This short promo just surfaced for the new MAD show on the Cartoon Network this fall:

Here’s another shorter one:

Neither feature any of my work. As you can see the style of animation runs the gamut from traditional cartoons to collage and highly stylized stuff. Many of the “skits” will be only a few seconds long with a single, quick gag. Segments like the TV show parodies I’ve worked on, the movie parodies and some ad parodies are a minute or two long and not part of these short promos.

The show debuts on Mon. Sept 6th at 8:30 pm.

I’ve been doing a lot of work over the last two years for filmmaker Ray Griggs, including illustrations, animations and a promotional comic book for his superhero spoof movie Super Capers, storyboards, the movie poster and animated character design for his latest film project “I Want Your Money” and illustration for iPhone and iPad apps like Bobble Rep. In the process Ray has become a good friend… he is a comic book geek at heart.

Case in point: Ray has an office on the Warner Bros. studio property in California, and recently got a permit to have a golf cart on the lot. Rather than get some boring plastic cart, Ray had prop guru Marc Irvin of Marc’s Creature Company build this little gem:

Here’s a little video of the cart being built and delivered to the WB studio lot.

Okay… that is just about the coolest toy I’ve ever seen. I’d even take up golfing if I had one just to see the faces of the old codgers on the links as I tooled around in this baby.

Nobody like this guy, but….

Some time ago I wrote a blog post about the importance of meeting deadlines as a freelancer. Just the other day my pal freelance writer extraordinaire Mark Evanier posted some excellent advice about deadlines and how not taking them seriously is extremely detrimental to one’s freelance career. Go read that post by Mark. I’ll wait…..

I could not agree more. Deadlines are not always absolute, and many art directors (read: SMART) build in room for late delivery of work. However some do not, and every job is unique. The bottom line is that failure to deliver your work at the time you have promised it is to be delivered is the quickest way to turn a career into a hobby.

Some people really have a hard time understanding this. Their idea of being a successful illustrator/artist is delivering fantastic work first and meeting a deadline second… sometimes a distant second. I have this friend of mine, who shall remain nameless, who is a truly gifted and talented cartoonist and illustrator. He gets some freelance work here and there, and the stuff is does is really superb, but he doesn’t earn a living doing freelance illustration nor is he in any high profile publications. He is constantly pointing out the work of artists in national magazines who’s stuff is inferior to his own, and wonders out loud why they are getting this work and he is not. The answer is pretty simple.. he doesn’t meet deadlines. Most of his jobs for clients are “one and dones”… he delivers the work ridiculously late and even though it looks great he never gets another call from that client. He cannot seem to wrap his head around the fact that the greatest illustration in the world delivered too late for publication or late enough to create a major production problem is less valuable to a client than a good job turned in on time.

The world is full of gifted artists who work delivering pizzas or cold calling people trying to sell them a timeshare who cannot learn that lesson.

Q: When you’re drawing, do you usually have anything on in the background (music, TV, movies)?

A: That’s a question that has a lot of different answers from a lot of different artists, which I find fascinating. Everyone seems to have their own idea of what kind of environment they need to focus their concentration, creativity and work flow. I know a lot of artists that have the TV going in the background playing either some specific station or DVDs of movies. That is one thing I cannot do… any visual distractions really mess up my ability to focus on my work. It seems to work just fine for some people, though.

What I have found is that certain stages of a job demand certain kinds of background noise. I can’t work in silence… that is as bad as having a TV going. I need some kind of noise, but it all depends on what I am doing as to what kind of sound I listen to.

Brainstorming, concepts, roughs, pencils- I listen strictly to music during this stage of a project. It has to be just music at this stage because I’m using a part of the brain that doesn’t allow me to split my attention to whatever I am listen to, so the sound becomes a background/white noise sort of thing and isn’t operating on any conscious level. Sometimes I just listen to the radio and sometimes it’s my iPod hooked to a stereo in my studio playing a playlist of some kind. I actually prefer listening to the radio because the occasional DJ banter, weather and such breaks things up a bit. I can listen to Sirius/XM radio over my computer because I have a satellite radio account for my car, but I rarely listen to that. Local FM or my iPod work fine. I like mostly classic rock and heavy metal, alternative rock, reggae and R&B and even the occasional techno dance tune. I loathe rap, country, hip-hop, country and country. My all times favorites are The Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath.

Inking, coloring, painting- This stage allows me to listen to something that I can devote a part of my conscious mind to because the nature of the work is not as creatively demanding. In fact sometimes the process of inking and coloring or painting can get a bit long and tedious, so by listening to something that keeps my attention and is something I want to continue to listen to I can keep myself on task for longer periods. I will sometimes listen to sports on the radio, especially baseball games. However, audiobooks are my favorite thing to listen to when I am doing finishing work. They are easy to get absorbed in and a good one keeps you wanting to continue to hear the story… that keeps me in my chair longer. The one caveat with audiobooks is that, while I do actually listen to the story and follow it well I often times will “zone out” of it a bit during some particularly demanding part of an illustration. For that reason, I only listen to audiobooks I have either already heard before or have already read the book itself so i can pick up on the story again after my little zone out and not feel I have to rewind to hear what I may have missed. I have a pretty extensive collection of downloaded audiobooks (300 or so at last count). My favorites are anything by Stephen King or Frederick Forsyth, The Lord of the Rings, the Harry Potter books, The Dune series and of course the Sherlock Holmes “canon” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I only listen to unabridged audiobooks, as I feel abridgments are like reading Cliffnotes.

On a side note, I also prefer to work in a clean studio. I hate digging under piles to find things I need. Therefore I usually have to prepare for a big assignment by thoroughly cleaning my studio and getting caught up on any and all mail and other things to “clean the slate” before I feel like I’m ready to get started on something that will consume a lot of time.

Thanks to Ed Placencia* 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!

*Ed was kind enough to send me about 1/2 a dozen questions for the mailbag after the last time I posted the empty mailbox image, and now I’ve burned through all his questions!

The future?….

Here’s a link to an recent CNN article on how the iPad is boosting the appeal of digital comics.

I absolutely agree that the iPad and it’s descendants will be the new format for publishing, including comics and magazines. I can see a virtual news stand in the future full of individual issues and subscriptions for magazines, comics, comic books and newspapers… delivered without user effort to your mobile tablet device in a format that is easy and natural to browse, read and enjoy. However I don’t see the iPad being that device, but some other piece of hardware that doesn’t force the Draconian limitations on the content providers that Apple does. Unless Steve Jobs and Apple wise up and start playing along with publishers to develop a real business model for digital publishing, the iPad will be the next Betamax player or Macintosh… a superior piece of technology squashed by the concept of free enterprise.

This is a teaser trailer for “I Want Your Money”, a politically conservative film by Ray Griggs that I did a whole bunch of animation character design for. You’ll see a few seconds of some of the animated segments. Unfortunately Ray had a lot of trouble with the animation companies that did the CGI and frankly the final results leave a lot to be desired. I think the modeling and basic characters look fine, but the talking animation part is rough.

Here’s one of the segments in full:

Just an added note- I have nothing to do with the message of this film… these are the opinions of the film makers and I just draw the funny pictures. Please don’t bother to leave any politically charged comments whether for or against the film’s content. I’m only sharing the artwork.

Since the images are out in the wild I guess it’s okay to share a few of the character designs I did. Click on any image for a closer look:

Had to work at Valleyfair today, and it was so %$#$@ hot and humid I didn’t want to work in my sketchbook. So, here’s an airbrushed color sample of my “Flo” caricature sketch of a week or so ago…

I do a few illustrations a year for Penthouse, which I have no qualms about doing so long as I am not asked to do anything pornographic. This is something they understand and only give me a call when they need a humorous illustration for an article that isn’t too “blue”. They are really great to work with.

The September issue has a full page illustration I did for a humorous article about why guys have “sex on the brain” i.e. it’s all some guys think about. Initially the art director wanted me to do an image of a guy with his brain coming out of his skull, and all the bumps on the surface forming intertwining bodies and female forms. That was a little borderline for me. While I followed through on that in a sketch, I also suggested something a little more classic looking… the same open skull but with tiny female figures popping out all over. Here are the sketches:

Sketch based on original idea

A different approach…

The art director liked the look of my second sketch. I thought the cartoony treatment of the naked female figures sans nipples or other realistic anatomical details gave them a “Barbie” doll look that was tasteful in this context. Here is the final art:

Click for a closer look…

I’ve gotten so many e-mails from people asking for help identifying the one or two pundits they can’t figure out in the above panel that I thought I’d just put together a “key” to all of them… so here ya go:

Click for a closer look…

1. Lawrence O’Donnell
2. Monica Crowley
3. Bernie Goldberg
4. Jonathan Alter
5. Joe Scarborough
6. Ann Coulter
7. Rudy Juliani
8. Frank Luntz
9. Fred Barnes
10. Frank Rich
11. Rich Lowry
12. Steve McMahon
13. Fareed Zakaria
14. Joan Walsh
15. Thomas Friedman
16. Dana Perino
17. Margaret Carlson
18. Howard Dean
19. Maureen Dowd
20. Eugene Robinson
21. Richard Wolffe
22. Oliver North
23. Newt Gingrich
24. James Carville
25. Pat Buchanan
26. Sanjay Gupta
27. Robert Reich
28. Karl Rove
29. Donna Brazile
30. Paul Krugman
31. Charles Krauthammer
32. Arianna Huffington
33. Liz Cheney

The lower panel has closeups of Huffington, Rove and Robinson.

Q: When you’re doing a piece for MAD, where do you get your reference material? Does the movie company send you a variety of production stills? Do you just do an image search online?

A: That process has changed a lot over the years, even in the relatively short time I have been with the magazine.

Back in the old days when MAD sold close to (and once over) 2 million copies of each issue movie studios actually lobbied MAD to do a parody of their films. Not with bribe money of course, but by by sending them the press kits and even inviting their writers/artists to a film’s premiere. Getting your film featured in MAD was great publicity and was considered an honor, even though MAD typically ripped it apart. A film’s “press kit” had 8″ x 10″ glossy production photos, placards, cast photos and other goodies. Theaters would place these items in shadowbox displays for the films they were showing… of course these were also the days when there was one film showing on one screen in a theater. That was before my time. Nowadays movie studios go out of their way to make sure as little of their film’s details are known prior to the release, especially the big blockbusters. They tightly control the release of images and story plot. Certainly they don’t care if they are parodied in MAD, and don’t actively seek to be satirized by them. So, we are on our own as far as getting images for the artwork on a movie parody.

I’ve got an interesting story about those movie press kits. Back in 1999 I wrote and drew a sample movie parody specifically to show to MAD art director Sam Viviano, who was going to be a guest speaker at a mini-convention for the National Caricaturists Network. The movie I chose to do was “Godzilla”, the pretty awful 1998 remake starring Matthew Broderick. I found Broderick a challenge to draw because he had this ageless sort of baby face and there didn’t seem to be a lot of really good recent reference pictures of him at the time. I did an internet search on him and ended up on an eBay auction for the original press kit for “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”. He was of course a lot younger in those pictures, but beggars can’t be choosers. Looking through the scans of the pictures in the auction the images looked awfully familiar to me, so I dug through my old copies of MAD until I found the issue with the Mort Drucker drawn parody of that film. Sure enough, each picture in the press kit could be matched up to individual panels that Mort had drawn in the parody. It was pretty instructive (and cool) to be looking at what was obviously the very reference that Mort was looking at when he did that parody artwork. Clearly the press kit for “Ferris” was the primary source of reference he used.

Back when I first started with MAD in 2000, they sent me a pile of printed out photo references one of the interns or art staffers put together along with the boards and script. After a while they stopped doing that and I was totally on my own finding reference. I use a variety of sources… if the film is already out in theaters I of course go to the film and pay attention in the places that I know I’ll be drawing panels for. I sometimes take a sketchbook and doodle notes and quick impressions. I do internet image searches for each individual cast member and put together a page of reference for each character with a variety of angles and (hopefully) expressions. I try to get as many references of them in character from the actual film as I can, but that is usually limited to a few official publicity stills that are shown over and over on articles about the movie. I’ll also use pictures of cast members from other recent films or just from paparazzi shots I find online. Sometimes I’ll rent a DVD of a film an actor might have recently been in and do a few image captures from it.

One great resource are the online trailers for films. These usually consist of very short bursts of imagery and some quick dialogue that I can do screen captures of. Sometimes I get some decent reference of the actors but mostly these are good for getting images of environments, costumes and other details. I’ll put together several pages of these stills for key scenes that I can refer to for those kinds of elements. Most films these days have multiple trailers with different scenes and images in each… teaser trailers, full trailers, alternate trailers. Very useful.

Thanks to Ed Placencia 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!