Q: I’m curious about how your creative process has evolved since you were a newbie. I’m fresh out of school myself, and I’ve landed a few low-profile illustration gigs, but I’m often pretty clueless about how to proceed after I’m hired. How do you go about working up your initial roughs? What processes are involved immediately after you get the greenlight? How much time do you spend brainstorming, looking up references — how much work do you put into your initial roughs? And how has this changed since you were as clueless as someone like me?

A: My process from beginning stage to final art of any given job remains basically the same since my first illustration job… it only changes when the dynamics of my relationship with a given client allows it to.

I’ll give you a rundown of my typical process. Let’s take for granted that the client I’m working for is either a new one or one I haven’t worked with very long:

1. Conversation with client about job- This is most productive after I have received a copy of the article I am illustrating and if possible the layout of the article (or specs on the ad or other job, as the case may be). We discuss the objective or message of the illustration and possible ways to convey the message visually. I take notes and be sure I have any questions answered.

2. Thumbnail roughs- It depends a lot on the client’s desires and how specific or clear they are on what they are looking for as to whether I start with thumbnail roughs. If I am unclear about the direction or the client ambiguous about what they are looking for, I will do 3 or more rough thumbnail drawings first. These are done at 1/2 or less print size, and are very rough. Basically this is just to get the basic concept agreed upon. It’s important to get this clear before going to even basic rough pencils, because it saves you time and trouble. Drawing takes time, and you will waste it if you have to redo more detailed drawing down the road because the basic concept was not established clearly. For clients I have worked with often, I usually skip this step as i know what they want and they know what to expect.

Here are some thumbnail roughs I did for a job this past summer:

3. Rough Pencils- Once the concept is clear, I move to rough pencils. This is done at print size, and is more clearly defined than the thumbnails. I still do not spend much time at this stage, I am looking to get a basic approval or revision requests before I do all out on the final pencils.

Often times I skip this stage if the thumbnail roughs are tight enough in the first place, or I may just tighten up the approved rough with any requested revisions to fulfill the “pencil rough” stage. In the case of the above job, I just did some revisions on the approved design and placed in in a mocked up layout.

4. Final Pencils- Here I spend a fair amount of time really penciling out the illustration so they can see all the details and full intended image. When still in pencil, changes at this stage are still pretty easy to make. Yes, I can waste some valuable drawing time if radical changes are needed, but it’s still possible to do it without a major time commitment. Besides, if any radical changes are needed, it will be because the ball got dropped somewhere along the first three stages.

5. Final Art- By this stage everything should be decided upon and all that is needed is the work to do whatever finishes are required for the final image. In this case it’s an ink and color job.

The stages change depending on the dynamic. For some jobs and clients I go right to the single pencil rough without doing multiple thumbnails searching for a concept they will like. Other jobs need that step. No matter what it’s always pencil rough (multiple thumbnails and/or single concept)> final pencil> final art.

It does not matter where you are in your illustration career… your job is always the same: to produce an illustration that fits the needs of your clients. That requires a process that is 50% communication and 50% illustration.

Thanks to Ryan Cole 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!

The new book above by former New York Times Op-Ed art director of 13 years Jerelle Kraus promises to be an interesting look into the thought process, decision making and insider information of the approval (or rejection) of illustration in the Times’ Op-Ed pages. The book’s description states that within you will find:

Episodic essays accompanied by illustrations re-create the battles between art directors and editors that have raged since the Times created the world’s first op-ed page in 1970. The works of famous Times illustrators like Brad Holland and Roland Topor, are enriched by Kraus’s presentation of the controversies associated with their publication or rejection.

In a recent article about the book in the New York Post, the author was quoted as saying:

editors were convinced that illustrators always were trying to put something over on them, sneaking in hidden sexual or political statements.

The article goes on to say caricatures were a subject of particular scrutiny by the editors:

For years, there was a puzzling prohibition on caricatures of famous people, and even the most explosive opinion would be accompanied by a watered-down picture. If the pen was mightier than the sword, editors believed that art was more brutal than the pen.

Very interesting. The Post article contains several samples of rejected illustrations, including caricatures from the likes of Robert Grossman, David Levine, Ward Sutton and Andy Warhol. Many of the rejected images seem to be thought to too closely resemble sexual imagery.

That may seem paranoid, and much of it likely was, but there are plenty of stories of how editors and art directors have been burned and embarrassed by illustrators doing something sneaky like hiding sexual symbols, political agenda, subliminal messages and the like into their artwork, so it’s hard to blame editors for being a little gun shy. Still, most of the rejections I’ve seen that this book cites are ridiculous in the extreme.

One of the more famous “urban legends” of subliminal illustration shenanigans was the story that has circulated for years that one of the spires in the underwater castle depicted in background of the poster for “The Little Mermaid” was in fact a phallus deliberately drawn by a disgruntled Disney artist who was about to be fired (see close up, right). The issue reached national attention thanks to an article in Entertainment Weekly in the mid 90′s, and plenty of rumor and innuendo followed.

The story of the image being done on purpose by an angry soon-to-be ex Disney artist has been reported as false by several sources, including being debunked on Snopes.com, the rumor examining website. According to snopes, which cites several reliable sources, “The plain truth is that the resemblance between the castle spire and a penis was purely accidental, and it was drawn by an artist who was neither disgruntled nor about to be dismissed.” The artist in question was a freelancer who did a lot of promotional art for the film including greeting cards, Happy Meal Boxes, etc. and who claims that is was purely an accidental resemblance. The entire design of the undersea objects are phallic, so I suppose it could have just happened. I have to admit that even at four in the morning, as the artist claims was the time he was working on it, I would be hard pressed not to notice that the above element looked and awful lot like a penis. Hence the persistent rumors.

That one may have been accidental, but there are some that are not. I got into a little hot water once in high school when, as the school paper’s editorial cartoonist, I inserted a subliminal message in the background of a cartoon that went unnoticed by the editors. Only after publication did someone point out to school administration that the letters on the books in the background of a school library scene spelled out a derogatory comment about a kid in school I didn’t get along too well with. That got me tossed off the newspaper staff, and taught me a valuable lesson about abusing trust. Later I was let back on the school paper and one of my cartoons was nominated for a state award… more importantly I’d learned my lesson.

I happen to know that certain artists who have worked for MAD garner(ed) special attention from the editorial staff, who had to pour over the backgrounds of their illustrations to make sure something didn’t get slipped by them. That is sad, IMO. As an illustrator it should go without saying that you are being trusted not to pull that kind of crap and try to sneak in some little inside joke or personal statement that isn’t what your client intends to convey. I can use the poor but still valid excuse that I was a dumb kid of 14 when I drew that cartoon that got me kicked off the school paper. As a professional today I would never think to do that sort of thing. The closest I get is putting the faces of people I know into the work I do, but that is a different animal… I have to draw SOMEBODY as a secondary character in these illustrations… it may as well be a familiar face.

Getting back to the book, it looks like an interesting stocking stuffer for the illustrator who has it all.

It was inevitable when drawing caricatures at the theme parks every summer that should I do a drawing of a kid with a round head and large ears I would hear behind me “you look that that kid from MAD Magazine in the picture!”. Har har. However in the late 90′s that exchange changed somewhat. I more often heard (at least from the under 20 crowd) “you look that that kid from “MAD TV” in the picture!”.

Me: “Actually that’s Alfred E. Neuman you are talking about, from MAD Magazine.”

Them: “You mean “MAD TV” has a MAGAZINE?!? COOL!”

Me: Groan.

Since I started working for MAD I cannot do a talk or a Q & A with any high school aged kids without fielding a question about “MAD TV”. Do I do anything for “MAD TV”? Does MAD Magazine have anything to do with “MAD TV”?, etc. (The answers are: No, and No- they only license the name and rights to animated shorts with MAD characters).

It was recently announced that FOX has canceled “MAD TV” after 14 seasons… that’s a pretty good run for a sketch comedy show not called “Saturday Night Live”. I confess I have never actually watched a full episode of “MAD TV”, but I have been told at times during it’s run it was pretty funny and cutting edge. The bits I have seen of it demonstrated to me that is actually was, occasionally at least, a video version of MAD Magazine. It did MAD-like movie and TV show parodies, some of which I’ve seen and were pretty funny.

There is talk from the show’s producers that they are trying to get picked up at another network, so maybe this isn’t the end of “MAD TV”. I hope not, if nothing else it keeps the “MAD” name out there.

Here’s a couple of You Tube “MAD TV” sketches to enjoy:

I hope everyone who celebrates this holiday has a wonderful time with family and friends today!

This week’s subject is “The Daily Show” host Jon Stewart. This sketch took about 1/2 hour. It’s a good example of how the posture and body language of a subject can play an important part in the overall effectiveness of the caricature. Stewart’s hunched forward posture and folded hands are as recognizable a feature of his persona as his ample nose. Likewsie expression comes very much into play with his caricature. He often looks up from under his brows and cocks and eyebrow at the camera. These elements help reinforce and strengthen a caricature.

Comic Strips are a tough business. The newspaper market keeps shrinking and its harder and harder to get in enough papers to make a living doing a daily strip. I know a lot of cartoonists who do syndicated newspaper strips and that all say the same thing… what would have been a hit strip back in the 80′s struggles to get off the ground today. Many complain that part of the problem are “legacy” strips that stay in the comics pages long after they are either stale and no longer relevant or after their creators have passed the strip on to their kids or other artists and writers. Comics are like comfort food… newspaper readers like seeing the strips they saw as kids still in the comics. That and the shrinking market make breaking in with a new strip very difficult.

One of the few recent success stories with daily strips is Mark Tatulli‘s “Lio”, a daring pantomime strip with a unique art style and edgy humor. Lio is Mark’s latest strip… he also has a daily called “Heart of the City” that has been around for 10 years. The two strips could not be more different.

I’ve met Mark several times at the National Cartoonists Society Rueben weekends. He’s a great guy and very derserving of his success. The Cartoon Art Museum’s Andrew Farago recently did an interview with Mark for The Comics Journal, and excpert of which you can read here. The article is very insightful into the world of daily strips syndication and the challenges cartoonists face today. I will be hunting down the latest issue of TCJ to read the full article. In the meantime check out the excerpt.

For more reading about working int he comic strip business, Alan Gardner‘s fantastic blog The Daily Cartoonist has a post today with links to articles by several strip cartoonists about how they became syndicated.

I have several irons in the fire at the moment but here’s the latest “workplace poster” job I just completed last week. This one was a killer.

Here’s the art direction and tagline:

(Urban street scene. It’s Feb. 14. Maybe there’s Times-Square-style zipper that says, ‘Happy Valentine’s Day today!’ Looking up on either side of the street you can see a flower shop, a bookstore, a jewelry store and a candy store. It’s a mob scene, with men and women (diversity, please) frantically running in the streets with cards and last-minute gifts, sweating and carrying their packages. Men carrying flowers and jewelry bags, a woman carrying a puppy, another woman pushing a new, shiny, zooted-up gas grill down the middle of the street. You could even have a cop or two directing pedestrian traffic. Everyone’s looking frazzled. It’s the last minute to buy a gift. No cars in the street, please.):

“If you want to have a sweetheart of a day, don’t procrastinate! Come on – pace yourself on (and off) the job, and avoid pushing the envelope! Here’s to planning ahead … keeping a cool head … and giving yourself time afterwards to relax and smell the roses.“

Well, not much to say about that. Some jobs call for a relatively easy image and some call for something like this. An illustrator is paid for usage not for time it takes to complete a piece, so the paycheck is the same whether I spend two days on one of these poster jobs or two weeks. I consider it to all “come out in the wash” in the end, meaning there are very easy and quick jobs that balance out these more complex ones so it all evens out over time. This one was a killer, though… did I say that already?

Here is the rough pencil sketch:

Click for a closer look…

I have been working for this client for many years now (in fact so long I have lost count of the number of these posters I have done… somewhere in the forty or fifty range by now at least) that I no longer do any thumbnails or multiple roughs for review. I just go straight into a single solution. I know what they want and they know what to expect from me, so there are seldom any major changes.

Obviously the point of this image was a frenzied scene with people rushing to get last minute valentines gifts. I know the client will not like anyone looking “too crazy” or panicked, nor will they want to see any violence like people getting trampled or pushed aside. They like a blend of caricature/cartoon character people, lots of diversity in sex, race and age, and lots of strong color in the final. My layout uses a tilted angle of the scene to create more chaos, and then just fills the space with various people scurrying about.

Here are the final inks:

Click for a closer look…

I spot some blacks here and there but as this is going to be color I only do a little value work with the inks (i.e. solid blacks, linear or crosshatch shading, etc.)

I saved the image in a partially colored stage:

I work from the background forward with the color, which is very important. In a crowd scene you must alter your colors from the foreground to the background to help create some depth. The farther back you go, the less saturated or intense the color and the less contrast it contains. I will add a blue cast of varying strength to the color of the figures in the back until they become nearly monochromatic.

Here’s the final image:

Click for a closer look…

Crowd scenes are something I’ve garnered somewhat of a reputation of being good at. I don’t know if that’s a blessing or a curse, as they are a serious pain in the ass to do. If you think this one is complex, that’s nothing. Right now I am working on one for MAD that makes this one look like two kids playing in a sandbox. The good news is that I am going to spend a little extra time on it to set it up as a tutorial for how to design and illustrate a crowd scene. Look for that one once that issue of MAD is on the stands in January.

Q:  I notice in the “Ironic, Man” Mad movie parody that there are caricatures of George W. Bush and Osama Bin Laden as well as a guy with an egg frying on his head. My question is: How much artistic licence do you have when it comes to producing the parodies? Do the ideas of putting Bush and Bin Laden in the picture stem from you or does the writer determine those sight gags?

A: I have a great deal of artistic license when it comes to adding sight gags within the art of a parody or any MAD piece. In fact, the editors greatly encourage the artists to add such things as much as possible. In most cases any visual gags, like the examples you cited above in the “Ironic, Man” splash that do not relate in any way to any of the word balloon text will be “artist written” gags. In rare cases the writer will add an “art note” where he/she envisions an unrelated sight gag in a given panel… for example in the parody I did of “X-Men 2″, writer Desmond Devlin suggested in a panel where Prof. X and Magneto were playing chess I instead have them playing “Hungry, Hungry Hippos”.

Very funny that one, and I did it. However this is very rare… usually the artist is free to add the visual gags on their own and the writer leaves them to it, just as the artist does not suggest different written gags… we sort of stay off each other’s turf.

MAD art director and longtime MAD artist Sam Viviano always likens doing a movie or TV parody (or “continuity piece” as the MAD editors call such jobs) to juggling… in order to do it well you must keep many balls in the air at the same time. The artist on a continuity piece needs to:

1. Design the layout using strong comic book (visual) storytelling
2. Work within the restrictions dictated by the word box placements (character order, etc)
3. “Sell the gag” i.e. reinforce the written gag with the art, either via appropriate visual setting or through character interaction, expression and action
4. Draw convincing caricatures of the actors in various angle, expressions, action, etc.
5. Add visual gags and other humorous elements in the art

That last one is where the artist becomes more than just an illustrator and contributes to the humor in a combination artist/writer capacity. Don’t get me wrong, even without adding visual gags the artist on any MAD article contributes a lot to the humor of the piece. Just plain funny drawings can add a lot, and properly “selling the gag” will make the written jokes funnier or at least more clear. Still, it’s the addition of humor from another direction that I feel adds the extra layers to any MAD piece. That is Will Elder‘s “Chicken Fat” technique in action. It’s that part I spend a lot of time and thought on whenever I do a continuity piece for MAD.

I break visual gags into four categories: parallels, peripherals, cameos and running gags. Three can be seen in that splash page you referred to earlier from “Ironic, Man”:

Click for a closer look

1. Parallels- these are gags that relate in a fundamental way to the subject matter. For example if I am drawing a parody of “The Sopranos” any visual gags I might add that has to do with the mob, New Jersey, McMasions, etc would be “parallel” gags. In the “Ironic, Man” splash the gags dealing with military stuff are parallels. Also the bra coming out of Stark’s pocket and the “product placement” label on the cell phone refer to elements from the movie.
2. Peripherals- These are gags that are coming from “outside the box”… mostly related to only superficial elements of the scene or subject. Making the round targeting “eye” of the missile cluster on the right into the “Death Star” is an example of that kind of thing. They are added gags that sometimes seem a bit like non sequiturs, but are really referencing less prevalent elements of a subject.
3. Cameos- These can be of both a parallel or peripheral nature. In the above example, Bush, Bin Laden and Lynddie England are cameos of a peripheral nature… relating not directly to the story but to the war on terror and the military. Other examples might be when I throw cartoon characters into panels based on their having some correlation with the scene. The Monster Cereal characters in “Van Helsing” or Popeye on the naval ship in “Behind Enemy Lines” are examples of that.
4. Running gags- these are gags that show up continuously throughout the pages of a parody. Part of the humor is just that they are there so many times. These can be any of the previous three types as well. An example of that might be in my “30 Rock” parody when I drew Rachel Dratch cameos in multiple panels as she often shows up playing different roles on the show. Another might be the ever-changing t-shirt slogans I did on “Dog the Bounty Hunter’s” well endowed wife in that parody.

Adding visual gags is a big part of the fun for me. You can tell how much I am “into” a piece by how many visual gags I add in. The MAD editors do edit those gags as well, sometimes asking me to remove or alter them at need… but that is also rare.

Thanks to Daniel Moir from Australia 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!

A never considered myself much of a “Trekkie” (or “Trekker” if you prefer). The original “Star Trek” series aired when I was only 2 years old so I grew up watching it on syndication… which is appropriate since that is when Star Trek really became a phenomenon. Being a comic book reader and science fiction fan I naturally liked and watched the show but I was more of a cape and cowl kid. I did buy many of the old Star Trek model kits that contained a phaser, communicator and tricorder (I must have slipped that slimy decal of the alien face onto that tiny tricorder screen two dozen times or more), which I built, played with and which promptly broke. A friend of mine had a pair of those cheesy “communicator” walkie talkies. Around age 8 or 9 was the peak of my Star Trek interest.

Then when I was in college along came “Star Trek: The Next Generation”. Great show, and while I didn’t do much TV watching in those days I did enjoy that program… so much so that I enrolled in the video series library program where I got two episodes mailed to me a month (one tape) in a nice clamshell container. I kept that up until I had the whole collection… then it was released on DVD. Ugh. I sold the whole lot on eBay for a decent amount of $$ and then never bought the DVD sets. I watched only occasional episodes of the other spin offs.

Therefore as just a casual Trek fan I don’t have any strong feelings one way or the other about the new J.J. Abrams film coming out next year, the new trailer of which has recently been released.

See it in higher resolution here.

I watched the trailer and cringed at the opening scene showing a ridiculous looking kid yelling his name, “JAMES TIBERIOUS KIRK!” at a cop who just chased him down and watched him leap from a speeding convertible before it when over a ravine. I get it… Kirk = reckless daredevil. Meh. The movie might be good, might not, although the rest of the trailer is pretty cool. I’ll go to the theater and plunk down my $10.00 (!!!) and find out in May.

Meanwhile this fall Paramount released the first several of what will eventually be a complete remastering and digital face-lift of the original series for syndication. The original live action footage has been rescanned from the original 35mm source, and special effects shots have been redone completely as CGI. Sound has also been digitally remastered. The result is a high definition remastering of individual episodes with more vibrant color, better picture and resolution, much better sound and CGI replaced special effects.

Hearing that also made me cringe, thinking of the “remastered” Star Wars films where an apparently clueless George Lucas messed around fixing what wasn’t really broken. My thought was “can’t something just stay a representation of the films (or TV shows) of the time?”. The cheesy nature of the sets and effects of the original Str Trek series are part of the charm. Did they go in and sharpen all the Vaseline-lens fuzzy shots they did of the sexy women closeups in the original series? Lucas would have. Then again after Ted Turner bought the rights to “The Wizard of OZ” we all thought he’d colorize the first half hour.

I have yet to see one of these episodes, but according to reviews I’ve read Paramount did it right. They didn’t pull any “Greedo shot first” shenannigans and stayed tremendously loyal to the original episodes and thier intent and action. Each episode is remastered shot for shot, with no “reimagining”. Apparently even the exterior shots of the space ships, battles and such are the same movements and action, just in sharp CGI instead of matte lined, 60′s era special effects. Smart move. Paramount knows their audience.

So why all the trouble and expense? DVD and blu-ray, of course. Although the syndicated shows are in standard definition, you can bet Paramount is planning on a major Ka-Ching! when they release the remastered series in High Def on blu-ray. The best part is it will actually be in real high def BECAUSE it’s so old. TV shows used to be shot in 35 mm film just like movies, until the advent of video tape technology. Original film sources are the equivilent of 4000p, so transfer to 1080p results in as high def a picture as transfer of any film source. Later TV shows will never be able to be in true high def, as they were shot and mastered on video tape, which has a resolution of only 625i (PAL) or 525i (NTSC), which is too low for hi def imagery.

Here’s a great and funny short promo for the new syndicated series, which is hard to locate airing times for but I hope I can find an episode or two to check out and see for myself.

Thanks to Mike Lynch for the heads up.

Very busy right now but I thought I’d do a quick post recommending a recent comic book series from a King. Not Jack “King” Kirby (don’t we all wish we could see more Kirby work on the comic book shelves)… but a new series based on a novel by Stephen King.

I took Number One Son Thomas to the comic book shop the other day, and I was surprised and delighted to see there is another adaptation of a “King story on the stands… actually “The Stand“. The first three issues are already out. I picked them up with some low expectations, mainly because the adaptation/continuing story series based on King’s fantastic “Dark Tower” books have been (in my opinion) a colossal disappointment.

Not so this one.

The Stand is up there with my favorite of King books. It’s a phonebook-sized monster that takes forever to read, but it’s also a page turner and great re imagining of the classic “plague wipes out the earth except for a handful” story. Tied closely into the “Dark Tower” mythos, it has all the best element of a Stephen King story firing on all cylinders… great characters, entertaining dialog, well moving plot, atmosphere and the fascinating intrusion of the supernatural.

Unlike the Dark Tower comics, this series also is firing on all cylinders. Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa‘s scripts capture the essence and mood of the original novel very well. However it’s the art of Mike Perkins and the coloring of Laura Martin that is really bringing the story to life. As much as I respect the work of Dark Tower artist Jae Lee, I think those books suffer from an inability to create a substantial world visually. The entire book series feels like a disconnected dreamworld of misty nothingness just beyond your immediate area. Here the art grounds us firmly in a real world, and as the disease begins to take hold the panic and plight of the human race becomes more and more evident in the visuals.

Only three issues into the five issue series and barely a dent in the full story. Obviously this will series will consist of several chapters and arcs. The official comic website seems to hint that other creative teams might be taking on later chapters. Hopefully they can keep the same level of success this team is capturing.