Q: During the last 15 years what caricature or drawing skill have you developed the most?
A: All of them.
I debated whether to use this question, as that is really the only answer. I don’t know what else to tell you. As an artist, unless you completely focus on only one thing to the exclusion of all else (faces for example), you are going to improve your overall drawing skills with constant work and practice. It’s gratifying to be able to look at work I did 15, 10, 5 or even just a few years ago and see glaring faults that today would never have gone unnoticed and uncorrected. Growth as an artist is the most exciting thing to see. It makes all the hard work put in to achieve that growth worthwhile.
Want to see an example? Here is a page from an issue of NOW comic’s Married… with Children featuring Christina Applegate from 1992, so this is 17 years old:
Ugh.
Now here’s a page from my parody of two years ago of “Samantha Who?” from MAD, also featuring Christina Applegate… so this is 15 years of improvement under my belt:
Not the best example but I can certainly see a huge difference in virtually every aspect of the work… caricatures, expression, visual energy, composition and layout, storytelling, perspective… just plain ol’ better drawing.
The best part? Even after just two years I see lots of things in this more recent piece that I’d have changed or made different if I were doing it today. Christina’s face in panel one is awkward, and her hand is gigantic. The expression and head angle is also too similar to the one in panel two, and I should have changed one or the other. The standard “pointy finger” pose is something I used to screw up a lot by making the index finger too big for the rest of the hand, as in panels one and five. The window/floor position in panel five is confusing. Etc.
I’ve always said if you look at something you did five years ago and are not dissatisfied with it, or better yet downright embarrassed by it, you aren’t trying hard enough.
Thanks toRobert Sharp 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!
Many years ago, immediately following my graduating from college and my marriage to The Lovely Anna, I moved from Minnesota to Georgia to be the manager of a caricature art concession at Six Flags Atlanta. I worked with a lot of different caricature artists during my two years at that Six Flags, but I’d be hard pressed to think of one more gifted than Eddie Pittman.
Eddie started with the company I was managing for, Fasen Arts, in my second (and last) year as their Six Flags Atlanta manager, and eventually he worked for me at Underground Atlanta for several years before moving on to bigger things.
In the intervening years Eddie has worked doing comics and freelance illustration, with Disney Feature Animation as an animator on such features as “Mulan”, “Tarzan”, “Fantasia 2000″ and several others, taught at the Ringling School of Design, conducted a popular series of drawing classes in the Orlando area for aspiring animators, directed his own animated feature “Legends of the Night Sky: Orion” for 360° planetarium dome theaters (the first of its kind, I might add) and also managed to marry a charming young lady named Beth and produce an equally charming young daughter named Ginny.
He has also been a good friend for 20 years. He and I collaborated on a special issue of NOW Comics‘ Married… with Children in 1992(ish). It was a double issue. One side was a story Eddie drew about Al thinking he was involved in a spy plot, and if you flipped the issue over the other side was my art on a story about Peg going to a weekend spa retreat and imagining it was mirroring the plot of a romance novel she was reading. (On my introducing Eddie to NOW Comics… sorry about that, pal.)
Eddie may have a long list of accomplishments but his first love has always been comics, and when he started doing a webcomic/graphic novel I knew it would be something special. Eddie is nothing if not a perfectionist, and his new project is as terrific as I had expected.
Red’s Planet is a story about a young girl who runs away from her foster home only to fall prey to that all-too-often scourge of the wandering orphan… abduction by aliens. She is mistakenly kidnapped and then marooned on a mostly deserted planet, where she encounters some oddball and eclectic other castaways. The story is just getting started, but it is already intriguing, and the art is stunning. There are six pages of the story prologue already on the website, and they leave you wanting more. Eddie sent me a fantastic teaser comic featuring Red and her first meeting with “Goose”, which you can also see on the website although it is a bit hidden. Go to the drop down menu “Chapters” on the right side of the web page and choose “Preview” to see the 24 page teaser… or just follow this link. Yes, the taste of great art and storytelling so far on Red’s Planet is just the tip of the iceberg.
I heartily recommend visiting Red’s Planet. It will be worth the travel.
Here’s a little video from our recent visit to Cuba, courtesy of Lex Fajardo, creator of Kid Beowulf, artist/director at the Schulz Studios and one of our group of traveling cartoonists. It’s a short clip of me and one of the Palante! cartoonists drawing one another.
Follow this link to read Lex’s thoughts on the trip.
You can also listen to another cartoonist from our trip, MythTickle‘s Justin Thompson, talk about the experience on the latest episode of the podcast Comics: Coast to Coast.
Just in case you have been frozen solid and living under a rock- yesterday the eagerly awaited Apple branded tablet device, the iPad, finally was unveiled… to a lot of fanfare and a fair share of catcalls. It has been anticipated as a bold new step for the way people use technology in their daily lives.
Will it live up to the hype?
I think it has a chance to, but right now there is just not enough software written to take advantage of the hardware. Personally I think once there is a wide selection of software out there that is native to the iPad (right now it only has a handful of apps that are designed to work with it’s larger screen… it will run iPhone apps they look tiny at native size and clunky at increased size) the device will start realizing its potential. Right now it’s little more than a better portable way to surf the internet, watch movies or read books than the iPhone or other smartphones. That’s not to say it won’t eventually be the revolution it was anticipated as being, but it’s in its infancy right now.
I’ve read a lot of angry reactions from people who seem disappointed that this gizmo won’t do everything but tie their shoes for them. I think they are missing the point. It’s not supposed to be able to do anything radically more than what your laptop or iPhone already does… what it’s meant to do is those same things but in a way that addresses the limitations of the laptop and the smartphone, and do them better. It’s the form factor that is the selling point. I don’t think people really understand how much this “giant iPod touch” is going to make the Touch and the iPhone look like toys in comparison. The potential that programmers have in this large of a multitouch surface is huge… Apple’s handful of native apps only scratch that surface and yet they look fantastic. By the time Apple releases an updated iPad in a year or so, it will be a completely different animal thanks to the software that developers are no doubt slobbering to start creating and marketing.
The multitouch technology is one of the most intriguing parts of the iPad. In the iPhone and iPod Touch, the tiny bit of real estate makes the technology little more than a novelty by comparison, yet it was hailed as groundbreaking. Imagine being able to drag things around a real screen, access pop up menus, use fingers from both hands to combine and shift objects and make choices. It’ll be like the computer interface from Minority Report. People have been using computer mice for so long they’ve forgotten what it is like to use their hands and fingers for tasks in front of their eyes, instead of separated from them. When some of the native programs start popping up there will be a few eyes opened. Apple’s next step will be an iMac without a mouse using a multitouch monitor.
Regarding the functionality, I think there is a market for something in between a laptop and a smartphone. Let’s face it, using an iPhone or Blackberry to surf the web is an exercise in exasperation… the screen is just too small for it to be easy or enjoyable. Can it be done? Sure, but it’s a major hassle. I’ve been frustrated many times attempting to use my iPhone to order some supplies or such on a website for one of my caricature concessions, trying to switch back and forth from the text field entry boxes back to the entry page. Almost impossible. I’ve had order pages time out on me before I can get to the end of the process. Likewise forget about reading books on the iPhone. Too small a screen. Laptops are plenty big… in fact too big. A laptop is great if you have the room to open it up and use it, full sized keyboard and all. That’s hard to do on a bus or train, at the lunch counter, while you are on a coffee break- even with a “netbook”. Laptops are heavy, clunky in their clamshell design and just not that easy to whip out anytime. Few have built in cellular connectivity, either. They are built to be transportable computers, not instantly accessible anywhere machines. Battery life is only a few hours. They are not truly portable in the way a smartphone is.
The form factor on the iPad is the major appeal, rather than the clamshell/keyboard design of a laptop. Here is a device with a screen big enough to be able to comfortably read a real web page, use a web 2.0 site, read an eBook (and the iBook app looks truly awesome… it’s my favorite thing I’ve seen from the iPad so far), read and respond to an e-mail with a decent sized keyboard, watch a movie that won’t give you a headache from squinting, allow you to really view and edit photos while you are on your vacation, store, read and edit documents from work… all while you are sitting on the bench at the park or on an airplane (even if the jackass in front of you reclines all the way back from takeoff to touchdown). The iPad is lighter than a typical hardcover book, and about the size of a magazine. Not pocket sized, but a far cry from a laptop that needs a shoulder bag to lug about. It’s got (supposedly) 10 hours of battery life, so a day’s worth of use is not a problem.
If you are expecting it to be a portable replacement for your desktop, you are going to be disappointed. If you want it to fit into your front pocket, you will also be disappointed. That’s not the point and never was. This device and it’s eventual decedents will someday be what we get our news, magazines, entertainment and productivity from. Someday everyone will have some form of this kind of portable multitouch device, and we’ll have subscriptions to all the content we want delivered to us invisibly, ready for our consumption when we are. Eventually they will be powerful enough to replace our desktops, but that is years away.
So, do I want the iPad? Yep, absolutley. I will likely get one at some point. I was considering getting a Kindle for eBooks and for just a bit more I can get the iPad which does books even better and so much more besides. This device will let me bring all the videos, books, music, documents, photos, access to current news, communication and information I could possibly ever want or need with me in a 7.5″ x 9.5″ 1.5 lb package. That is pretty handy.
Is it perfect? Hardly. No camera? Only 64 GB max? No flash capability with the browser? Only Apple sanctioned software? No pressure sensitive/stylus drawing (that’s just for us artists)? It has some growing to do, but as software for it matures and expands, and as future hardware improvements are realized, this kind of device really is the future.
Sometime today Apple will be releasing their new tablet gizmo, which will either revolutionize the entire world as we know it… or it won’t. Either way our subject for the Sketch o’the Week, Apple ÜberCEO Steve Jobs, will doubtless be doing the unveiling… or he won’t.
This collection of MAD‘s superhero-related spoofs picks up where the first volume left off. It is officially in bookstores now and, of course, available from Amazon.
Most of the content in the first volume was classic MAD spoofs from as early as MAD #4′s “Superduperman” on through “Smellville” from MAD #415. Great stuff, but I was depressed as the book came out just after I started doing some superhero movie spoofs and so I missed out on being in it.
I definitely made up for it with Volume 2.
My “Spider-Sham” parody from #418 opens the book, and other parodies and pieces of mine include “$-Men 2″- MAD #430, “A MAD Peek Behind the Scenes on the Set of the Hulk”- MAD #431, “Spider-Sham Too”- MAD #446, “Battyman, Begone!”-MAD #455, “Stuporman Returns”- MAD #468, “Zeroes”- MAD #487, “Ironic, Man”- MAD #492, “The Dork Knight”- MAD #495 and “Botchmen”- MAD #499. It’s by far my biggest presence in any MAD book… but don’t let that prevent you from buying a copy!
Despite so much of my work dragging down the quality the book is well worth getting, including lots of Mark Fredrickson cover art (and a Bruce Timm cover from MAD #438!), the star studded “League of Rejected Superheroes” piece also from #438, the San Diego Comic Con Exclusive special Watchmen graphic novel parody “Botchmen” by Desmond Devlin and Glenn Fabry, Lot’s of Sergio‘s “A MAD Look at…” featuring various superheroes and tons of other great art and writing.
Best of all the book is printed in gorgeous color on some nice, bright stock and it looks terrific as a result. In fact it looks better than the art looked in the magazine!
So what are you waiting for?? Go buy a copy, clod!
To say the last nine months of my life were filled with a lot of travel would be an understatement of epic proportions. Since April of 2009 I have gone on personal trips to New York, Orlando and London, England and professional trips to Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Washington D.C., Sandusky OH and New Jersey here in the U.S. as well as to Colombia, Germany, Kuwait, Iraq and Australia abroad. Whew. After officially signing on to be a speaker at the Stanley Awards in Sydney I was thinking that I wouldn’t be taking any more major trips for a looong time.
However some things are just too good to pass up.
I was contacted several months ago by Jeannie Schulz, the widow of the great “Peanuts” cartoonist Charles Schulz, and asked if I’d participate in a cultural exchange trip with a group of cartoonists and representatives from the Charles M. Schulz Museum to Havana, Cuba. The trip would last 6 days, during which time we’d meet with a number of newspaper cartoonists, animators, fine artists, students and art teachers in Havana. The idea was to learn about cartooning, animation and art in Cuba while we shared with them what we do back in the United States. There would of course also be time to see Havana and experience some of the culture of Cuba.
Q: My question is what advice would you give to someone who would like to branch out more into the world of freelance illustration and cartooning? I have many years in the world of theme park caricatures and hope to eventually branch out more, or at least supplement my income a little bit on the side..
A: I get this one a lot from other theme park artists I know and have worked with. Drawing live caricatures is challenging and a good way to earn a modest or even very good living (if you find the right situation) but it gets old to see all your artwork walk away knowing it will end up hanging in the rec room, from the refrigerator from a magnet shaped like a green pepper or eventually in the garbage can and only be seen by Aunt Sally and company. Being published and doing work for professional clients is something most theme park artists aspire to do.
First off, here is a link to a post where I explain about “breaking into” the freelance illustration business from a generic standpoint. It will answer a lot of questions about getting started, marketing, establishing a client base, etc. This is advice any artist who wants to do freelance illustration can find useful.
Specifically, as it pertains to a live caricaturist’s desire to get started in freelance illustration, the first thing you need to understand is that there is basically no market for theme park style caricatures in the publication world. The style of work done and the materials used have “street artist” written all over them and most art directors do not want that type of work in their publications, ads or other projects. There is a strong market for caricature, but anything that looks like it was done by a live artist is shunned. A live caricaturist must figure out how to apply their skills in a new style or way so the work is not typecast as a live caricature style. This usually means abandoning the tools the live caricaturist using for their live work… markers, pastels, prismasticks… whatever. At the very least the live caricaturist must use these tools in ways that differ greatly from the “live caricature” look.
I’ve got a story that illustrates this very point. I had an artist working for me at Valleyfair many years ago, and he took his portfolio to a local publisher to try and get publication work. He had all manner of styles in is book, from park-like caricatures to some David Levine-ish crosshatch caricatures. These latter they liked, and he got a call to work up a caricature of then Minnesota Viking’s coach Dennis Green. He worked hard on the piece, and then brought it to me to show before turning it in. What he showed me was a park style airbrush caricature, not the crosshatch style. I told him they would not like it, and that he should have done it in the style they responded best to. He disagreed and turned in the piece as he showed me. As I expected, the piece was rejected and he got a kill fee, plus he never got another call from that publisher. That artist would have been better suited to have removed all the park style caricatures from his portfolio, but as it was he had some very different styles of rendering as well and that is what the art director liked.
Another thing that prevents many live caricaturists from successfully transitioning to freelance illustration is what I call “Live Caricature Disease”, or LCD. LCD is a condition in which the live caricaturist, through years of conditioning, believes the entire universe starts at the top of a person’s head and ends at their neck. They have spent so much time drawing basically nothing but faces that everything they do is about faces and they often struggle to draw anything else. Some literally can’t draw the rest of the world with anywhere near the same skill as they can the face. LCD victims also often cannot draw a convincing environment, nor compose a drawing in any way that does not focus overwhelmingly on a caricatured head.
Clearly this is a big problem for sufferers of LCD, as there are not a lot of jobs out there that call for the illustrator to draw floating heads (or giant heads with little bodies rollerskating under them), and have no need for the other skills an illustrator brings to the table like storytelling, composition, problem solving, etc. Another occasional and unfortunate side effect of LCD is a certain blindness to the problem. Some LCD sufferers see only the caricatures in the work of other published artists, compare their caricature favorably to that published work and then cannot understand why their portfolios are not getting them similar jobs. What they do not see is that, while the caricature is a major element to the published artist’s work they feel they are comparable to, it is really only one element of many that artist does well. Meanwhile when an art director looks at the LCD striken artist’s portfolio, they might see very good caricatures but very weak other elements… hence no jobs. MAD art director Sam Viviano has often told me that he sees sample work from terrific caricaturists all the time, but often the strengths of that artist stop “at the neck” and they do not have the ability to do all the other things that MAD needs it’s illustrators to do. As a result they are never seriously considered for any jobs. A live caricaturist needs to be brutally honest with themselves about their work.
My advice on that point is simple: the cure for LCD is to draw everything and anything BUT faces in your sketchbook for as long as it takes to develop the same visual command of environments, objects, figures and other parts of the world in which your caricatures reside. Drawing live caricatures for a living often dulls those skills, so that makes it all the more important to work on them. Buildings, cars, animals, the human figure, stop signs, soda cans, chairs… you name it. An illustrator should be able to not only draw all these things with the same level of skills as they draw faces, but they should feel like they exist in the same universe. A Jack Davis drawn caricature is instantly recognizable as his work, but a building, car, animal, human figure, stop sign, soda can, chair or any other object drawn by Jack Davis is also instantly recognizable as his work. He applies the same eye to the soda can as he does to the caricatures.
Above all keep at it and don’t get discouraged. Keep yanking old pieces out of your portfolio and keep inserting new ones in their place. Keep beating the pavement and marketing your work. Start locally and work your way into bigger and better clients. Stay professional and deliver on your promises. Success will always follow hard work and perseverance.
Thanks toDave Ussery 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 National Cartoonists Society Foundation, the charitable “arm” of the NCS, is sponsoring an auction of original cartoon art to benefit the family of an animator who’s son is in a coma as a result of a horrific car accident back in August. The effort is called “Help the Hodges“, and it’s being organized by current NCSF board member Chad Frye. Here’s their story:
On August 22, 2009 Matthew Hodge, the 17-year-old son of former Disney story artist and Big Idea productions director Tim Hodge, was in a serious auto accident. A train struck his car at 50mph as he was crossing the tracks. While Matt suffered neither broken bones nor any internal organ damage, he did receive severe head trauma causing him to remain in a state of coma today. Matt is a high school senior, a straight A student, and a drummer in his state championship marching band.
Being self-employed, the Hodge family has short term medical insurance that will not fully cover all of their bills. Additionally, with the care they are giving Matt, full-time work is not possible for Tim right now. This loving family is relying on their faith and the love of family and friends for their survival. This is a tragic accident that will forever affect their lives as the road to recovery for Matt may be a long one.
In an effort to help the Hodge family, the National Cartoonists Society Foundation is getting involved by hosting a fund-raising auction to be held on eBay. The NCSF is a fully licensed 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that not only helps fund educational endeavors for cartooning, but is there to help cartoonists in dire circumstances like the Hodges.
As a former board member of the NCSF, I can say that any cause theu choose to support is a worthy cause indeed. If you’d like to bid on some of the amazing collection of artwork now up for auction, follow this link:
This one should be a dead giveaway. There were many correct guesses! Yes, I was in Havana, Cuba with a group of cartoonists from the Schulz Museum (all perfectly legal, I assure you). I return today.
