I almost made it to the end of my comic book project without resorting to the DDD… but not quite.

This week’s subject: Barbadian singer, model and former beauty queen Rihanna.

I’m usually not one to post random YouTube videos no matter how clever, but every once and awhile you find the perfect blend of image, humor and ingenuity and it cannot be resisted.

Between the funny design of the character, the fact that this is the actual song and not some redub AND the further fact that someone realized what they were hearing and made the connection, this might be the funniest 20 second video I’ve ever seen.

Thanks to Mark Evanier for the link.

Last month I got a call from the art director of Penthouse magazine asking if I was available to do a series of spot illustrations for a humor article about St. Patrick’s Day for their March issue. My immediate concern was whether the job entailed drawing any pornographic images. I won’t do that kind of work.

I was assured not, and that all I’d be drawing was a guy getting drunk out of his mind, fighting and eventually passing out in his own vomit.

Well, there’s nothing wrong with that!

The issue is out and here are a few of the spots that were used in the article, which is a “timeline” of a typical yuppie male’s St. Patrick’s Day:

I used a different technique for these, combining my typical linear drawing style with colored lines as opposed to black lines. The effect is a more painted, softer look but it still retains the cartoon look of my drawing style.

The folks at Penthouse liked it a lot and I am already doing another assignment for them. You can say what you want about magazines like Penthouse and Playboy, but they have long been filled with outstanding cartooning. I’m happy to call Penthouse a client.

Also the comp copies I got of the magazine with my illustrations in it seem to be very popular with the guys in my neighborhood. Several have asked if they can have one. Funny, they never asked if they could have a copy of one of my comped MAD Magazines before…

As I mentioned the other day I am extremely busy right now, and trying to keep any meaningful content on the blog is difficult. I thought I might, under these very occasional circumstances, take a page out of my friend Cedric Hohnstadt‘s book and do a little something called “Reblogging”. Cedric does (or did) that every so often.

After being in existence for a long time, a blog will have a lot of back content that is buried so deep no one will ever see it unless they specifically search for it… and if they don’t know it’s there they can’t do that, can they? The MAD Blog is going on 3 years old, with well over 1,000 posts and there are a few articles that I am sure many new readers have missed that they would nevertheless be interested in reading. I do try and place links to past articles that were popular and of some importance of topic in the “Posts People Ask About” page linked in the upper part of my blog roll, but the occasional “reblog” of an article with some good information I think is not a wasted post.

I happened to get an e-mail recently asking “are there any ‘intellectual’ copyright laws preventing an artist from drawing/painting a caricature of a celebrity/sports person, then selling the original artwork and artist’s prints of the original drawing?”, I thought I would repost my LOOOONG 2006 article about the laws that apply to these issues, called the “right of publicity”. The information is still very relevant. Here’s the article:

Caricature and the Right of Publicity

A few years ago a colleague of mine who does party caricatures in southern California was contacted by comedian Jay Leno about an ad the artist had in the local Yellow Pages. The artist had used a caricature he had done of Leno as part of his ad, and Leno took exception to that. According to the artist, Leno was quite nice about it, but made it plain he did not want to see his image used for advertising this artist’s services. Leno did not sue, but he did ask for the artist to stop using his image, and if he did not a lawsuit likely would have followed. Did the artist have the right to use Leno’s caricature, or anyone’s caricature for that matter, to advertise his services? Can a caricaturist sell copies of his caricature of Jack Nicholson or any celebrity on T-shirts at some store or over the internet? How about all those caricature prints selling daily on eBay? Each case has it’s own individual facts and facets, but the underlying law that allows public figures (or private ones, for that matter) to protect the value of their own image is called the Right of Publicity. (more…)

Q: When you get a job, are you usually given reference photos to work from or are you expected to have your own resources? (Assuming the subject in question is famous, not just Joe From Accounting.) For a job where the reference photo is not provided, where do find your references? Do you have a clip file of particularly nice, interesting photos that you clip from magazines? Do you ever freeze a video image from a movie or TV show to get a reference?

A: Since these questions all deal with reference I thought I’d answer them all at one time.

When you get a job, are you usually given reference photos to work from or are you expected to have your own resources?

I usually get my own references. Back when MAD had a larger staff I used to get pages of references that they had an art department person or some intern dig up for me, but I prefer to find my own references anyway because some pictures are useless for reference and I know what I am looking for.

For a job where the reference photo is not provided, where do find your references? Do you have a clip file of particularly nice, interesting photos that you clip from magazines?

I get 90% of my reference from the internet. Google internet search usually does the trick, although in the case of a movie this site is great for movie stills. What I generally do is create 13″ x 19″ sheets full of reference pics, one for each “character” or actor I am drawing and a few for incidentals like environments, vehicles, etc. Here’s a sample of a reference sheet I set up of Alec Baldwin for when I did the parody of “30 Rock” for MAD:

I try to get a variety of angles and expressions. I got all of these off the internet.

Back in the day I had what was called a “morgue file”, which was a big file cabinet full of tabbed folders with clipped pictures of celebrities from tabloids and entertainment magazines. Actually I still have the file cabinet and the morgue files but I haven’t clipped a picture in years… the internet is too easy to use for that purpose.

Do you ever freeze a video image from a movie or TV show to get a reference?

Sometimes. If I am doing a TV show for example I can either download an episode or two or burn one to a DVD and then do some screen captures from the show and get some very specific reference that way. With movies I can download trailers and freeze and capture scenes and faces. I honestly don’t do it too often with TV shows… regular reference pictures are usually enough for that, and I will play some episodes on my laptop as I am drawing out the parody so I can freeze the picture anytime I want a look at what some room or environment looks like, or if I want to draw a specific expression from a reference.

What I don’t do is scour the internet or DVDs for the exact expression and perfect reference for every single panel. That would take forever and frankly it would sap the life out of the artwork if I drew everything from specific reference. That would be boring. Reference should be used as a resource, not as a crutch.

Thanks to Robert and Margaret Carspecken 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 few Sundays ago I worked at my Nickelodeon Universe location with fellow illustrator James Hungaski, which is something I haven’t done much of for a long time but likely will be doing a lot more often… especially this summer. I was going to bring a camera and snap pics of some of the lives ones I did but I just didn’t have the energy.

I did do this one from a couple of pictures in between customers, which I mailed out to the subjects (a couple of friends from Nevada). They wanted a Batman/Catwoman theme. Not much too it… I was plenty rusty Sunday. Still I thought since its Valentines day and all…

I just made plans to attend WonderCon in San Francisco from Feb. 27th through March 1st. I’ll be have several scheduled appearances at the “Super Capers” movie booth where I will be signing copies of the film’s promotional comic book as well as possibly at the DC Comics exhibit. I will have a bunch of original art for sale from MAD and I might be drawing some live caricatures as well. Emphasis on the “might” as I am not sure I’ll have the room or will be able to drag a drawing board setup with me. Hopefully I will also have some copies of MAD #499 with my parody of “Watchmen” in it to sign.

I will post more details about where and when I will be there as they solidify.

MSNBC reports about a criminal case in Pennsylvania involving two judges who allegedly accepted over 2.6 million dollars in kickbacks for sentencing minors to dentention/correctional facilities, including a girl who’s crime was creating a parody of her vice principal.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

My God. If drawing caricatures of your high school’s authority figures was punishable by jailtime, I’d be in permanent solitary confinement right next to Hannibal Lecter in some dungeon somewhere.

The young lady in the story and video created a parody MySpace page that lampooned her high school’s vice principal. For that she got sentenced to a work camp for several weeks. She is only one of hundreds of kids that these two Pennsylvania judges sentenced to time at two different privately run youth detention centers. Many of these kids apparently were not represented by a lawyer nor told they had the right to one. Their “hearings” often lasted only a minute or two.  They were then sent to the youth prisons for minor offenses like “stealing loose change from cars, writing a prank note and possessing drug paraphernalia” and… caricaturing their vice principal. According to the article many of these kids had no prior records or had ever been in trouble before.

All kidding about “getting sent up the river for drawing a caricature” aside, if this doesn’t make you sick to your stomach you are not human. Imagine being a young kid who did something harmless but stupid and found yourself locked up with possibly some real bad apples just so some dirtbag judge could line his pockets.

Hopefully they send these guys to a real prison, tell the other prisoners they were judges who sentenced people to do time in exchange for money, and then wish them a nice day.

Here’s what I’ve got on the board right now:

• Supercapers Comic Book- 13 page full color promo comic for the movie I did illustration work on. I was given two weeks to get this done, which is almost impossible so I am collaborating with my friend and ace comic book artist/inker Tom Nguyen on it. I’m doing the penciling, color and all design/layout while Tom is inking most of the book with me inking the caricatured faces and some other detail work. It’s been a long time since anyone else has inked my work, so this should be fun to see. Tom is one of the best inkers out there. The comic is going to be given away as a promo item at WonderCon in San Fransisco the last weekend of February. I will share some of it here on The MAD Blog once its released.
• MAD Job- Working on a two page gag article likely for #500 but might end up in #501. It’s one of those “evergreen” type pieces.

In the meantime, here is a job I did for movie industry magazine Fade In a few months ago. The issue just hit the news stands. It was a tough job, as the topic was discrimination in Hollywood. Short of throwing KKK hoods on studio executives or having some burning crosses in front of the Hollywood sign, it was difficult to come up with images that demonstrated the discrimination minority creators and actors/actresses deal with in the movie business. The main image was the client’s concept, playing on the popularity of superhero movies:

The idea is that the studio execs are ignoring black superhero films in favor of ones with white heroes. Apparently nobody wants to make a Black Panther, Luke Cage or Jon Stewart Green Lantern movie, but they will make The Hulk. The thing is, there are sadly few mainstream black superheroes anybody outside of comic book fandom has ever heard of (Blade comes to mind as one that went from relative obscurity to a three film franchise, but had anybody ever heard of “Blade” before the first film?), so that’s not exactly a strong message. Also, the Hulk is green… not white.

The other spots were illustrating specific stories of discrimination in the article.

A few other small projects in the works as well. Next week I should be able to share the artwork I did for an article in the March issue of Penthouse, which should be on the stands by then.