Q: I worked doing retail caricatures I know that it is hard to hire someone trustworthy and is a good artist. Especially to be a manager at one of your concessions. Here in L.A. we always had someone (even managers) pilfering from the till. Are the artists permitted to display their own samples? Will you ever acknowledge them (not the criminals but the worthy artists) on your blog?

A: I don’t often write about the business side of the retail caricature business here because I don’t think that is a topic that anyone but a very small few might care about or get anything out of. Therefore I have tried to devote this blog to the art side of live caricatures when I address it at all, with perhaps the occasional comment on the business side of it. I will, however, be happy to answer your question(s).

Business is business, and it doesn’t much matter whether your business is selling caricatures, widgets or chicken soup… the challenges of operating a business are almost universal. One of the toughest ones is finding good, reliable people to work with/for you. It’s very hard to find people who are reliable, honest, hard working and who place a high priority on their job. With retail caricatures, you also have to throw in the extra wrinkle of needing to be talented as well, and that’s the hardest part. Any business needs people like that, and they are not easy to find.

Each season we go on a recruiting search in art schools and colleges, via newspaper ads and lately via Craigslist and other online resources to find artists to work with us at my various park operations. We work very hard to put together the best crews we can, because the better the people we have in place the easier the rest of the season goes. I estimate we need to interview at least 4 people for each one opening if we expect to fill it with a decent artist who will do a good job. More than a few times we never got those four to choose from, and that leads to mediocre artists who do mediocre jobs.

You ask about stealing and how to prevent it. Only an owner who is either very naive or very stupid believes no one is stealing anything from their business. There is only three things you can do to deter that from happening, and those things are to pay attention, make stealing as difficult as possible and to deal harshly with anyone who is stealing.

That last one isn’t really prevention in and of itself, but it is still the most effective deterrent. My method is to dismiss thieves instantly and very openly. There are no second chances when it comes to theft. No one can argue they didn’t understand it was wrong, or that they did it by mistake. They just didn’t think they’d get caught. The way I look at it, you are doing them a favor by sending them packing, and embarrassing them in the process if possible. They will get another job and in that way get a second chance, but they might remember that incident and think twice about stealing from their new employer. The other reason for the public dismissal is to send a message to the rest of the people that work with you that you are paying attention and that you have a zero tolerance for that kind of thing.

The other two steps for prevention is to pay attention and to make it hard to steal. These go hand in hand. Ultimately you need to trust the people who work with you, but that doesn’t mean you do it blindly. Most theft occurs when otherwise honest people believe no one is watching and there is no way they will get caught. If they think there IS someone watching that will deter 95% of all theft. Most people logically value their jobs more highly than the extra $20 they might get with sticky fingers. The theme parks make this easy for me, as they have a large loss prevention team and secret shop everybody, us included, as well as watch in plain clothes behind us at random to see they things are rung up properly and the money is handled correctly. I have had a few artists caught doing something naughty and they have suffered the consequences.

Some people might argue that paying people more might deter them from stealing, but that is absolutely false. Paying people more is what gets you (hopefully) more loyalty, harder work, more willingness to put the job higher on the priority list of life… there are a host of benefits to paying your people as much as you can and still have a healthy business. I have always done that. The theme parks take a ridiculously high percentage of the gross sales as rent and I cannot pay as well there as I would like, although despite a constant increase in percentage for the theme parks over the last 12 years I have not reduced the percentage I pay my artists one fraction… I have eaten the reduced profit out of my own pocket instead. However in other venues who take a lesser percentage in rent I pay that extra directly to the artists, keeping my profit margin the same. That hopefully gets me better people who stay with me longer, but it does absolutely nothing to deter theft. People very seldom steal because of NEED. They steal because of WANT, and they will do that no matter how much they are paid. They do it for multiple reasons… it’s amazing how people can justify something like that in their minds.

Good management is the key. I have been offered many other parks to expand into and have turned most down for one main reason… I had no one I felt was a reliable manager ready to take on such an endeavor. When I do find someone with the work ethic, responsibility, organizational skills and ability to handle people that constitute a good manager I actively look for a place to put them, and they are paid accordingly. Good management is essential to any business. I don’t mention them here on the blog because that’s not what this blog if for, but I do have at least one person with these special abilities in place in each of my locations. They either share in the profits if they manage the crew or get a large percentage of their own work in exchange for overseeing the workings of a smaller booth, but they are well compensated and are treated as partners and not as just workers. My current managers are James Hungaski at Valleyfair, Ryan Roe at Six Flags St. Louis, Alex Hughes at Six Flags New England for caricature and tattoos and Rich Carper for airbrush t-shirts, Jim Batts at St. Louis Union Station and Andy Blakeborough at Nickelodoen Universe. I consider myself very lucky to have these guys in place I treat them right.

As to your other question, I encourage all my artists to have their own samples on the display walls. All samples need to be approved of course, but I consider that a necessity. At least one sample should be up for each artist.

Thanks to Michael Garisek 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!

Whew…

No matter how much I try and guard against it, every once and a while a freelance job “get’s away from you” and ends up being 10 times the amount of work you thought it would be. I just finished such a project tonight that has been on my board, at various stages of concepts, pencils, approvals, revisions, reviews and finals for about 4 months. It didn’t seem like such a big job when I took it on, but it ballooned into a lot of work. Fortunately the clients were very patient, and were willing to adjust my compensation when it became apparent the original scope of the job was not going to cover how much they wanted me involved. They also allowed me to work the job in between other more deadline orientated projects. Still, having a project hanging over the board for four months is draining. Thank goodness it’s over.

Well… MOSTLY over. There will be some tweaking of a few of the over 140 images I did for this job, as it involves programming and placement for an on-line game and doubtless a few of the elements will need some adjusting or cleaning up once they are in place and game play is tested. Still, the vast majority of the work is over. This job burned me out like no other has in many years.

When the game is live and on-line, I will write about the enormous process and all that went into it. Should be sometime this fall. In the meantime, it’s back to several other jobs including that MADoptical communications parody. No rest for the wicked, but in this economy I’ll take swamped over unemployed any day.

No energy (or time) for a real post today. There is another installment on “How to Draw Caricatures” coming soon, though. I promise. I also have a full review of the portable Cintiq 12WX in the works, as well as some articles on this and that.

Eccccch!

Here’s another of those oddball advertising jobs that come along, you do them and get paid for them, but they never get produced or used in the way intended.

This project was done a few years ago for an ad agency. They wanted a “superhero” team designed in a style somewhat reminiscent of the Bruce Timm animated look for some ad campaign pitch to Canon, the photocopy/consumer electronics company. I got the job via referral from a fellow illustrator.

I needed to design 5 heroes, two of which were a hero/sidekick combo. I honestly don’t remember the exact details but the leader of the group was “Golden Eagle” and I think he was supposed to represent some new kind of technology or feature set being introduced. The others were “Canon Man”, “Digital Diva” and “Captain Connectivity (and sidekick)”. I did a few simple roughs with some goofy ideas noted:

Uhhh… legs too short on this one…

They approved “Canon Man” and “Captain Connectivity” right away, but we needed to work on the other two. Apparently someone in the office had a problem with a “double D” plastered across the large breasts of the lady superhero… who knew?? Also, and more bizarrely, they wanted me to give “Golden Eagle” the actual HEAD of an eagle. The client is always right!…

Funny, they decided the eagle’s head was too weird (REALLY?!?). Also even one “D” was too much on Digital Diva’s chest:

Those got the nod, and I did the whole group in a pose together in color for the “pitch”:

Click for a closer look…

I assume since I never heard from the client again after getting my paycheck for this coneptual work that the idea was not accepted and the ad campaign not developed. This could have been one of several different ideas that get pitched to the ad client, you know, like Darren Stevens used to have to do on Bewitched all the time with Larry Tate rolling his eyes in the background… I think I may have just dated myself.

Anyway it was fun while it lasted. You have to love getting paid to draw goofy superheroes.

I thought I’d do something different for “Sketch o’the Week” this week.

I’m a member of an international organization of caricature artists called the National Caricaturists Network, which I occasionally blog about here. Part of membership is access to a private forum where ideas, opinions and artwork are shared concerning caricatures and the business of caricatures. One of the forum sections is called “The Firing Squad”, where members post pictures of themselves and other members draw their caricature. A lot of the caricatures in my “Me Gallery” come from there. This week I thought I’d take a person from “The Firing Squad” and do a little mini-demo of a caricature sketch.

Here’s our “victim”, caricaturist Doug Sterner:

He’s got a lot to work with! Here are my observations. Some are a result of the nature of the photograph (there is a slight fish-eye feel to pictures one takes of themselves at arms length):

• Long, narrow face
• prominent nose, a little pointy
• large distance from nose to top lip
• prominent, bony, cleft chin
• heavy brow
• Overbite and strong front teeth
• wide forehead
• ears set back on head

In drawing our caricature I need to make some decisions as to what aspects more important than others. According to the Law of Constant Mass, if I emphasize his chin and upper lip area, I will have to ignore the big forehead. Clearly that is the way to go here, especially at this angle which offers the chin/jaw in the forefront. Therefore i will shrink the forehead and enlarge the chin/jaw/upper lip area. I will also make the nose and brow large and make them protrude out. Finally I’ll follow through with the smaller cranial mass by narrowing the back of the head as well, which results in the ear protruding farther back. Here’s our rough with some notes added:

Then we do the actual drawing, making some adjustments as we go:

As long as we are on the subject of Batman movies…

If you happen to have an extra $110,000 laying about, head over to eBayландшафт and bid on this ’89 Batmobile. The seller describes it as one of the 5 original cars built for the Tim Burton 1989 film starring Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson. From the interior it sure looks authentic… there are a few batmobiles of this type about that were built for Six Flag’s stuntshows but the interior of those were minimal with a space for a hidden driver to make the car appear like it was remote controlled.

I’ve always loved this car design and thought it one of the best things about the original Batman movies. Too bad I blew my last extra hundred grand hiring Van Halen to play my birthday party.

Regular blog reader Chip O’Brien sent me a link yesterday to this article about how “Iron Man” star Robert Downey Jr. disses “The Dark Knight” in this article on Moviehole.net.

“My whole thing is that I saw ‘The Dark Knight’. I feel like I’m dumb because I feel like I don’t get how many things that are so smart. It’s like a Ferrari engine of storytelling and script writing and I’m like, ‘That’s not my idea of what I want to see in a movie.’ I loved ‘The Prestige’ but didn’t understand ‘The Dark Knight’. Didn’t get it, still can’t tell you what happened in the movie, what happened to the character and in the end they need him to be a bad guy. I’m like, ‘I get it. This is so high brow and so [expletive] smart, I clearly need a college education to understand this movie.’ You know what? [Expletive] DC comics. That’s all I have to say and that’s where I’m really coming from.” >> Read the full interview.

I loved “Iron Man”, but this sounds like sour grapes to me. The story must be making perfect sense to a few people, as they have so far blown about $490 million on tickets. I believe “Iron Man” topped out at $320 million. As fun and entertaining as “Iron Man” was it was much more of a popcorn flash-bang film than “The Dark Knight”, which took a lot more risks than Downey’s film did.

I went to the latest Batman movie without much in the way of high expectations, as I don’t care a lot for the dark-for-dark’s-sake take that I was fearing it was going to embrace. Like I said in my review of the movie, it was plenty dark but it balanced it all with a great story, pacing, action, character development and some incredible performances by some actors playing parts that were anything but cartoonish. The most amazing part for me was that John Q. Public, not exactly known for their discriminating taste in films (Will Ferrell, anyone?) responded with a resounding stamp of approval. I would have expected the movie to get critical acclaim and do good but hardly outstanding box office numbers. It just goes to show if you have a good story and all the other elements to make an entertaining film, audiences will sit through the deep and dark themes.

Robert Downey Jr. sounds like a baby with those statements. Get over it, man… and get on to “Iron Man 2″!!

After finally putting to bed several ongoing projects last week and this weekend, the only thing currently on the board is a pretty big MAD job, which is more than enough for the next two weeks.

Just for something to look at, here is my latest “workplace poster” job- pencils, inks and final color:

Click for a closer look…

In the initial pencils there was a lot going on. The client wanted four servers in tuxedos, race/gender specific serving Thanksgiving dinner to a family of turkey farmers. The catch is, of course, they are serving anything but turkey. I needed to show it was: A.) Thanksgiving. B.) A family of turkey farmers (race neutral) happy with their dinner. C.) something obviously NOT turkey they were getting served.

My solutions were to add a cornucopia with a “Happy Thanksgiving” message in it (I briefly thought of a wall calendar with the date circled and marked, but thought that too convoluted), a picture window showing a barn with a “Turkey Farm” sign on it and some gag turkeys looking in and a platter of seafood being presented to a happy family.

Click for a closer look…

The client decided four servers was too many, so I eliminated two and changed their positions to balance the scene. They also wanted more cartoonish, exaggerated faces of glee and anticipation, hence the wide, googly eyes on the family.

Click for a closer look…

The final colored piece. They like the bright, colorful look. These posters are 17″ x 17″, so they really stand out on the walls in a busy workplace environment.

Q: Upon viewing the Phelps drawing it prompts the question, how much of your style is based on comic book drawing?  I kind of get the impression that what sets your work apart from others is that you draw caricatures the way a Marvel or DC artist would.

A: In my opinion not much of my style of drawing or caricature is based on comic book work, and none of it is intentionally.

My main style of caricature was developed from doing live caricature work at theme parks, and my experience with comic book style illustration is rather limited. It’s hard to pin down where a style comes from. You see influences in it, but essentially anyone’s style is just an extension of how they think, see and interpret their environment. I think your observations may be coming from my treatment of the figure… particularly the athlete or muscular type forms. “Comic book anatomy” has a certain look to it. In exaggerating the human form it often looks comic bookish, as comics artists also exaggerate to give their more-than-human characters greater dynamics and visual energy. Certainly I exaggerate the figure as much as the faces when I can… the Phelps drawing is a perfect example of that.

I never did comic book work in the “cape-and-tights” pure sense. The “Married… with Children” and “Coneheads” issues I did were much more MAD Magazine than mainstream comic-like. Of course there is a large amount of crossover there, particularly in the storytelling and layout end of things. Humorous comics may not be given the same kind of attention that superhero comics get, but they have always been a part of the comics world, and often a large part of it. Some of the greatest comic book artists were equally as adept at drawing funny as they were are drawing dramatic.

When I was a kid I drew my own comics during every spare minute I could find. I had hundreds of pages of superhero and sci-fi stories I’d written and drawn on everything from notebooks to old mimeograph paper to computer print log sheets. I devoured comics like Batman, Star Wars, The Hulk, Doctor Strange, Captain Marvel… you name it. You can certainly trace whatever storytelling/layout skills I have back to a love of comic books. Perhaps you see that glimmering through somehow.

Thanks to Mark Grant 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!

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the availablility for purchase of the sculpted Sherlock Holmes pen that was based on my illustrations of Holmes for the audible collection of the complete Sir Arthur Conan Doyle collection One Voice Chronological: The Complete Holmes Canon. That announcement was a bit premature, as the web page meant to enable buyers to purchase the pen was having some trouble.

Well, that is all corrected and the new ordering page is up, running and seems to work great on either a PC or a Mac, at least on my Mac using FireFox. While you are at it, visit the main web page of vocal maestro David Ian Davies and follow the links to sample some of his Holmes readings on Audible.com. His work is mesmerizing. He has applied his talents to several other classics available on Audible.com that I have downloaded and enjoyed as well as the Holmes canon, including Robert Louis Stevenson‘s Treasure Island, works by Edgar Allen Poe, H.G. Wells‘ The Time Machine and many others including one I am currently listening to, Edgar Rice Burrough‘s Tarzan of the Apes. All great stuff that it is hard to believe is all done by one person.

The sculptured pen is very well done… I can actually see my original drawing in it:

I have had other 3D work done based on my drawingd which have not been nearly as successful. It’s a must for all fans of Sherlock Holmes. I will have a permanent link to the ordering page on my blogroll on the right. Currently I am working with David’s son, who is the the producer of this and many other resin cast pens and items, on a line of pens based on my artwork. I will let everybody know when and where they will be available.