I ran across this shocker on CNN this morning and thought I’d post a link. Seems there is an offer from Disney to buy Marvel Comics for 4 billion dollars, pending stockholder approval.

This begs two interesting questions: first, what will happen with the Marvel movie production company? Marvel has been doing it right with Iron Man and other offerings lately. If Marvel movies become Disney movies, that does not bode well for the Marvel characters.

Second, what happens in Orlando? Right now the Universal Studios theme park relies heavily on the Marvel characters as part of their Islands of Adventure park. If Disney now owns the rights to the Marvel characters through corporate osmosis, does Universal have a chance to keep the license of those characters for their theme park? The same thing happened when Cedar Fair bought out Knott’s Berry Farms, who had the license for the Peanuts characters in theme parks including Camp Snoopy at the Mall of America. After a long and sorted process, Snoopy and pals packed up and left the Mall of Am,ercia park, which is now Nickelodeon Universe.

If Disney is smart, they will leave the Marvel people to make their own films and keep them un-Disneyfied. Likewise I am sure Universal has a license agreement in place with Marvel that will stay in effect after the sale, but when it’s up for renewal? Perhaps we’ll see the above character running about the Magic Kingdom?

I know I promised the “Nose” tutorial today and it’s almost done but due to a scheduling snafu at my parks I will instead be drawing live caricatures at Nickelodeon Universe today. Rest assured, the tutorial will be up and running early tomorrow.

Oh… and I have had a request from a few people to post in advance when I will be drawing caricatures at one of my park locations. I will be drawing at Valleyfair here in Minnesota this Saturday, Sept. 5th from 12-8 at our location near the “Wild Thing” roller coaster.

I really get a lot out of your “How to Draw Caricatures” tutorials. They are the best instruction I’ve found anywhere. It’s been so long since your last one. When will we see a new one?

A: I am sorry about the length of time in between those tutorials. The blog is something I do just for fun and it has to take a backseat to paying jobs and projects.

When will the long promised tutorial on “Noses” be posted? How about… tomorrow! It’s all done except for a few doodles so I will do those and post that tutorial Monday.

Thanks to Grant Jonen 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!

Yesterday was the official opening of the previously mentioned cartoon art show in Aitkin, MN, and today is the opening reception gala:

August 28 – October 3, 2009

In the Main Gallery at the Jaques Art Center, 121 Second Street North West, Aitkin, MN

Artist reception: August 29, 1-4 pm public is welcome!

What’s So Funny? features an entire gallery of original cartoon art including comic strips, comic book art, panel cartoons, editorial cartoons, advertising art, book illustration, caricatures, animation art, cells, and storyboards and more created by many of the world’s foremost cartoonists including Charles Schulz (Peanuts) and Jim Davis (Garfield). If you are a cartoon fan or have ever read comic strips, comic books, or watched animated cartoons, you will want to make the trip to Aitkin and be amazed by the work of these cartooning professionals!

It is a great exhibit for ALL AGES!

FEATURED CARTOONISTS

• Duane Barnhart – Contributor to the AITKIN INDEPENDENT AGE, SATURDAY EVENING POST

• Jim Bertram – Contributor to the WALL STREET JOURNAL, award winning editorial cartoonist

• Ed Fischer – Award winning editorial cartoonist – author of many regional humor books

• Carl W. Gawboy – Cartoonist, book author, illustrator IN WITH THE FINN CROWD

• David Gillette – Emmy Award winning cartoonist for TWIN CITIES PUBLIC TELEVISION (TPT)

• Dan Jurgens – Award winning comic book artist and writer SUPERMAN COMICS, others

• Dave Kirwan – advertising cartoonist, creator of syndicated comic strip ALIENS

• Scott Klingelhofer – advertising illustrator, cartoonist, art director for MELLO SMELLO

• Chris Monroe – Award winning book illustrator MONKEY WITH A TOOL BELT, draws VIOLET DAYS cartoon

• Dave Phipps – Panel cartoonist, specializing in advertising and promotion

• Tom Richmond – Award winning MAD MAGAZINE cartoonist, advertising artist and caricaturist

• Scott Rolfs – Comic book artist, book illustrator, advertising cartoonist

• Joel Seibel – Emmy Award winning animator and storyboard artist. Draws SKEETER TALES

• Julia Suits – Contributor to NEW YORKER MAGAZINE, nationally syndicated caricaturist

• Jackie Urbanovic – NEW YORK TIMES best selling children’s book author, illustrator

• Jerry Van Amerongen – Award winning syndicated daily cartoonist. Draws BALLARD STREET

RELATED EVENTS:

• Friday, Sept. 4, MOONLIGHT MADNESS CARTOONING SCAVENGER HUNT– Find clues about Minnesota cartoonists scattered around the Aitkin businesses
• Thurs. Sept. 10, 7:30 pm THE MAD ART OF TOM RICHMOND (www.tomrichmond.com) at the 40 Club Convention Center, Aitkin (call or e-mail the Jaques Art Center for directions) The public is invited to look behind the scenes at MAD Magazine as cartoonist and caricaturist Tom Richmond shows how he creates his award winning cartoon art. If you like to draw, don’t miss this educational and entertaining evening. Autograph session follows presentation. Admission: Donation to Jaques Art Center and/or Food Shelf
• Saturday, Sept. 12 THE WHAT’S SO FUNNY CARTOONING WORKSHOP! – Tuition $10 Instructors: Duane & Angie Barnhart Class 1 – 9:00 am – Noon / Age 7 – 12 /Class 2 – 1:00 pm – 4:00 / Age 12 – Adult
• Thurs., Sept. 17 – noon – 1pm 100 YEARS OF MINNESOTA CARTOONING
  Brown Bag Lunch at the Jaques Art Center FREE! Presentation by Duane Barnhart
• Saturday, Sept. 19 – 10am – 3pm QUILL AND INK CARTOONS with Duane BarnhartFestival of Adventures Rendezvous Encampment, Aitkin City Park.

Contact the Jaques center at 218-927-2363 • www.jaquesart.com • e-mail info@jaquesart.com
Sponsored by Paulbecks Country Market, The Tuscany Room and Iron Range Resources

I will be there on Thursday night for a speaking presentation and will be signing autographs afterwords. No admissions or cost other than a donation to the Jaques Art Center or the local food shelf.

The show of my MAD work is still hanging through October 4th at the Pittsburgh Toonseum, a museum of cartoon art located inside the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh. Toonseum curator Joe Wos recently send me a link to the following video posted on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette website about the exhibit:

Sorry can’t embed you’ll just have to click the image to go to the video page…

The big news is that the Toonseum is going to be moving out of the Children’s Museum and into their own separate location in downtown Pittsburgh. The location is in the “Cultural District” across from the August Wilson center and into over 1000 square feet of space. That’s great as space is really limited at the Children’s Museum.

I do find it telling, howver,  that right after my artwork is hung in the Toonseum they are suddenly getting booted out. Hmmmm.

Here is yet another of the time lapse demo caricatures from the 1993 retail sales video. This one is of “All in the Family” star Carroll O’Connor. I’m not sure how many people under 35 will know who this is… I don’t think “All in the Family” gets a lot of syndication time on TV these days. It was a famous and groundbreaking show in it’s day.

This week’s sketch subject is Brad Pitt in his role from the film “Inglorious Basterds”. I’m looking forward to seeing this movie and hope I can find the time to do it before it is gone from the theaters.

The work is piling up… I am currently totally swamped.

• MAD Job- small one but fun.
• Bobblehead design- I’m doing a caricature of Obama as a “turnaround” similar to an animated character design which will be turned into a bobblehead.
• 535 caricatures- That’s the actual total of the number of caricatures I am doing for an iPhone app project.
• Documentary Movie Poster- Another Obama image
• Graphic Novel- I’m working with a very well known syndicated cartoonist/author on a full length graphic novel we are pitching to various publishers, so I will be doing about 8-10 pages for the pitch.
• Newspaper Illustration- Haven’t done anything for the Minneapolis Star Tribune in a while (newspapers, in case you haven’t heard, don’t quite have the budget they used to) but this project promises to be a really fun one if it gets over the budget hurdle.

Here’s the latest workplace poster job just completed:

The assignment- an illustration of the interior of an expensive home with a professional, middle aged couple looking on in exasperation as two sloppy house painters with coke-bottle glasses make a mess of their home. The initial sketch:

Click for a closer look

The client wanted me to change the painter on the left so he was working in a reasonably safe manner… on a stepladder the right way, etc. I should have known they’d object to that pose as they need to promote safety in the workplace. They also didn’t like the roller of paint from the guy on the right leaving a trail of paint across the couple’s faces. The asked me to move the couple back and slightly more centered.

Click for a closer look

Those changes were made and incorporated into the very colorful final. Sorry forgot to save just the inked version.

From left to right: The Lovely Anna, me, Cedric Hohnstadt, Anne and John Hambrock,
Jerry Van Amerongen and Linda Houden, Nicole and Kelly McNutt,
Mike Edholm, Roxanne Prichard and Jim Horwitz.

The Lovely Anna and I were fortunate to find our humble abode graced by the company of a bunch of cartoonists and their families from Minnesota and elsewhere around the mid-west as we hosted an official unofficial Grill-Out Party of members of the North Central Chapter of the National Cartoonists Society.

The occasion was that new NCS member John Hambrock, creator of the syndicated strip “The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee” and his family were in town from Kenosha, WI to register their oldest son Alex at the University of Minnesota. Having “met” John online and getting to meet he and his charming wife Anne in person at the Reuben Awards this year in Los Angeles, we planned on getting together when they came up to the U of M. So, we threw a party!

Enjoying our backyard fire pit

Attending were the Hambrocks with their three children, NCC chairman Mike Edholm (all the way from Lincoln, NE), freelance illustrator Cedric Hohnstadt, Jerry Van Amerongen (creator of Ballard Street) and his wife Linda Houden, animator Kelly McNutt and his wife Nicole, illustrator Jim Horwitz and his wife Roxanne Prichard. we even had a surprise guest… one of my mentors Steve Fasen and his wife Wendy were in town from Orlando and stopped in for a while to visit. Back in 1985 Steve and his brother Gary hired me ,a young college kid at the time, to draw caricatures at their theme park location in Gurnee, IL and taught me not only how to draw them but to love the art form.

It’s always fun to get together with other cartoonists, and everybody had a great time. Of course it helps that The Lovely Anna is not only an excellent cook but a total “hostess with the mostess” and puts on some great parties

The cupcake version of The Lovely Anna’s famous dark chocolate raspberry liqueur
layer cake. These are filled with whipped raspberry cream frosting. !!!!

We cartoonists spend too much time cooped up in our little studios with the single light burning above our heads… so it’s good for us to get out even if it is just into my backyard. Sorry I don’t have more pictures but I was busy making Tom’s famous marvelous mojitos.

Q: I want to ask you about the bane of my life – speech bubbles. I create cartoons for a fanzine over here in the UK and have just recently splashed out on an imac and adobe photoshop, is there a facility within photoshop to create speech bubbles and to insert text within them if not is there a software package you recommend?

A: I really don’t deal much with speech bubbles, but I feel your pain. Speech bubbles and especially lettering drive me crazy as well.

With MAD, I am one of the few artists who still draws the speech boxes into the art:

People ask me why in the world I would do that when MAD would create all the boxes themselves when the do the text in production. The answer is quite simple… then I don’t have to spend time drawing and coloring large areas of panels that will be covered with word boxes and never seen. Duh.

On occasion I have a specific job that requires me to do word balloons, like the recent “Super Capers” promotional comic I did.

Recent versions of PhotoShop have vector tools built in that allow you to draw ovals and boxes and such, but I prefer to place the art into Adobe Illustrator and do the text boxes and type there. I find it easier to keep track of everything if I have the text separate from the art. Illustrator makes it simple to create your text balloons and tails, as well as to add the text. Plus you can then save the file as an EPS and send that to the printer, thereby preserving the vector quality of the fonts and balloons. No doubt you can do the same in PhotoShop, but this is just the way I do it.

Doing this is easy, first you prep your art board:

• Once the PhotoShop art is done, flatten the file and save (I save as a TIFF)
• Create new Adobe Illustrator page set to whatever specs you need for your project (i.e. comic book page: 6.75″ x 10.5″ plus 1/4 inch bleed, total 7.25″ x 11″).
• “Place” art in the AI page, center as required (Below is zoom or specific panel)

Now you create your text/word balloons:

• First type out your text using your favorite comic book font (I like Comic Craft’s “Tim Sale”)

• Using the Ellipse tool, create an oval that roughly encompasses the text. Fill with while, stroke with 1 pt black. Also make sure the text is “brought to front” via the “Object>Arrange>Bring to Front” command when the text is selected so it’s on top of the balloon.

• The oval will not be the ideal shape. Using the direct selection arrow, alter the shape of your balloon so it works best with the text. The arrow allows you to click on individual anchor points and either move them directly or grab the ends of the extending “curve control” lines and move them about. You can experiment a bit to learn how these can alter your oval shape to flatten it, extend or blunt the curves, etc.

You can see the red “curve control” lines with the dots on the ends

Moving them alters the balloon shape

• You can also add anchor points along the oval border to do things like cut off part of the balloon to tuck it under a panel border. You do this with the “Add Anchor Point Tool”:

Anchor points added at the places where the balloon overlaps the panel border

Part of oval deleted with direct selection tool/delete key

Oval ends connected via pen tool

• Now you want to create the “tail”. If you do this right you can use the same method of direct selecting the anchor points and curve control points to manipulate the tail easily. You start by adding anchor points to the place on the oval border to the area you want the “tail” to come from:

Anchor Points added to tail opening of balloon

• Then you delete the area between the new anchor points to create your tail opening.

Area between deleted

• Now it gets a little tricky. Using the pen tool, click on the anchor point on the left of the opening. Now move the pen tool to approximately where you want the end of the tail to be. Click and HOLD DOWN the mouse, then pull the arrow downwards to the left a little. This will create a “curve” as opposed to a straight tail line (assuming you want a curve to your tail. If not, just click and release at the end point)

• You then end up with “curve control” lines with the dots on the ends that control the curve of your line.
• While still using the Pen Tool, press and hold the “Alt/Opt” key on your keyboard. Your pen tool turns into the “Anchor Point Convert”. Click and drag the end of the lower left curve control line and drag it counterclockwise until it’s to the upper right of the end of your tail.

• Now release the “Alt/Option” key and using the Pen tool click on the other anchor point on the right of your tail opening to complete the path.

• You can now use the direct selection tool to grab either the anchor point and the end of your tail and move it about, or either of the curve control line endpoints that emanate from the anchor point at the tail’s end to adjust the curve of each of the side of your tail.

You can move the tail about now

Below is how I originally did the balloon in that panel. I placed my opening in a different spot than in this example… that’s something you can’t change after the fact (not easily, anyway) so make sure you create the opening in the place you want it to be.

It sounds complex but once you get the hang of it you can bang these out pretty quickly. Once cdone you can save as an EPS file and send it to the publisher (assuming they have your same font in their system) or you can easily select everything using “Select>All” and then choose “Type>Create Outlines” which converts all your fonts to vectors so no font info is needed. Of course once you do that you cannot go back and edit the type, so save a master of your file first with the fonts intact.

Doubtless there are easier ways out there but this is how I do it, having worked it out on my own.

Thanks to Tat from the UK 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!