This is it, the final segment of the demo video of some of my live caricature samples from the early 90′s. For those just tuning it, this was a time-lapse, looping demo of me doing a bunch of samples that played through a window in several of my indoor caricature stand locations.

It’s interesting to see the difference in my work when you compare this example with one I did last year:

Q: Hey, here’s a question, MAD mate!

I’ve been considering buying an ipod touch as a cheaper way to get into the whole kindle dealie (my gal-pal has a kindle, loves it)–plus (and here’s the rub) for any other possible useful apps.

Here’s the thing–I went on youtube to check out some ipod/iphone app reviews, and all the apps seemed to be a bunch of silly “fake lightsaber” gimmicks or very simplistic games. I realize this is because the people most likely to make a youtube video are teen boys and junior nerds, so there’s that.

So, my question to you, master of all gizmos–nay, my challenge!–since your family has at least one of these iPhone things, can you talk about any iPhone apps that are actually useful or worthwhile? I just need a couple to look forward to along with the free kindle app to maybe actually take the plunge!

A: We interrupt this art/cartoon-centric blog for a brief digression into the world of electronic gadgetry! This question came via a comment on my post about an iPhone repair service.

I’ve had an iPhone since Day One, when I happened by the AT&T store in the mall of America on the day Apple’s smartphone went on sale to find a scant 20 people in line (the line at the Apple store in that same mall was at least 150 people). While there are a lot of useless, silly apps there are a number of great ones as well that do everything from increase work productivity to make life more convenient… and of course there are ones that are just plain cool.

My Favorite Apps

Productivity

Actually a lot of the apps that I use for business and work come with the phone, but the features they have make them extremely useful:

Mail- Most smartphones have good email capabilities, so this is hardly groundbreaking. I use e-mail all the time on the phone and it has really made e-mail my main method of communicating with clients.

Safari- The built in web browser is like an instant reference machine on the go. I can do a Google image search for anything or anybody, and I get a plethora of results to peruse and find ones that work for my purposes using a special “mobile” image browser. Best of all, a simple touch and hold of the image allows me to save it to my photos and I can then browse these offline at my leisure. Great zooming ability to for getting a close look when needed.

Contacts- Another feature virtually every smartphone has, but as a Mac user it’s seamless. Fully synced contact list from my studio machine. Via Apple’s “Mobile Me” service any changes I make on the iPhone get’s synced with my studio Mac and my Macbook Pro automatically over the internet with no wires required. Phone number, notes, e-mail… the works.

Things- This is my ToDo list app of choice. Syncs with my Mac over wifi but only when I have them both open. Good scheduled/recurring task features and long term “when I get to it” categories. The red badges on the icons makes it easy to see you have something that needs attention.

WordPress- App for blogging on-the-go isn’t perfect but does work. I use it mostly for checking and approving comments as writing an actual post is unwieldy because it requires html and php tags instead of WYSISWG, but it keeps me in touch with the blog on the road.

AppBox Pro- Toolbox of mini apps that you can use for a variety of tasks.

ACT Printer- This app allows you to “print” anything to your iPhone or Touch. The document is saved as a PDF file that is easy to access and read on the phone. Works great for making a portable copy of some art direction or a script for a MAD job so I don’t have to lug a pile of paper around.

Convenience

I can’t categorize these apps as “productivity”, but they are timesavers and makes life more convenient. I use these all the time:

Maps- Basically a GPS unit in your pocket. Not only do I use this to find places I am looking for, but it works great as a telephone directory. Type in the business name , city, state and then tap the pin tag that pops up and you go to a contact list type entry with address, phone number, website, etc. Another tap calls the number. The maps are pretty accurate.

Facebook- This is a great app for keeping up with your Facebook account. Not as fully featured as the website itself but a lot easier to use than trying to navigate Facebook proper or it’s mobile web version.

PayPal- I can access my PayPal account, see my balance and send money right on the phone. The sending money of kind of pointless because you can’t use it to pay for an auction or a specific item you are ordering from some website, but the ability to check balances and transactions is nice.

Fandango- This app I use all the time. I can check showtimes for movies anywhere I am using the location feature, or look up my saved theater’s shows and times. Then I can buy my tickets straight from my Fandango account all while I am on the way to the theater. You can read about the films playing and even see fan reviews.

MLB At Bat- You have to be a baseball fan to appreciate this one, but if you are it is seriously awesome. You can follow all scores, go to a “GameDay” style play by play of a game in progress, and even watch video highlights shortly after they’ve happened. You can even watch some games completely right on your phone. That works best when you are using wifi.

Sportacular- This app is great for the sportsfan in general. It will keep constantly updated scores and there is a graphic representation of games in progress that will let you follow the action somewhat. Features almost every professional and collegiate sport, allows you to customize what gets followed including favorite teams and sports.

Phone Flicks- This is the “Netfilx” app which lets you manage your cue from your iPhone. Add movies, move them around, delete entries… virtually everything you can do from the web.

OpenTable- Great app for making reservations at a restaurant. Many restaurants belong to this network and with an account you can book a table at your favorite place or search for nearby spots based on the type of food, rating, etc.

Rocket Taxi- I don’t use this one much but when I do it’s handy. It simply looks up local taxi companies based on your location, and allows you to call them directly to get a cab. It also has a trip calculator feature so you can estimate the cost of your cab ride.

Kayak- App version of the popular travel website which will search for the lowest airline fares among all the online travel sites like Orbitz, Travelocity, etc. Handy for researching flight costs and option on-the-go.

Livestrong Calorie Tracker- Portable app that syncs to your Livestrong account and allows you to track your calories and activity levels for the day. Makes sticking to a healthy diet easy and accurate.

Fast Food Calorie Counter- This is another great app to keep your healthy eating goals in line. It will tell you all the nutritional info on over 70 different fast food restaurant menus.

Pure Frivolity

You can’t be serious all the time:

Platinum Solitaire- The best solitaire game I’ve found. Choose your casino and game. Simple but works great.

Bobble Rep- ‘Nuff said.

The Moron Test- This will drive you crazy.

Guinness- This will locate the nearest pub that serves Guinness on draught and give me directions to it… actually this should be included in the “productivity” category.

Chipotle- This app will let me order ahead at a nearby Chipotle and then gives me the location on the map. Just don’t check the calorie content of a carnitas burrito first (1165 !!!)

I’ve got a lot of other apps that are just for fun, but actually I consider my iPhone a very useful business tool.

Thanks to RC 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!

Some weeks back I blogged about this 5 inch tall bobblehead of President Obama as Uncle Sam I designed for filmmaker Ray Griggs as part of the promotion of a movie he is making called “I Want Your Money”. A few people have asked how they can get one.

Ray told me yesterday that he is giving away the bobblehead to anyone who makes a $30.oo or more donation towards his film project. He has a donation page on the film’s website. All you have to do is follow the link, donate $30 (make sure you include your name and address with the donation) and you’ll get one of these Obama bobbleheads sent to you.

Of course the catch is you’ll have to donate money towards the making of a right wing film promoting conservative political viewpoints. Depending on your political opinions that might be too high a price… but that’s up to you.

I don’t usually endorse products or services on The MAD Blog, so when I do you can bet it’s because I am really impressed with whatever it is I am recommending. UBreakIFix iPhone repair service is one of those exceptions. Here’s the story:

The entire Richmond family was visiting Universal’s Islands of Adventure theme park last week when my son Thomas had a disaster with his iPhone 3g. He took it out to type what was probably his 10,000th text message of the day when it slipped out of his grasp and fell face first to the sidewalk. When he picked it up it looked like this:

He has a protective case but didn’t have it on that day. Needless to say he was devastated because he knew two things:

1. He was not going to have a phone for the rest of that trip and
2. He was not going to get another iPhone

That second one is the killer. The reason is because iPhones may be (sort of) reasonably priced when you can get one with a 2 year contract with AT&T ($99 for his model), but what if you have only had your phone for a few months and are ineligible for a contract discount and you break it? Well, then you are SOL, because you will not be able to get a replacement for the contract price and will have to pay full retail for it. For a new 3Gs that is a whopping $399 for the 16gb and $499 for the 32gb. Whoa.

But hold on, ubreakifix.com to the rescue!

UBreakIFix is an iPhone repair service that will handle all sorts of repairs to your phone including replacing a broken touch screen, water damage, broken and unresponsive buttons, camera, rear casing and battery replacement. They have complete menus on their website, with detailed descriptions of what kinds of damage or problems you may have so you can self-diagnose the issues and order the right repair. They also have a diagnostic service that will determine what you need for you.

As it turned out Tom royally messed up his phone, not only breaking the touchscreen glass but also ruining the LCD screen. We needed both the glass and LCD replacement service… total cost with shipping was $149.00. Not exactly cheap but better than  $399 replacement phone. That kid has a lot of free snow shoveling to do this winter to pay that off… but he’d have been mowing the lawn for free all summer without UBreakIFix!

The best part was I shipped the phone off on Monday morning via overnight delivery, and we received the repaired and perfectly functioning phone back on Wednesday… 48 hour turnaround. The repairs were flawless and the phone is working just like new.

The phones are expensive and when something like that happens it’s nice to know there is a reliable and fast way to fix them that will save you some money.

This week’s subject is Edward James Olmos, star of the updated “Battlestar Galactica” TV series on the ScyFy network. The series is over now, and I never watched it while it was running. I’ve recently been renting the DVDs and found it to be a very good show. It’s pretty courageous in the way it handles it’s characters… warts and all. Olmos is particularly good and he’s got a great face to draw as well.

Lot’s of projects going on the board right now…

• Animation Character Designs- Political caricatures to be used for some animated segments in a documentary, wrapping those up this week.
• Personal Commission- I was honored to be asked by a cartoonist I greatly respect to do a caricature of a famous friend of her’s as a birthday present. I might be doing this digitally now.
• Movie Poster- A very simple design and illustration for previously mentioned documentary
• Movie Storyboards- More work on that documentary, now I’m doing the storyboards for the animated sequences as well!
• Workplace poster job- my usual monthly assignment

Last Wednesday I posted as my sketch o’the week the pencil rough for last month’s poster illustration job. Here’s the final inks and color image for that project:

Click for a closer look…

Click for a closer look…

Looks like I only have about 5 more years of doing these monthly before I can have another “Great Art Blowout Sale”.

Busy, busy, busy already in the new year. Above is a small spot illustration I did for On Patrol magazine of USO president and CEO Sloan Gibson. On Patrol is the magazine of the USO, and the Winter issue features coverage of the USO sponsored NCS cartoonist’s trip to Germany, Kuwait and Iraq back in October. The website linked above is not yet updated to include the winter issue’s content, but the magazine features a great cover by Michael Ramirez, some pictures of us in action (I mean drawing… not the kind of action the people we drew are used to) and an article that is mostly made up of a “journal” of the trip written by me. Most of my contributions to the article are by way of revised versions of my blog posts on the trip: See Prelude, Washington DC/Germany, Kuwait, Iraq.

I might as well take the opportunity to once again thank the USO for sponsoring our trip to the Middle-East. In a year that featured a ridiculous amount of traveling and speaking for me, including trips to England, Colombia, and Australia, the USO trip was really something special.

Q: Working as a freelance artist, how do you financially plan for retirement? As artists, I don’t think most of us ever plan to completely “retire” but by being a freelancer you definitely have to create your own pension. Do you simply put a percentage of your income away each year?

I’m making an assumption here but, seeing how selling your originals in the future might be a part of your income, what are some of the practices you keep when preserving your artwork? I feel like it’s very easy to forget about the future and not have a plan because it seems so far off for beginning freelancers. Is there any advice you’d like to give young whippersnappers like myself when thinking about preserving artwork, retirement or any other aspects of the future?

A: Being self-employed has a lot of advantages but a lot of disadvantages as well. No company health insurance to buy into for example, which leaves the self employed without the buying power of an employer to get their insurance costs down. Another disadvantage is no company retirement program to be able to participate in. All self employed people need to think about the future and make some sort of plan for retirement. You cannot count on Social Security… that program will not survive the retirement of the baby boomer generation and is on the verge of bankruptcy right now.

It’s hard to think about retirement when you are a young person, as it seems so far away, but when you are young is by far the BEST TIME to get a retirement plan in place and start making contributions to it. That’s simply because the longer you have to put money away and let it gain interest/dividends the more money it will be worth at retirement, and the better that money will be able to weather economic bad times like we have been experiencing the last year or so (although things have been looking up recently). Consider this: let’s say you take one dollar and invest it in some mutual fund vehicle that averages a modest 7% return a year. If you invested that dollar at age 45, when you are 65 it’s worth $4.14… a little over 4 times your initial investment. If you invest that same dollar at age 25, when you are 65 it’s worth $16.02, or over 16 times your initial investment and 4 times what your earning power is for the same dollar at age 45. That means that every dollar you invest at age 25 is already worth four times what it would be if you wait until age 45 to invest it.

There are a lot of other reasons to invest as young as possible as well. You can afford to go with more aggressive growth (riskier) vehicles because you have a lot of time before that money is needed and you can handle the more severe ups and downs of those kinds of investments. Over a long period of time the aggressive growth and growth investments yield higher returns, but as they are more volatile you need the longer time periods for the good to average out over the bad years. As you get older your “portfolio” (meaning the list of the various things you have invested in) will need to start easing away from the growth vehicles to the more moderate “growth and income” level investments, and eventually to the much safer but lower yielding “income” investments as you near retirement.

There are a lot of different ways to save for retirement that also provide immediate tax benefits. Things like an individual 401k, or a SEP IRA (Simplifies Employer Pension Individual Retirement Account) provide tax relief on the money you put into the account. There are different rules for how much you can invest a year for the tax savings, various levels of administrative fees and penalties for early withdrawal and other considerations like being able to take out a loan against your balance depending on the type of retirement plan you are contributing to. You can choose what kind of vehicles you invest in within the 401k or IRA, which can be all sorts of different kinds of funds (index funds, b0nd funds, money market funds, stock funds), stocks… there is a lot out there and it can be confusing.

My advice is to seek out a professional financial consultant for a plan. You do not have to pinch and scratch to save for retirement when you are young, as you need the money to do things like buy your first house, start a family, etc. However setting a little aside at a young age really pays off in the end. Find a consultant you trust. Ask older friends and people you respect who might be knowledgeable about investments if they have any suggestions. Don’t use the phonebook… get a referral from someone.

Just remember that the hardest part is doing it in the first place. You don’t have to contribute a set amount or at all if you are struggling, and can put money away as best you can for that far off retirement. Even just a few hundred dollars a year invested when you are in your twenties will be of enormous benefit.

As to the other half of your question, I don’t count on my original art being worth a plug nickel as I get older. I keep it all and occasionally sell or donate pieces, but none of it will really be worth enough for it make it part of my retirement plans.

Thanks to Chris Houghton 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!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCDxaiYZXaU

My pal, the great animator and illustrator Stephen Silver, has been working on an incredible video series project for some time that is about to come to full fruition this month with the first of several video releases. His project has been to travel to the studios of some of the great legends of cartooning and film them working while interviewing them about their process, their careers and their philosophies about art. All the while the camera is looking over their shoulder and capturing them actually drawings, inking and painting. Not only are these videos going to be fascinating looks into the work of some of the giants of the cartooning industry, but they will be like taking a master class from these legends.

Appropriately the first video will feature MAD great Mort Drucker, who is one of the main influences on Steve’s work (see tariler above). People who know Mort will understand when I say this is a very exciting thing to see, because Mort is famously shy about drawing in front of people… he just doesn’t do it. Getting a chance to see him actually draw and ink, and hear him talk abotu and explain his process, will be amazing.

Silver’s video project “The Master’s Series” will be available via Schoolism.com, a very innovative video lesson site where you can take online “classes” with artists like Steve on various disciplines and techniques. The costs of the different lessons very. Steve’s “Master’s Series” are listed at $39.95, which I believe will give the buyer access to the videos via the site for a certain amount of time. More details will be available soon I am sure. The series continues with artists Stan Goldbeg (Archie) and John Reiner (The Lockhorns, Howard Huge)