A bit of news through the National Cartoonists Society:
The ToonSeum Gallery at the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh
In October 2007, the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh will open the ToonSeum Gallery, a space dedicated to rotating exhibits of cartoon art featuring the genres of comic book, comic strip, illustration, editorial and animation.
The gallery will kick off with an exhibit titled “From Illustration to Animation: Picture Books Come Alive Through the Art of Animation” and feature production art from classics such as “Lord of the Rings,” “Charlotte’s Web,” “Raggedy Ann” and “Horton Hears a Who.” Upcoming exhibits include “Drawn in Black and White: The Portrayal of Minorities in Cartoons” and “Kidding Around: Children in the Funny Pages.”
The ToonSeum is working with the National Cartoonists Society Great Lakes Chapter in developing future programming and exhibitions. The ToonSeum Advisory Board, consisting of cartoonists, pop artists, art supporters and will also advise on the creation and maintenance of this exciting venture.
The ToonSeum is founded and curated by cartoonist Joe Wos, who has been a performing cartoonist with the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh for 16 years. Wos tours nationwide with his cartooning-storytelling program “Once Upon a Toon,” and he was the first resident cartoonist of the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, Calif.
“The Pittsburgh Children’s Museum is a great location for this ToonSeum Gallery. It is my goal to create an inviting and educational gallery experience that children and adults will enjoy. Cartoons are one of the world’s most popular artforms, and I hope this ToonSeum Gallery will grow into a full-fledged museum of cartoon arts here in Pittsburgh,” Wos said.
As part of each ToonSeum exhibit, the Children’s Museum will feature cartooning-related activities and classes. The ToonSeum will present as many as five exhibitions a year, and each will feature original art from some of the world’s most popular cartoons.
*Additional note for cartoonists:
To Artists: We are currently looking to build are collection for upcoming exhibits. Loans and donations of original art are greatly appreciated, also used materials that show the creative process, such as pens, pencils, drawing boards, rough sketches etc… We would also love your general advice and suggestions for exhibits!
This is your museum too and a chance to educate the public on the wonderful art form of cartooning in all its genres and mediums.
The Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh is rated as a four star non-profit by Charity Navigator and any work donated will never end up in the hands of private collectors. Our collection is for the education and enjoyment of the public.
For more information feel free to contact Joe Wos at joe@toonseum.com or call 412-760-1896
Visit Pittsburghkids.org to find out about our museum.
ToonSeum Gallery at the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh
The NCS Great Lakes Chapter is helping out, which does not surprise me… that’s what the NCS is really all about. This is a worthwhile thing to support. If you are anywhere near the Pittsburgh area stop in this fall and check it out.
I just arrived back from New York after a short but energetic trip to the big city. The Lovely Anna, myself and kids Victoria, Gabrielle and Tommy made the trek in part to see Laura Osnes, winner of the “Grease: You’re the One That I Want” reality TV show, perform as Sandy in the Broadway production. Laura, as I wrote last week, grew up four houses down the street from us and was a drama instructor for years with our kids during summer drama camps at the local high school.
Laura with Tommy, Gabrielle and Victoria
Trips to NYC are always fun but very expensive and very tiring. Driving home from the airport through the Minnesota suburbs on Sunday afternoon, there was almost no one to be seen… just quiet streets with green lawns and shade trees in our sleepy little neighborhood. What a contrast to the packed streets of New York. I like the energy there but after just a few days I’m ready to get home to the peace and tranquility.
While we were there we had a lot of fun. We met up with Orlando cartoonist/caricaturist Keelan Parham, his wife Barbie and daughter Brady (baby Kaley was back home with family). The Parhams are great friends and we always love seeing them. We also hooked up with NYC humorous illustrator Ed Steckley and his wife Heather, also old friends. Most of the weekend we hung out, window shopped, saw another show and ate at some great restaurants including the famous Jean Georges.
Getting “street meat” from a Times Square vendor
We also visited the MAD offices, and received the “50 cent tour” by MAD art director Sam Viviano. Personally I don’t think it was worth more than 37 cents, but this is Manhattan so everything is more expensive. Come to think of it, I gave Sam a dollar but he never gave me back any change… another Manhattan trick. Sam is great about taking time from his busy day to visit with freelancers who show up at the office, but I think he’s just trying to get out of working… anyway, here are some pictures:
Sam tried to duck us in the lobby but we showed up early…
The MAD office directory….
The MAD movie marquee, these “now playing”…
Collection of useless MAD toys and memorabilia
Keelan studies some original MAD illustrations
Barbie looks at more originals, including the first Norman Mingo
cover of the definitive Alfred from MAD #30
Brady and Tommy next to the Alfred “Up the Academy” statue
The MADropolitan Museum of Art gallery
The collection of “celebrity snaps” featuring celebs with copies of MAD
Gabrielle looks at two covers MAD decided not to use, one because the
Gulf War had just broken out and the other because of 9/11. The bottom
right cover was the one they used post 9/11 instead.
This artboard is there for MAD artists to draw on when visiting
The gang out on the town!
Good fun with great friends. Now it’s time to pay the piper, because with five of us in one hotel room I couldn’t get any work done. So, now it’s a few late nights and Monster Lo-Carb binges this week.
Q: Does anyone ever get angry or offended by a live caricature you’ve done? And if so, how do you handle it? You seem like such a diplomatic and eloquent guy on your blog, but maybe that is the result of thoughtful editing. Tell us some stories!
A: These days I have little problem with people getting angry over their caricatures when I draw live because after 22 years I am pretty good at reading a person’s tolerance for caricature and exaggerate only when I think they can handle it. I always err on the side of caution if I am unsure, and frankly my style of caricature isn’t the mean-guy type of exaggeration anyway. If I get rejects these days it is mostly because someone doesn’t think it looks like them… sometimes they are right and sometimes they are wrong. They get a refund either way. Now that I’m “The Boss” I set an example by being extremely accommodating to customers who did not like their caricatures… it’s just part of being in business.
Back when I was a young punk I had more of an attitude about caricature. The company I worked for fostered a “the customer’s are morons and don’t know what is good art” mentality among it’s artists, which was kind of a carte blanche to rip people new ones and then dismiss their reactions as “not understanding caricature”. Not good business and not good customer relations, but we were all young and full of ourselves. Back then I would wildly exaggerate people and did get some angry customers. The rule was that they did not have to pay for it, so if you wanted to play those games you had to accept that you would get some rejects now and again. You were supposed to handle them with some professionalism, but that did not always happen, as evidenced by the following story:
I was drawing during spring break one day at Six Flags Atlanta in 1990 or ’91… can’t remember which year, when a large group of frat boys came up to the booth. They were all fat guys from some area school who were joking about how it sucked they were at Six Flags for spring break when they should be at some tropical beach. So, I drew the first guy with his fat head on a buff body, with beach babes drooling over him. They loved that and each successive drawing got a little crazier with exaggerated faces and buffer bodies, etc. They were really yucking it up over these, until the last guy sat down. Unlike the rest of them, he actually was a pretty buff guy… the good looking jock of the group. He didn’t want to get drawn but the other guys razzed him until the did. I gave him the same treatment, although I was tempted to draw him with the fat gut the rest of his group had rather than a six pack. I refrained, and I actually did not exaggerate him as much as I could have. I showed him the drawing and he just threw it back at me saying it sucked and walked off without paying. His buddies started railing on him but he just kept walking. They apologized to me but I just said not to worry about it. They all left for other parts of the park.
Unfortunately, after that we had a long lull in business. You know what they say about idle hands and the devil…. well I made some alterations to that rejected drawing. I put Mr. Vanity in a girl’s bikini, added makeup and long eyelashes and changed the girls oogling him into flamboyantly gay guys. Then I replaced one of the samples on the wall with this revised drawing. Later a couple of the frat guys came by and stopped to again apologize when they spotted my new “sample”. Their eyes got really big for a second before they started laughing, screaming and pointing. I thought one guy was going to pass out because he couldn’t catch his breath. They went to find their buddies and eventually they all were behind me laughing their asses off at the drawing. The good looking guy turned a shade of purple and started threatening me, trying to get into the booth and tear down the drawing. I just calmly sat in my chair and smiled at him as his friends, who all went well into the mid two hundred pound range, held him back and mercilessly chastised him for being a vain jerk. He started walking off promising to meet me in the parking lot later. I winked at him and blew him a kiss, which earned me another effort on his part to get at me. His buddies stopped him cold and dragged him off. I never saw him again.
The best part is those guys all pitched in and bought that revised caricature of the jerk, and took it back to school with them. If there is any justice in the world for self centered, vain pretty boys, that guy had to live that drawing down for the rest of his college days and was tortured about his lack of a sense of humor for years afterward. One can only hope.
Thanks to Paul Yamagata-Madlon 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!
Back when I was going to college at a small school in St. Paul, Minnesota called the School of Associated Arts (now the College of Visual Arts), there were three distinct groups of students… the illustrators, the fine artists and the designers. To say the three groups were mutually exclusive would be unfair, as most of us got along just fine, but it would be fair to say that among each group there was often an attitude about the validity of other groups. The fine artists were sometimes heard to call the illustrators “wrists” as we were considered by some creativeless machines that churned out images based on other people’s direction. The illustrators sometimes referred to the fine artists as “framers” or “kinkoes”, referring to the notion that most of them would never earn a living as an artist and end up working at a frame shop, copy center or some other peripherally creative job rather than selling their art. I imagine the designers thought both the illustrators and fine artists to be idiotic children, while the other groups thought the design major was what you studied in art school when you “couldn’t draw to save your life”. Ah, the stupidity of youth. Personally I never thought that way about any of my fellow classmates… well, maybe a little about the fine artists.
The whole “wrists” stereotype is something I think about occasionally when I run into difficulty with art direction. The fact is that those fine artists were very, very wrong. Illustrators are artists first, and as such it is impossible not to have some emotional investment in the work you do. Even though we do what we do on demand and follow the direction of our clients, we still create art… and that process is tied to ourselves in fundamental and sometimes deep ways. The problem with that is ultimately we really ARE art machines that need to serve the needs of the client, and that sometimes leads to fighting emotional reactions to art direction.
Let’s say you are assigned a job creating a caricature of a company CEO for a feature article in a business magazine. You do some roughs and work from various references and happen to do on sketch that really catches your eye. The other sketches are okay but this one really sings. You work it up nice and tight, and are enthusiastic about how it’s turning out. You’re already thinking about how you are going to handle the finishes. You submit the sketch to the client…
… they don’t like it. Too this or too that. It doesn’t look like the subject. They like one of the other sketches that you thought was flat and not nearly as dynamic.
It’s natural have feelings of rejection and annoyance when something you really thought was going somewhere gets shot down, especially if what the client asks you to do instead is lame in your opinion. Your natural reaction is to argue, or even get angry… how stupid can that art director be? This drawing is much better than that one!! It can be very difficult to detach yourself emotionally from your work and accept the direction of the client. If you want to be considered a professional, that’s exactly what you must do. You have to put aside any attachment you have to the work and move on to satisfy the client. It’s that simple. To do otherwise is to be unprofessional and eventually garner a reputation for such, which is not a good thing is the freelance world.
A few years ago I did a seminar about freelance caricature illustration at a caricaturist convention, which featured a prominent caricature illustrator (who shall remain nameless) as the main guest speaker. My seminar consisted of telling a group of live caricaturists that wanted to get into freelance illustration how to be professional, and one of my main points was that satisfying the client is job one… all personal feelings or needs must be secondary. My esteemed colleague then got up and proceeded to deliver a message exactly the opposite… that you must be true to “your art” and that fighting the good fight is the only way to go through life. Easy for him to say, as he is one of maybe a handful of illustrators who are well known enough to dictate creatively to the client. Those elite illustrators are sought out specifically for their unique style, and seldom get art directed at all as their style is what the art director was after in the first place, if that makes sense. I thought that was reckless advice to give a room full of artists that would have a better chance at being successful as one of the many hard working professional grunts than as a one in a million big time illustrator. After a few pointed questions the main speaker had to admit he sometimes did actually bow to the whims of an art director and occasionally completed a job just to finish it and make the client happy as opposed to being true to his art.
I don’t know how he sleeps at night.
Everybody wants to be proud of what they do, and it’s hard to accept that kind of art direction sometimes. But being a professional means doing your job to the best of your skills and having a happy client that will call you again and will recommend you to others. Sometimes that means just doing what the client wants even if you believe it’s not as good or effective as it could have been. If you have a good relationship with your art director you could have a ‘discussion’ about the effectiveness of the illustration and what it is meant to achieve, but unless it’s explaining some aspect of the illustration the art director is misunderstanding that is usually pointless. In a way, my years of doing live caricatures prepared me well for dealing with this kind of situation best. When doing live caricatures all day, there are some drawings you know you have to do a cutsie-pie, nice guy job on and just go for a good likeness to make the customer happy. Then there are those moments when you get a “live one”. You can tell they will really enjoy a good, exaggerated caricature and you let them have it with both barrels. You do the tame ones for the money with a smile but you do the wild ones for the fun and for the artistic expression and satisfaction… the fact that you also get paid for that one as well is a bonus. You tolerate the one and live for and enjoy the other when it happens. It’s the same with freelance illustration. I always start out going for the artistic satisfaction in a piece, but if the art direction makes that impossible I go into auto mode and just to my best on the job to please the client and get my paycheck. I write that one off in the “artistic satisfaction” department, figure it won’t be one for the portfolio and look forward to the next one.
That all sounds terrible, like most of what I end up doing I hate and have no fun doing it. In truth I can count on one hand how many jobs end up like that each year. Most of the time, even if the art director has a lot of changes and direction I still come up with something I can be proud of. It’s entirely possible to satisfy the client AND satisfy yourself artistically.. in fact it’s usually possible. My point is that if it is impossible and you must choose between the two, the client’s satisfaction must always be the choice. Even when I do those cutsie-pie caricature I can still get some artistic satisfaction from it. I just focus on my linework and likeness, instead of my exaggeration.
I’ve brooked this subject at least twice on the blog, and when I do I always use Jack Davis as the best example of emotional detachment from the work. Jack has no problem crumpling up what he calls his “doodles” and starting from scratch on any job he’s working on. I used to think that, if you’re Jack Davis, every drawing you do is incedible anyway so you can just move on to the next bit of brilliance. However I now believe that, if you’re Jack Davis, you probably still differentiate between drawings you think tuned out really good and ones you didn’t. We mere mortals see it all as genius, but the genius sees the differences. No doubt even Jack has had those moments. From all I’ve heard of the man, you will never find an art director that hired Jack Davis for a job tell you he was difficult to work with. He is the consummate professional.
I was going to close with a gag about bringing some drawings into Kinkos for one of my former classmates to copy for me, but that wouldn’t be fair to either my former classmates or the good people who work at Kinkos… so I refrain.
As thousands of cartoonists head to the west coast for this year’s San Diego Comic Con, I’m on the east coast for a short visit to New York City. We are meeting good friends here and went to see “Grease” on Broadway last night, among other things we’ll do in the big city. Why “Grease”? Well, some may recall a reality TV show this spring called “You’re the One that I Want”, which was an “American Idol”-like competition for the leads (Danny and Sandy) of this Broadway revival of “Grease”. The winner of the Sandy role was Laura Osnes, who happens to have grown up four houses down the street from us here in Burnsville, MN. She was a drama camp instructor for my kids during summer play camps, and her parents still live there. So, we made plans to see her on Broadway. We’ll be visiting the MAD offices today. I’ll try and take some pictures.
Meanwhile at the San Diego Comic Con, the National Cartoonist Society‘s booth will have postcards with info about the NCS Foundation’s available scholarships in cartooning:
Click on the image above to go to the NCS Scholarship web page for more details. The Foundation is handling the administration and judging of the scholarships, so they are not tied to any particular school as they were last year. Check the eligibility requirements and download an application from the web page if you are interested.
It isn’t very often that you find scholarship money for going to school to study the art of cartooning. The Foundation wants to promote the art form by encouraging and supporting young artists to study cartooning and become the next generation of professionals. It’s a unique resource, thanks to the generosity of the NCS and the contributions of it’s members to the NCS Foundation.
Lots o’stuff on the board at the moment. As usual not much of it that I can show images of, but I did finish this poster job last night. I’m posting it to show how sometimes you get so focused on the details you don’t step back and think about the big picture until you literally step back and look at the big picture:
Pencil sketch, approved by client
Final color illustration….
…hmmmm….. I’m thinking the placement combined with the coloring of the stuffing coming off that falling platter might be unfortunate… yep. Better fix that.
That’s better, a poo-free illustration.
Whew. Disaster averted. You have to love digital artwork. If that was a real watercolor it would have taken a lot more effort to correct.
Now I’ve got an emergency MAD four pager to do with a super short deadline. As I am leaving early today for NYC, looks like I’ll be doing some drawing on the road. AGAIN.
Damn! I forgot the “Sketch O’the Week” last Wednesday. Sorry. Here’s a small and quick study of Lucille Ball for a possible black and white park sample.
Right now I am trying to work ahead in anticipation of a short trip to NYC this weekend with The Lovely Anna and the kids (sans The Animated Elizabeth, she hates anywhere but her house and her videos). After getting assigned a short deadline piece for MAD yesterday, there is not a lot of time for blogging, so here is one of those cheap posts about some websites to visit:
Freelance Switch- The Daily Cartoonist, which is itself a must visit concerning news about the world of cartooning, had a great link the other day to a blog called Freelance Switch. It’s billed as “a Community & Resource for freelancers of all varieties – designers, writers programmers, illustrators, photographers …”. It is a great resource, chock full of useful posts like this one called “8 Simple Online Time Management Tools for Freelancers” or this one called “10 Essential Steps to Avoid Freelance Headaches”. A definite bookmark for anyone in the freelance business.
Renegade Fitness- My personal trainer, Ryan Branson, left Lifetime Fitness and has started his own PT business. This is his new website. Ryan is a very knowledgeable trainer and has helped me progress in the last two years even after I had achieved some pretty significant physique changes in the previous three years with my original trainer, Rich Dolan. Rich left to pursue a life in the service of God, and he hooked me up with Ryan before departing. Ryan’s site is new and a work in progress. If you want to see where I came from and where I’m at with my training, check out his client testimonials page for a brief article by me and some shocking before and after pictures.
Audible-Audible.com is the best source for reasonably priced audio books for download. It has quietly added one of my most eagerly awaited books to it’s library. I never thought I’d see it, but Dune by Frank Herbert is finally available, unabridged, for download as an audiobook. I’m a big Dune fan, really loving the slow burning books stuffed with social, political, religious, geo-scientific, economic and caste-system themes and concepts amid an inventive and far reaching science fiction universe. I hope this is the first of what will eventually be a complete collection of Herbert’s Dune series on Audiobook. I haven’t listened to it yet, but it looks to be a cast recording as opposed to a single reader. It will be fun to hear it brought to life.
Finally, a few posts ago I was talking about MAD and advertising, and mentioned how nobody complained about the Spy vs. Spy Mountain Dew commercials. That may have been because they were so darn well done. Here’s some I found on that bastion of copyright infringement, You Tube:
NOTE- This review contains NO spoilers. No specific plot points are revealed, so read with confidence that the fun will not be ruined.
Well, It’s over.
Ten years, seven books, 3,694 pages. Five feature fives (two more to come), billions in sales of books, merchandise, etc. Millions stood for hours in line to buy their copy of the final tome at 12:01 on Saturday the 21st of July. Easily the most popular, best selling fiction book series in history. Over. The tale is told.
That’s a lot of hype to live up to for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final book of J.K. Rowling‘s ludicrously popular Harry Potter book series. With that kind of build up and that kind of rabid fan base, can this book possibly provide a satisfactory ending to the phenomenon that was the Harry Potter saga?
I read the book on Saturday (I took an entire day off for it), and in my humble opinion I think Rowling delivers a satisfying and surprisingly deep story that puts a conclusive wrapper on almost every aspect of the tale, right down to the inevitable showdown between Harry and Lord Voldemort. That’s no mean feat, as there are so many different plots and elements to the story that were left to be explained. What is the true relationship between Harry’s Aunt Petunia and the world of magic? Are Dumbledore and Sirius really dead? What’s the real story behind the Horcruxes? What is the truth behind the strange connection between Harry and Voldemort? Will the many predictions of Dumbledore bear fruit? So many more questions. Rest assured, Rowling does not leave you wondering about any.
The story itself is unlike any of the other books, which all revolved within a year of magical education at Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Hogwarts plays a part in the story but very little of the book’s events take place there. True to his word at the end of Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince, Harry has left Hogwarts to keep his promise to Dumbledore and pursue the final four Horcruxes, objects in which Voldemort placed portions of this soul to cheat death, and destroy them. The magical world has been turned on it’s ear and it’s truly war now. Rowlings digs in right away and the body count is appalling. She promised the deaths of two major characters… it’s a lot more brutal than that. With almost callous nonchalance the good guys drop like flies, often without the fanfare and mourning that followed the deaths of Sirius and Dumbledore in previous books. This book really is like war, where you don’t get a chance to grieve for the dead as Harry and his companions are too busy trying to make sure they don’t join them. It seems almost disrespectful in a way, but I think it reflects the changed world in which this story takes place. Much of the wonder is gone, replaced by terror and brutality.
Harry and some of his friends keep to themselves and go about the business of figuring out what the Horcruxes are, where they are, how to get them and how to destroy them. Rowling relies on her usual plot devices here, which involve a lot of discussion, re-discussion and “almost figuring it out” until the answers suddenly dawn and then the action happens quickly. Meanwhile the Death Eaters are on the warpath for Harry or any of his and Dumbledore’s supporters, now in the open and without reservations. As with many of her other books, there are some pretty big plot holes here and there but asking us to ignore them is a small favor when rewarded with the overall story. There is more exciting action and far more deadly obstacles and tight spots for Harry to wriggle out of in this book than any of the others. Harry and company don’t just blindly stumble into action either, but are themselves active in thoughtfully planning and pulling off some covert operations right under the noses of the Death Eaters and Voldemort himself. Harry has long been telling people what he’s done is mostly “luck and getting help”, so it’s refreshing to see him growing up and being more than just a powerful chess piece manipulated by others. This Harry is still confused and frustrated by his lack of total understanding of what he’s involved in, but he is taking his own reins at last.
Harry’s frustration mainly stems from what he perceives as Dumbledore’s lack of total trust in him by not giving him of all the facts and the complete story about he and Voldemort. One of the most surprising things about this book is it’s slow revealing of Dumblebore’s past… one that does not appear to be as snowy white as we would have thought. Further confused by a shaken image of his mentor, Harry needs to search for truth on several fronts. Harry is also further split by a need to decide between searching for the Horcruxes as he was bidden, or to pursue “The Deathly Hallows”, another collection of magical objects that have to do with cheating death. This leads to hard choices for Harry.
Another element that sets this book apart from the others is Voldemort’s direct involvement and participation in the action. In the past he’s either been peripherally involved or working through minions, letting other do his bidding. Even after his fight with Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, he is barely in The Half Blood Prince at all. Here he is one of the principal characters, showing off his gaudy powers and actively pursuing Harry as well as his other goals. Voldemort’s relationship with even his most loyal servants reveals much of his character, both it’s greatest strengths and weaknesses.
Rowling borrows liberally from others sources such as classic mythology as well as The Lord of the Rings. There is an especially obvious parallel between the One Ring and one of the horcruxes that readers of both tales will not fail to recognize. That’s not a criticism but merely an observation. If I have any other complaints about the book they might be that despite the length it seems to shortchange some of those dangling plots in their often very swift resolutions. Some of the areas which drag along during a period where a lot of time passes without any advancement in Horcrux pursuit could have been trimmed a bit and others expanded. Characters like Hagrid and McGonnagal also appear very little in the book, and that’s a shame as they were such big parts in the other novels. Ultimately, though, the story is Harry’s and other characters merely play their parts. The only other distraction was the obvious shoehorning in of nostalgic references to past books, as if Rowling was determined to have Harry say goodbye to places and people we’d be reading about for the last time through reminiscences as they are happened upon. Unnecessary.
A welcome delight was the many instances throughout the book where people, places and things that were only casually mentioned or pointed out in previous books are shown to bear tremendous meaning or purpose in this one. It’s been a staple of Rowling’s writings for these kinds of things to occur, but here she deals them out in spades and it will cause many a reader to run to their bookshelves to look up passages in previous books that seemed innocent at the time but with hindsight now come full circle. If anyone ever had any doubts that the entire story was nearly fully plotted out before the first book was written, they are dispelled here. Great fun.
The strength of the story, and for me the most satisfying aspect of it, is the sudden growth of Harry from an angry, confused kid into a man with great purpose and wisdom. He learns to trust his instincts as the story unfolds, even if those instincts lead to painful choices. The pivotal moment (and since it’s well known there are deaths in this book, this is not a spoiler) comes upon the death of a character that occurs while rescuing Harry from a tight spot. Something happens to Harry after that. He reaches an internal decision, one that is represented by his choice of “Horcruxes or Hallows”, but actually goes deeper. He comes to terms with his relationship with Dumbledore and what his future must be. After that his actions and words REMIND me of Dumbledore… calm and purposeful. He embraces his destiny at last, and the rest of the story follows suit.
The climactic ending itself is a worthy one, and that’s saying a lot (although there is far too little after that climax is over… I wanted more time to breathe and get to know what changes were wrought in the wizarding world by the events that happen). Rowling doesn’t stretch it out. It happens fast and furious, rather too fast, and the chips fall for good or ill. In the grand tradition of mythology, nothing good comes without cost. I’ll say no more but leave it for those who have not had the pleasure of reading the book to discover for themselves. I envy you.
For myself, I was not as melancholy as I thought I’d be after I turned that last page. The story is over. It was a good one, and it ended as all good stories should… satisfyingly and with closure.
As I wrote previously… Thanks, Ms. Rowling. It’s been an enjoyable journey.
Q: How do you figure up how much time a project will take so you know you can promise it by a certain time? By paper size? By number of people/objects? I really should start timing myself to see how long it takes to do each step of my projects before I even consider charging anybody for my time.
A: If asked how long it will take to do a particular job, my answer is always the same: “It takes as long as you’ll give me.”
Some jobs require a lot of complicated imagery like crowd scenes or lot’s of elaborate detail, and some are simpler and therefore take less time. The difference doesn’t amount to much, really. I estimate it takes 2-3 days for a full page illustration. It might take a little more if the image is very complex, or a little less if it’s something simple, but 90% fall within that range. I guess after a while you get a feel for what a job entails and what you can realistically expect as far as time frame goes.
Most jobs come with a deadline anyway, and you either accept it in that time frame or not. I’ve been asked to do artwork overnight and been given 2 months to do it. If they give me two months I’ll take two months, I just accept other jobs along the way. I also find myself doing a lot of needless noodling on a piece if I have a long deadline, whereas if the deadline is short I would work quicker. The end result has little difference really, I notice but most would not. Therefore the exact same illustration would take longer in the second instance simply because I had more time to mess around on it.
Not much of an answer, I know… but it’s that’s the way it is..
Thanks to Garrett Williams 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’m running low!
