portfolio while Hermann was doing some work for DC Comics. Charlie was a book editor for DC who edited a lot of the comic company’s graphic novels and prestige format specials. He got a load of Hermann’s work, and marched the portfolio straight upstairs to Nick Meglin at MAD. Nick immediately recognized Hermann’s gift for humor and put him to work. He’s been one of the “Usual Gang of Idiots” ever since.
MAD editor John Ficarra calls Hermann the “artist’s artist”, meaning his biggest fans are other artists who understand all too well the tremendous talent he possesses. I’m one of those fans. His art is mind boggling. His skill with expressions and pure, uncompromising ability to DRAW are nothing short of amazing.
I’ve never met Hermann. For some reason we never end up at the same MAD functions. Maybe he’s avoiding me. Who could blame him? I hope I’ll get a chance to meet him sometime soon. He’s a rare talent.
Q: I have unsuccessfully searched the web and several art books on the simple topic of Inkwashing. I would like to know the technique for preparing the wash. Do you mix the ink and water ad hock as you are using it, or do you measure out 1 or 2 drops per ounce of water into several containers and create your own solutions for use later on? I have arbitrarily made some batches but it seems to me there must be some standard procedures??
A: I don’t do a lot of ink and wash illustrations anymore as it’s so much easier to just add the grays digitally, but I still do it every once and a while just to get that paper texture involved. It does have a certain look that digital has trouble matching.
I do both the “ad hock” method and the pre-mixing. I have small, one ounce plastic bottles for washes that I have labeled 75%, 50%, 25% and 10%. I mix up the ink and water based on those percentages (using an eyedropper) with the percentage number equaling the amount of ink content. That way I always have a consistent value when I want it. I usually start out with some of these set value washes first.
Then I will dip my brush into clean water and then into one of these bottles and water it down further that way. I add values to create volume or form, or sometimes atmosphere. I will often start adding a wash and, while it’s still wet, rinse my brush and continue the wash with just water in the brush to gradate the wash over some of the paper surface. Of course adding a second wash over a previous one will create a darker value, so you can layer it that way to build up tones and values in the piece.
I test out the wash on a scrap board first. Start light as you can always make it darker but not lighter. Do some test studies on your scrap board before attacking the final artwork.
Thanks to Nick Cirasella for the question. If you have a question you want answered for the mailbag about cartooning, illustration, MAD Magazine, caricature or similar, e-mail me and I’ll try and answer it here!
For the second time in as many weeks, I’m currently away from the studio visiting my theme park operation at Six Flags New England.
Each year the spring is a hectic time for me. In addition to my usual freelance jobs and business work, it’s opening time for my caricature/art concessions in the seasonal parks. Our operations here in Massachusetts opened on April 15th, Six Flags St. Louis opened on April 21st and Valleyfair! in Minnesota opens May 12th. There is a lot to do, settijng up displays, hauling out the equipment, cleaning it and getting it set up, replacing the things that are breaking down and generally making it all nice and shiny for a new season.
All that stuff is just busy work. The real challenge with these art concessions is finding good artists to do the caricatures. I send information and a full color poster out to area art schools, place ads in newspapers and on Craigslist, and review the work of many artists in order to put together a crew for each location. Outside Minnesota I have some very capable artist/managers who pre-screen interested artists and, in some cases, contract those who will work out on their own. Finding artists that are capable of doing good caricatures quickly and who possess the necessary people skills is very difficult. Our approach and live techniques do not lend themselves to being picked up quickly or by those with less than very strong drawing skills and a natural eye for caricature. I hate ‘genericature’, where every face looks basically the same with just superficial variations, and work hard to avoid these pitfalls with our artists.
The seasonal nature of the work also makes it tough to keep a stable crew. Since the job is over in the fall, many artists move on to find full time jobs elsewhere and are not available the following season, setting up a never ending cycle of turnover. College students usually make the best recruits, as they have school in the off season and often return for multiple seasons. I put myself through art school doing caricatures during summers at Six Flags. It’s a fun and challenging job where you are surrounded by other artists in a highly creative environment. It’s hard work, but getting paid to draw funny pctures of people is a tough job to beat.
I remembered to bring my camera with me this time, so next week I’ll post some pictures of the Six Flags New England operation and maybe some live work.
I finally got the chance to see the new episode of “Heroes” the other night, in glorious HD. It was a long wait for a new episode, but as I expected it was worth it.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
It was no surprise this series picked right back up where it left off. One of the brilliant things about this show is how effortlessly it jumps from sub-plot to sub-plot, and maintains both interest and development in almost all of them. The Nikki/Jessica storyline seemed to me to be the least engaging before the break (save maybe the Hiro one, which was spinning it’s wheels), as it was the farthest from the central story. It was action packed, with Jessica being an assassin and taking on Parkman at one point, but beyond that her association with Linderman was not very deep. Now we see Micha is going to play a major part in Linderman’s master plan… Ali Larter‘s face when she pulls up in the car and suspects something is wrong bodes ill for Linderman. She will be the wildcard for certain.
Speaking of Linderman’s plan, I confess I saw that coming. “The Watchmen“, anyone? For those out there not among the comic book geek nation, “The Watchmen” was a graphic novel series written by Alan Moore (V for Vendetta) that is among the greatest comic book stories ever published (in my opinion). If you have never read it, immediately go out and buy a copy and do so. Not to give too much away, but the main theme mirrors Linderman’s plan to destroy part of New York in order to bring people together through tragedy. Not exactly a new concept, even for “The Watchmen“, but nicely demented even with the misguided idea that the end justifies the means. It will allow players like Nathan Petrelli, who do not seem to fit the mold of cut-and-dried hero, to show their complicated sides.
My favorite part of this episode was the brief but fantastic confrontation between Peter and Sylar. You didn’t get to see too much, but what did happen was dynamite. Sylar’s trick with the glass shards ended it too quickly, but there’s nothing wrong with leaving ‘em wanting more. It must be the intention of the creators of the show to only give us glimpses of each person’s powers in use… especially the more flamboyant ones. As much as I’m dying to see someone really cut loose with their powers, I think this is a wise policy. It builds tension and creates anticipation, but at the same time keeps the super-powers themselves from being the driving force of the stories. In the comics, the heroes always use their powers to solve whatever problems arise. In the real world it wouldn’t be that simple. It would be rare for these beings to find themselves in a situation where their specific power would actually help matters much, so there is no reason to use them all the time. The stories are character driven, and the superb casting is making it all work.
It will be interesting to see what Mrs. Petrelli’s power ends up being. I hope it’s a shocker, like she transforms into a Hulk or other monstrosity… that would be a cool counter to her prim, icy and respectable demeanor. Is Linderman Peter and Nathan’s real father? If not their father probably had powers as well. How much of Sylar’s powers did Peter absorb in their brief encounter? Some, as he clearly had telekinesis that he did not before possess. Peter must be going to die at the end… he’d be too powerful otherwise.
Great ending to the episode as well, with future Hiro meeting present Hiro. It was that first glimpse of future Hiro on the subway many episodes ago that made me realize this was going to be an extraordinary series. It’s already back on track and only a few episodes remain for the season. It’s been a great ride so far.
The “Dark Tower” comic book series from Marvel, based on the Stephen King novels, is now on it’s third issue. I wrote reviews of the first two here and here, and while I liked some aspects of the comics and approach, I knew I had to give the series a few issues to gel and try and find it’s footing before really deciding on my opinions of it as a whole.
This will be my last review of any of the series, at least until it takes a different creative and/or editorial approach than it’s current format.
I guess that bodes ill for my opinions of it. In all fairness, I was a tough sell to begin with. I am a huge fan of the King books, and have read them/listened to them countless times. When the source material is that familiar, almost any adaptation is bound to disappoint. Even the brilliant Peter Jackson “The Lord of the Rings” film adaptations of the J.R.R. Tolkein novels had it’s critics among hard core Tolkein buffs. Personally I can always take the limitations of the intended medium into consideration when weighing an adaptation of a written work, and therefore can recognize achieving a successful balance between the original and the demands of the adapted medium.
That said, I have come to the conclusion that this comic book series misses the mark too far for me to call it successful.
Let’s start with the story. After a stumbling beginning writer Peter David seems to have gotten a handle on the unique vernacular of the region. It’s a cross between old west and an oddly formal medieval dialect, with certain phrases that are used often. He also does admirably well in inventing his own dialogue to establish character elements that would otherwise have been either missed or needed deeper digging into the story to get across. For example, in the books the character of Susan Delgado is shown to be high spirited and brave despite her being a young girl. No single scene from the books delivers that trait but is comes across over the course of the story. David adds a single panel where Susan brandishes a small knife to show Roland she was prepared to fight if met with an attackers while out alone. In that one panel David describes much about Susan, even the fact that while brave she is not tremendously formidable through the fact that her knife is a tiny, almost useless blade.
Where the story suffers is in the need to shorten and gloss over the story to fit it within the framework of a seven issue series, and in some misguided ideas concerning the added element of John Farson and Walter’s appearances.
As to the former, all too often these kinds of adaptations are awkward in shoehorning in the introductions of various characters and then launching into scenes where their lack of character development makes the reader feel like they missed something. David failed to make the readers understand how dangerous and different these “Big Coffin Hunters” are from the regular folks in Hambry, and yet we are meant to be afraid for Sheemie at the mere mention that Roy Depape was the man who received an accidental soaking at his hands in the Traveler’s Rest saloon. Again, the brevity of the mini-series precludes much that should be told, but this is just an example of why that does not work. Would a 12 issue mini-series have been too long? I can”t answer that, but if this kind of thing is the result of editing down to seven issues, then I can say with certainty it’s too short. There is only 20 pages of story here as well. Most comics are 22 pages I think, or used to be.
The latter, regarding the additional scenes, seem to me to be really off base. I can appreciate the addition of information and story only hinted at in the King books, but some of this seems horribly far from King’s hints. According to the books, John Farson was a warlord who led a rebellion against the class system of Mid-World. Called “The Good Man” by his followers, he was in fact a ruthless killer and despot who used the natural envy of the lower classes against the (usually) fair but none-the-less privileged rule of the barons and the gunslingers to overthrow them. In the comics he’s depicted as a grotesque freak in Hellraiser leather armor and a bizarre mutant mask/helmet playing bat the decapitated head. I have no idea where that came from. I have to assume King has plenty of creative control over the process here… is that what he intended? His villains seem a bit more grounded in reality than that, barring the Crimson King himself. These people are not slow mutants.
The story as a whole is being told reasonably well and even with some flashes of innovation that work, if there are some that don’t. As far as the art goes, that is another matter.
I really wanted to love the art, but I am already very tired of the endless overuse of blacks and shadows, the non-existent or extremely minimalist backgrounds, the full page width panel layouts and close up after close up with almost no camera angle variation. It seems to me in his quest to create a moody, dark world Jae Lee has succeeded in creating no world at all. The story seems to be taking place in a dreamscape where nothing but the central characters are distinct and the rest of the world is hidden beyond edges of mist and clouds. This story takes place on the edge of a sea town in late summer, drenched in sun and approaching harvest. It’s all too stylized and the reader gets no opportunity to get a sense of the environment. The depictions of the characters are also often far from King’s descriptions, and Lee’s ultra stylized approach hasn’t given us any strong visual characterizations for the players. Except for Jonas, who looks like the old kung fu master from the “Kill Bill” movies with his white Fu Manchu mustache, I’m not sure I could match the name to a face out of context even after three issues.
I think it all stems to bad decisions on concept and direction, rather than a lack of effort. I am sure Jae Lee is capable of drawing detailed and descriptive characters, backgrounds and environments… but the way it’s handled in long, thin panels and close up after close up I’d swear it was done to save time and create as little work as possible on the majority of panels. Many of them smack of shortcuts and ‘easy’ panels that are meant to give the reader’s eye a break, not to be the central format.
I really wanted to like this comic series. I don’t think it’s awful or a waste of time, but it is certainly disappointing… at least to me. I’ll pick up the rest of them but am not expecting to be surprised by any of it. Perhaps later series will be drawn differently or by a different team and therefore provide a fresh approach.
Yesterday I wrote about the new issue of GAG! Magazine and recommended visiting it’s website.
Sadly, upon visiting said site and reading around a bit I saw the inevitable comparison of GAG! to MAD. That always made me angry with the old Cracked, when Dick Kulpa and Co. always had to compare their publication to MAD, of course always proclaiming they were better. Barry suffers from the same delusions apparently, where he says : “GAG! is funnier than MAD, that is for sure. MAD reached its peak in the late 1960s/early 70s, and has been losing readers ever since.”
That first comment is just natural bluster by a publisher trying to sell copies. Sorry, but while there is some funny humor in GAG!, it ain’t no MAD.
As to the second statement that infers MAD‘s readership has dropped from it’s “heyday” due to a loss of quality… that is ridiculous.
It’s true that MAD‘s peak circulation was in 1974 when it sold 2,132,655 copies of the magazine per issue. In 2006 it’s circulation was 190,956 per issue. Equating that drop in circulation with a drop in quality of content is preposterous. Let’s take, by comparison, Playboy Magazine. It also reached it’s circulation peak in the early 70′s at over 7,000,000 copies per issue. Today it is less than 3 million. I guess by that same logic we can infer that the quality of naked women today just isn’t what it used to be (tip of the hat to Desmond Devlin for that bit of satire). Another example is TV Guide, which peaked at 17 million copies and today has only 4.5 million. I guess the quality of it’s TV schedule listings is really in the toilet. Virtually all long-time print magazines have seen last gigantic declines in circulation in the last decade. A drop in quality can’t be the culprit in all cases, or even most.
My point is that the magazine industry itself has been decimated by the internet. Read this article about the speculative reasons why, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out getting one’s news, views, entertainment and opinions on-line virtually instantaneously after events happen… and for FREE… beats paying for a magazine that arrives with old news topics and costs money to boot. The comic book industry has been hit especially hard, as they compete not just with the internet for pure magazine-like content but also with today’s dominating video game systems for kid’s entertainment dollars and attention. A good selling comic book today is 100,000 copies whereas 15 years ago less than a million copies got you canceled.
Every magazine on the newsstands, including MAD, is trying to buck this downward spiral. I think MAD‘s content today is stronger than in was in the 90′s, and many comedy writers like Mark Evanieragree. MAD has taken many steps to try and reach out to new readers and a new generation of fans, with some success. Time will tell if any magazine can survive the continued evolution of the internet. Portablility has always been one of the published media’s biggest benefits, but as wifi and cell phone technology keeps advancing, there will come a day when you can read your daily news while eating lunch at the deli or on the train to work on a handheld cellphone device that gives you easy to read size and features via a nationwide WiFi network. Can magazines survive that?
I think niche magazines will always be around and will settle into a balance of revenues, content and expenses. The larger magazines will need to figure out how to get their print and on-line versions to supplement each other in order to keep their printed publications going. No one has gotten a handle on how to do that yet.
In the meantime I think MAD is doing what it needs to in order to keep publishing. It’s staff concentrate on producing the best content they can, and the rest will have to sort itself out.
Back when I was briefly working for Cracked I did the artwork on a few parodies written by Barry Dutter. I enjoyed Barry’s writing and thought he came up with some pretty good gags and observations on the films.
Cracked was doomed and did not run for very long under the Dick Kulpa era for several reasons, many of which I examined here. Barry left the magazine and started his own publication called GAG! with issue # 1 coming out in 2004. He just published his second issue… er… actually it’s another #1…. here in 2007. Barry and I still keep in contact a little, and I got a copy sent to me just the other day.
The worst part of the downfall of Cracked was the fact that a lot of pretty talented cartoonists lost a place to get their humorous work published. MAD is pretty much the only humor publication based on cartooning out there now, and it’s only got so many pages a year to go around. Even in it’s heyday Cracked was never up to MAD‘s standards in terms of quality of art and writing (with a few rare exceptions like Don Martin, John Severin and a few others) but it still had some funny stuff and some very good art. Cracked once paid pretty well also… that all ended when it was bought by American Media.
Barry’s GAG! features several of the better artists and writers from the last era of Cracked (I don’t count the thinly disguised and virtually art-less Maxim rip-off Cracked of the very last few issues). There also appears a number of caricaturists and cartoonists from other sources that have contributed to this new issue. I was glad to see two pieces by my old friend Chuck Senties as well as a few other National Caricaturist Network members/alumni. The magazine is a combination of classic MAD-like gag articles and parodies with other text driven articles and stories. Also interspersed are a few cheesecake pics of bikini bimbos. The highlights of the issue for me were “Things for King Kong to do in New York” with excellent cartooning by Jared Phillips, The “Star Wars: Episiode III” parody and Rich Heddon‘s “Ralf the Rat”. Unfortunately it suffers from the long time between production issues, and none of the topics of the satire are very current. “King Kong”, “Batman Begins”, “Star Wars: Episode III” and other films that are targets in GAG! are very old news. Hopefully Barry will sell enough issues to produce another #1 sometime in the near future. There is never anything wrong with having a printed venue for cartoonists to showcase their work.
It may have a vanity press feel to it but GAG! is a fun magazine that is worth a look. You can get more info and order a copy on the GAG! Magazine website.
I’m about to get very busy again for some time, so don’t be surprised if the Dreaded Deadline Demon rears his ugly head around here in the near future.
In the meantime, although I’m not usually big on posting YouTube videos unless they are cartoon or caricature related, the following one my kids played this one for me is a total riot. If you are familiar with “street magician” David Blaine you will get a real kick out of this very clever and well staged parody of his act.
You have to love how the guy playing Blaine apes how he turns to stare at the camera after every trick.
This is the second of a series, but since the first one contains more offensive language (and isn’t quite as funny) I thought this the better one to share.
Q: What do you consider a good caricature? I’ve seen plenty of published caricatures that look nothing like their supposed persons, is there a point where you can go too far with a caricature or not exaggerate enough?
A: I consider a good caricature to have an unmistakable likeness and yet have both humor and exaggeration with the features. Some artists push the exaggeration too much and lose the likeness, which makes it an unsuccessful caricature. Some caricatures are little more than portraits with bigger heads and cartoonish bodies, and while the likenesses might be unmistakable with them they don’t have that humor that makes for a good caricature.
The best caricaturists combine likeness and their own style of exaggeration and humor to great effect. Sebastian Krüger really pushes the exaggerations but never so much he loses the likeness. Al Hirschfeld exaggerated in a stylistic way by turning features into design-like representational elements and using head shape/posture to create his distinct and instantly recognizable caricatures. Mort Drucker combined fun, cartoon linework and incredibly strong drawing skills with Norman Rockwell-like exaggerations of expression and human form to straddle the line between straight illustration and humorous comic book art to arrive at his masterful caricature style.
Each caricature artist has to find their unique balance with likeness and exaggeration as it applies to the way he or she sees the world and interprets it. Their own style of drawing will help dictate that balance. It can be pushed as far as their vision will let it, but there is a limit. Once a likeness is lost the caricature is a failure.
Thanks to Piotr Walczuk for the question. If you have a question you want answered for the mailbag about cartooning, illustration, MAD Magazine, caricature or similar, e-mail me and I’ll try and answer it here!
I was thinking the other day about how much the internet has changed the dynamics of freelancing, in terms of how illustrators communicate, conduct and deliver jobs and market their work. For the most part it’s been an invaluable tool, but there is a dark side to it. The easy access and instant communication of the internet often leads to being contacted for jobs that aren’t really jobs.
I used to have the same problem when I drew at the theme parks. A few times each summer someone would approach me at the park and ask me to draw something for them that was obviously to be used for some commercial project. I’ve been asked to do everything from conceptual product design to company logos to T-Shirt designs, and they expected to pay the theme park caricature prices for this illustration work. Realtors were always the worst. They would sit down and ask to be drawn next to a house that said “Sold” on it. It was obvious they intended to use it in their advertising… for the price of a live drawing! I eventually got tired of explaining that using a caricature from a theme park for that purpose was copyright infringement, and they would need to pay me considerably more for the rights to do anything with the drawing but hang it on their wall. My solution was to draw them as they requested, but make the house look like a run down shack with holes in the roof, flies buzzing and garbage all over. Sometimes I’d draw an outhouse instead. They hated that, but couldn’t complain to the park as they knew they were trying to rip me off!
At least at the park they had to look you in the eye when they asked for something like that. Via the internet you can get an e-mail asking for your participation in someone’s latest million dollar idea without ever having to keep a straight face. This type of “job” usually consists of someone who has this “great idea” that just need some art to go along with it to pitch it to somebody who will make us all rich. Almost always the art is the driving force behind the concept… the idea took ten minutes to conceive but it will take countless hours to do the art to make it work, for which we get a portion of the profits. No money up front, of course, but sure riches just around the corner. In other words, working on spec.
The term “Working on Spec” (short for working on speculation) means to do something for free in hopes it will lead to future payment. It’s usually just “some artwork” to put together a pitch for the publication of a book, the development of a product or some other project to be sold to a distributor or manufacturer. Working on spec is almost never a good idea, especially with people who approach you cold without a track record of similar successful projects. Even then, most serious professionals will pay you to do the art they need, incurring some financial risk on their part to back up their big ideas. It’s amazing how many of those Big Idea people who are so ready to risk your time and talents on their sure-fire million dollar project shrink at investing a few hundred bucks in paying an illustrator a working wage to do the visual work.
I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been had once or twice on some of these kinds of “jobs”. Mostly when I was young and naive, though. One I really got burned on was by a production company who wanted me to design some animated characters for a series of shorts depicting members of Major League Baseball’s 500 Club (those with 500 or more career home runs). On spec I did designs of an Ernie Banks (who owns the rights to the “500 Club”) and Sammy Sosa for them, just style sheets in color. I never got a dime and as far as I know the animations were never produced. A few months after I did them, and hearing nothing from them since, they had the audacity to call and ask me to do the art for a birthday card for Ernie to be given to him at some shin-dig in Las Vegas or somewhere like that. Needless to say I didn’t oblige. I lost all that art when my computer crashed in October, or I’d share some of it.
Some spec jobs are legitimate and might be worth the time for the potential reward. I tried my hand recently at some greeting card ideas with a specific theme when submissions were called for by a greeting card company. They were rough sketches and jokes that were submitted like gag writers might submit basic joke ideas and fleshing out the ones that get chosen. That did not involve a ton of work and if some get picked up it might mean some royalties down the road. This is for an established greeting card company and that makes a big difference. That’s not really a spec job anyway as it’s not finished art but just a call for some roughs.
One spec job that was very disappointing was from a few years ago, when I was contacted by a writer named James Fitzgerald who had done several books in the 80′s that were political satire “Paper Doll” books featuring the Reagans and other politicians. Of course as paper dolls they were in their underwear and had cut out clothes and accessories that were gags, as well as different environments to be placed in. They were quite funny and sold very well. This writer wanted me to do the art for a new paper doll series based on the Bush twins. It was on spec, but he was a literary agent in New York with a lot of books to his credit and felt he’d have a publisher for this one without a problem. He asked me to work up a cover and one page for each twin, including his gags and some of mine. Here’s what we came up with:
He kept me updated but eventually he had to admit he’d struck out on publishers. So, that work went by the boards. I had really wanted to do a book and that one seemed like a lot of fun so I was more disappointed about that than not getting paid.
That was the last real spec job I did. Since then I ask those wanting spec work to pay me upfront and they can keep their profits. A few actually do, and so far I have not seen something I worked on become the next hot craze and cry over any lost millions.
