The Cartoon Network posted the first episode of the animated MAD show on their website recently. You can see it here. That one does have some of my work in it (the CSiCarly skit).

Tonight’s episode looks like it won’t have any of my stuff in it again. Usually the program description will contain the name of the segment I worked on, and tonight’s episode lists “2012 Dalmatians, Grey’s in Anime” as the featured skits, and I didn’t work on either of those. However next week’s episode lists “Star Blecch, uGlee” as being included, and the Glee segment I did a lot of work on.

Q: You seem to do a lot of political caricatures and humorous illustrations.  Is it a preferred subject for you, or is this just the way things work out?

A: When you are known for doing caricature you inevitably get a lot of work dealing with politics and politicians… especially in an election year. It’s certainly not a preferred subject for me, but it is a subject that seems to lend itself to work for my style of illustration. I’ve done political-centric work for magazines, newspapers, products, movies, iPhone and iPad apps and even campaign materials.

One thing I try hard to do in regards to political work is not to be pigeonholed into only doing work for “one side of the aisle”. I have done illustrations for projects that are considered liberal, conservative and somewhere in between. My own political beliefs lean to the left of center, but I have no problem doing work that criticizes liberals or conservatives alike. One of the greatest things about this country is our freedom to criticize our government and freely discuss and debate the policies and proposed policies of our elected officials. Disagreement is healthy, as long as it’s done respectfully. The work I’ve been doing for Ray Grigg‘s film “I Want Your Money” is conservative in nature, touting the benefits of “Reaganomics” and criticizing the free-spending of the Obama administration, while the work I do for MAD is often more liberal in message (although they also take their shots at Obama and the Left). I work on stuff for Scholastic  and other educational publications that are squarely non-partisan as well… all with equal attention on my part.

The one place I draw the line is doing any work that promotes discrimination against anyone for things like race, sex, religion or sexual orientation. Sometimes politics cross that line, and I won’t be a part of that.

Here’s some examples of just a few of the political pieces I’ve done in the last few years:

Magazine cover for Scholastic

Images for a political novelty product

Bobblehead for film promotion

Another Scholastic Cover…

A piece for MAD

Yet another Scholastic cover

Cover for “Contingencies Magazine”

Another piece for MAD…

Illustration for “Fade In Magazine”

Book cover illustration

Another “Contingencies” cover….

Movie Poster Illustration

Every three years Ohio State University and the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum puts on the Festival of Cartoon Art, a weekend of presentations, lectures and panels on the art of cartoonist both past and present. The festival is self-described as “a unique celebration of cartoons and comics featuring exhibitions, presentations by top creators, panel discussions, an academic pre-conference, and other special programs.” This is a big deal in the cartooning community and something I am very much looking forward to attending for the first time when it takes place in Columbus, OH, October 14-17. Circumstances have prevented my being able to go to previous festivals, and it being only every three years meant a long wait until I had another chance. I’m all booked for this one, however. The 2010 presenters include:

• Steve Breen
• Roz Chast
• Tony Cochran
• Jan Eliot
• Matt Groening and Tom Gammill
• Dave Kellett
• Paul Levitz
• Dan Piraro
• Jen Sorensen
• James Sturm
• Gene Luen Yang

There are several other events and activities over the weekend as well. A full schedule of events can be found here. The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum is the new handle for the fantastic collection of original cartoon art and publications that has resided there for many years and is a true cartooning treasure.

Here’s something completely different.

In the last 6 months I’ve been asked to do quite a bit of illustration for animation… stuff like iPad Apps, movie character design, character design for advertising and now of course the stuff for the MAD Show. The thing is I have never done anything like that before, and am flying mostly blind when it comes to doing things like turnarounds, style sheets… basically all the fundamentals that make animation character design work.

So, I am taking my pal Steve Silver‘s highly recommended on-line “Character Design” course through Schoolism.com. Steve is one of the best animation character designers working today, and I am sure his class will teach me how to do a better job on all these projects that I’ve been getting.

Anyway, today’s “Sketch o’the Week” is from the introduction lesson of the course. The “assignment” was to do a character design based on a description of “Jerry Loomy”, a greasy, middle aged used car salesmen from New York City. Stuff like the eye patch and missing finger were part of the specifics on the character’s look. This was supposed to be a quick, basic sketch as an introduction of the student’s work for Steve. No grade as of yet… I expect an “F-”.

I’ll give updates on my course experience now and again…

I just finished up a bunch of projects over a brutal two weeks including:

• MAD- TV parody for issue #506
• Workplace poster- The usual monthly thing
• MAD Show- some character design for this ongoing project
• Caricature Illustration- Sen. Harry Reid for a political campaign firm
• Product Illustration- Caricature of Rep. Dennis Kucinich for a deck of cards
• Private Commission- Rare one of these

Now I am working on:

• Another Workplace Poster
• More MAD Show stuff
• Another private commission

Here’s a little project I worked on a few weeks ago… this was a quick animation for a promo for that movie I did the CGI Animation design for. It was to accompany Reagan’s famous statement about democrats spending like “drunken sailors”. I put the images together in an animated GIF format, but I gave them to the client as individual layered images so doubtless their animation looks way better:

Mondays……Ecccccch.

Q: Any idea when your caricature book will be finished and made available to all us who can’t wait to get a copy?

A: Unfortunately work on the book has ground to a screeching halt in the last 6 months as I have been increasingly busy with work, including on the MAD cartoon. I am determined to have it done in time for the San Diego Comic Con next July, so we’ll shoot for that time as a release date. There, now I’ve set MY OWN DEADLINE. I’ll try not to blow it. A lot will depend on if a book publisher decides to pick it up, or if I self publish it. If the former, then there will doubtless be some reedits and it will be the publisher who decides when, where and how.

Thanks to J.C. Johnson (and a lot of others) 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!

Remember that debacle back in November when Apple rejected the U.S. Congress app featuring caricatures I had drawn based on it being “defamatory to public figures”? Surprising public backlash got Apple to reconsider, and Apple kept making the same mistake with apps from Daryl Cagle, Mark Fiore and others.

Well, it looks like Apple finally decided to get more specific about the rules and how they apply to satire and humor.

From the Daily Cartoonist:

Apple has relaxed some of their requirements for its App Store apps. The clause regarding defamatory or offensive material is still in the guidelines, but they’ve explicitly made it clear that “professional political satirists and humorists” were exempt.

Here’s how the two clauses are written:

14.1 Any app that is defamatory, offensive, mean-spirited, or likely to place the targeted individual or group in harms way will be rejected

14.2 Professional political satirists and humorists are exempt from the ban on offensive or mean-spirited commentary

Obviously the first question is what do they interpret as professional?

My reaction exactly.

Actually there are two things about rule 14.2 are going to be REALLY interesting. The first is how Apple decides to define “professional” political satirists and humorists. Since the traditional measuring stick of being syndicated/published is being eroded in this era of the Internet and blogging, how they decide who is professional and who is not will be enlightening.

The second is how far they’ll let those they do consider professionals go in being “offensive and mean-spirited”… does that mean those professional satirists/humorists have carte blanche? That could be quite a show, because cartoonists like nothing better than to push the envelope. I don’t think Apple is really prepared for how “offensive and mean-spirited” things can get. I foresee revised wording on section 14.2 in the very near future.

The bottom line here is that, despite the wording and new rules, it’s still Apple’s sandbox and they’ll only let those play in it they want to let in.

Super busy right now, but here is a quick profile study of “House” star Hugh Laurie done with a brush pen and some digital gray washes… This guy has got a great face to caricature.

Last night’s debut of the new animated MAD show on the Cartoon Network was certainly fun. Working on the show has been a real experience so far, and I am looking forward to continuing to work on future episodes… although as I understand it my role has been reduced to doing work for about every other episode. I have spent a lot of time during the first 5 I have worked on trying to figure out how to adjust my work to better fit in with what the animators need in order to produce the segments based on my art. The main challenge has been to simplify my linework so when the characters are redrawn in Flash the animators don’t need to interpret too much.

Last night’s “CSiCarly” segment was the first one we did back in May. I started out trying to get a feel for what the animation folks were wanting, so I did a few sample images for them using different levels of line work. Here is an example of the test caricature of David Caruso… the one on the left is more of the look I would do for the magazine, and the one on the right was my idea of simplifying the drawing:

The one on the right was still a little too detailed, especially in the hair… so I tried to simplify even more with Caruso  and the additional characters. The basic process is that I do a single full body image of each main character for the segment, plus do a few key expressions if some are called for. The animators also have a pile of “extra” drawings of generic people I have done with they are basing the “extras” on. Still most of the art is done by the animators, and I think it’s more fair to say my work is a “contribution” to these shorts than it is real character design. They are doing all the heavy lifting.

My main concern was that, by the time I altered my own style to fit in with the animation and the animators did their thing with all the expression and talking and such, not much of my art would be recognizable in the final product. After seeing the premiere episode I thought I could definiately see my work in there… it was a lot of fun to see it on TV.

I’m not sure week to week when I’ll have something in an episode or not, so you’ll just have to stay tuned to the show and see if you can pick out the stuff I contributed to!