As rewarding and fun as my USO trip to Afghanistan with a bunch of other National Cartoonist Society cartoonists was, it happened to come at a time that caused me to miss out on two other cartooning/caricature events. One was the International Society of Caricature Artists‘ annual convention and competition, which happened Nov. 7th-12th in Las Vegas. The other was the Australian Cartoonists Association‘s Stanley Awards weekend, which this year was held in Melbourne. Last year I was one of the guest speakers at the Stanleys, and had an outstanding time meeting a lot of wonderful and talented Aussie cartoonists as well as getting to see Sydney and the Hunter Valley wine area with The Lovely Anna. I’ve been so busy since returning from the USO trip I haven’t remembered to blog about the results of the 2010 Stanley Awards. Here are the nominees and winners (in bold italics):

Cartoonist of the Year

• Peter Broelman
• Mark Knight
• Tony Lopes
• David Pope
• David Rowe

Editorial – Political Cartoonist

• Peter Broelman
• Mark Knight
• Bill Leak
• Alan Moir
• David Pope

Single Gag Cartoonist

• Dean Alston
• Matt Golding
• Will Goodwin
• Andrew Weldon
• Cathy Wilcox

Comic Strip Artist

• Jason Chatfield
• Gary Clark
• Alex Hallatt
• Glen Le Lievre
• Tony Lopes

Graphic Media Artist

• Dave Allen
• Anton Emdin
• David Heinrich
• Chris Kelly
• Geoff Richardson

Illustrator

• Matt Adams
• Pat Campbell
• Anton Emdin
• John Tiedemann
• Luke Watson

Caricaturist

• Matt Adams
• Joanne Brooker
• Judy Nadin
• David Rowe
• Luke Watson

Comic Book Artist

• Roger Fletcher
• Dave Gaskill
• David Heinrich
• Jason Paulos
• Peter Sheehan

Jim Russell Award - Steve Panozzo

Congrats to all the nominees and winners… that is quite a great honor as there are some enormous cartooning talents down under! The Lovely Anna and I hope to make the Stanleys next year, barring the coinciding of any trips involving the ducking of bullets and the uncomfortable collecting of sand in bodily areas where sand should not be collecting.

I have a Google alert set up on my computer so I get a daily e-mail with links to any blog posts or web sites that mention “MAD Magazine“. Usually this results in several links a day where someone mentions MAD either in passing as part of some other subject, uses it as an example of satire or parody or says something to the effect of “I used to read MAD as a kid and loved it. Do they still publish MAD?”

More and more these days, though, I get links to sites that are hosting illegally scanned copies of MAD, available for equally illegal downloading. The name of the offending uploader is usually some stupid internet nom de plume like “doppleganger666″ or “iRocker”, and the offending posts are usually followed by several replies saying “Thanks for uploading this, I love MAD!”

I don’t know which is worse, the asshole who uploaded the pirate copy in the first place or the asshole who claims to love MAD but steals the issue instead of paying for it to support the magazine. Actually I think it’s definitely the latter… at least the original thief has the poor excuse that he likely knows what he is doing is wrong, whereas the person downloading it is part of the increasingly prevalent “iMe” generation who believes all things are free for the taking and literally sees nothing wrong with what he or she is doing since it’s “on the internet” and therefore “free”. Would these same people think it’s okay to tuck a copy under their coat at the local news stand and walk away with it? Probably not, but the scary thing is that these people don’t see these as equivalent acts.

Or, is the real culprit those creators who accept this kind of theft as “the future” and we other creators who expect to earn a living from our work should get with the 21st century?

Cartoonist and illustrator Colleen Doran wrote an excellent article about this subject for The Hill. Go and read it, as it makes many excellent points.

The internet is the equivalent of a world wide, 24 hour guy in a trenchcoat on the street corner selling pirated copies of DVD movies… and everything else. The difference is that guy in the trenchcoat had to schelp himself out to the corner, could only sell a handful of pirated stuff a day, and had to scamper off when the squad car drove by. Internet pirates upload their illegal wares in between “Gears of War” sessions and only get stopped when mommy yells at them to go to bed. Worse yet, they don’t even have the poor excuse of selling it… they are just giving it away. There is a developing culture of internet thievery where the thieves and those who download their stuff somehow feel entitled to it… and that is only slightly less disturbing than the resignation far too many creators seem to be resorting to.

Can internet piracy be stopped? Probably not entirely, but as the global world continues to shrink eventually a cyber-version of the Berne convention should crop up, with civilized nations agreeing to prosecute the people that HOST these illegal uploads. After all, wouldn’t the owners of some mall be held accountable if they allowed someone to set up a store fencing stolen goods? Going after the hosts is really the only way to slow piracy down, and it will take a true international effort to do it.

The other way to combat piracy is to simply offer consumers a legitimate and relatively inexpensive way to buy what they want legally. Despite the prevalence of music “sharing’ sites and bit torrent downloads of movies, legitimate digital downloads of music reached well over $4 billion in 2009. That means that consumers were still willing to spend $4 billion dollars on stuff they could have probably gotten for free if they wanted to go that route. I guess that means there are still some honest people in the world who understand that real people create these works and in order to keep them creating they need to earn a living from it.

While I don’t think there is any excuse for copying the creative works of others and then giving it away for free, I do not believe that internet piracy will kill the ability for creative professionals to make a living from their work. Good work will still sell in some form or fashion to those who understand what good work is and want to continue to support its creation… that form may be changing from the printed page to digital, but the creation of original and outstanding content is still something valuable enough that a way will be figured out to support those who do the creating.

Q: How old do you have to be to read MAD Magazine?

A: I could take that question one of two ways… either you are:

1. A parent asking about MAD‘s age appropriate suitability as it pertains to allowing your kids to read the magazine, or
2. A kid asking how old you have to be to read MAD.

If it’s the former, then that is an impossible question to answer because all parents have different ideas what is appropriate for their kids. The best I can do is describe what kind of stuff you can expect to find in MAD and let you decide for yourself. MAD has always reflected the outer boundaries of what I call “prime time humor”, meaning it really never goes beyond what you might see on prime time network television. Of course, these days that includes shows like “The Family Guy”, so take that as you will.

What you can expect to find in a typical issue of MAD:

1. “Bathroom” humor and jokes based on various bodily fluids\excretions
2. Minor swearing with words like “ass”, “bastard” etc. and implied swearing with words like “f*#@ing”, “A-holes” etc.
3. Very minor cartoon nudity (usually that naughty Sergio guy)
4. Humor with sex/drugs as the subject matter, especially pertaining to pop culture scandals/phenomenon
5. Political humor and subject matter (which right winger’s will say has an all-liberal agenda and left wingers will say unfairly bashes Obama)
6. Jokes about Carrot Top

What you will NOT find in MAD:

1. R-rated swearing
2. Nudity or pornography
3. Funny jokes about Carrot Top
4. Anything approaching good taste

Essentially MAD has always been something parents don’t usually approve of but doesn’t contain anything they can really point at as being totally inappropriate… especially if they let their kids watch cable TV. In fact, I’d argue that today’s MAD is relatively tame compared to many TV shows like the previously mentioned “Family Guy”, many sitcoms and some of the pretty violent crime shows you see on network TV. Humor is pushed much farther in other media than MAD is willing to go these days, so it’s “edginess” is much less edgy than it was in the 60′s and 70′s, when it had a more subversive reputation and yet was really even tamer than it is today. It’s all relative to the rest of the world.

Still, your own perspective is most important when it comes to what is objectionable in MAD or any other form of entertainment you may or may not want your kids exposed to. If I had to relate MAD to a scale like that used with movies, I’d say it was PG 13, and not near pushing the envelope to “R”.

For what it’s worth, I let my kids read MAD starting at about age 11. My parents never let me read MAD at all… and they still don’t know I read it let alone work for them. If you happen to know my parents, the official “story” is I draw cartoon bunny rabbits for Nickelodeon. Don’t blow my cover.

I hope that helped you decide whether or not to warp your kids brains by allowing them to read MAD. Hopefully the kids you are wondering about are in grade school and not 30ish, still living in your basement and claim “Attained level 80 with 142 characters” on World of Warcraft” on their resume. If so, it’s possible allowing them to have read MAD at age 10 might have actually helped your current situation… if that is conceivable.

Oh, and if the original question was taken as the latter?

A: Any age you can get your hands on a copy. Enjoy.

Thanks to Neal 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 your questions and I’ll try and answer them here!

2008 Cover art for the now-defunct MAD Kids

To all my friends and family from the United States, at home or abroad, The Richmonds wish you the happiest of holidays and hope you find yourselves together with your loved ones on this day of thanks.

For everyone else… carry on.

It seems that my trying to get fancy using some old fashioned HTML table coding on “The Great MAD Art Sale” page resulted in a lot of browsers (mainly Windows Internet Explorer) having trouble seeing the thumbnails and images… I’ve dispensed with tables coding so everything should be working fine now. My apologies.

Despite the technical glitches quite a few of the pieces are already gone or spoken for… thanks for those who have purchased some of this crap… uh… original art from the pages of MAD. Those who are just thinking about buying something… what are you waiting for??

This week’s sketch is a quick study of another star of the “Harry Potter” films, Rupert Grint AKA Ron Weasley. It’s remarkable how well these roles were cast 10 years ago when these actors were only little kids. They could easily have grown out of the roles, succumbed to “child actor” scandal syndrome or ended up just plain not fitting in as they grew up, but that didn’t happen. All three really grew into the roles as actors, and even more amazing is they ended up physically matching J.K. Rowling’s descriptions of their characters. Ron is described in the books as much taller than Harry and kind of gangly. Bingo. What if Daniel Radcliffe ended up 6 foot 2 inches and Grint stayed at 5 foot nothing? These movies lived charmed lives that rival the magic of the world they depict.

From a family of big Potter fans, we’ve loved the ride both from the books and the films. The latest movie was another good effort to capture the book, falling short in some places and going off path once or twice, but delivering an overall satisfying movie… looking forward the the final chapter this summer.

About this time last year I conducted “The Great Art Blowout”, where I sold some 60 or so pieces of artwork I did for various projects at dirt cheap prices just to clean out my flat files in my remodeled studio.

That sale went so well I threatened to do it again in 2010.

Well, 2010 is almost toast, so I have combed through my overflowing flat files again to bring you another Great Art Blowout… but this time it’s nothing but published artwork from the pages of MAD Magazine!

That’s right! This is your opportunity to own an actual piece of artwork from the (almost) 60 year old legendary publication MAD… suitable for framing, using as a coaster or lining your birdcage with. Yes, you too can be nauseated on a daily basis by seeing this original art hanging from a magnet shaped like an ear of corn on your refrigerator, or save a ton of money on laxatives by pasting it to the wall opposite your favorite toilet.

Most of this artwork is from pre-2003, making it some of my earliest work for MAD. The prices vary from spot illustrations that appeared in various features for as little as $25 (cheap!) to full pages from movie and TV parodies like “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets”, “Entourage” or “Scrubs” and more for embarrassingly high prices!

What? Not too excited? I don’t blame you… if this crap was any good I’d keep it! Instead, I’m looking to sell it to pay for stuff like Christmas presents, electronic gadgets and egg salad sandwiches.

Just click on the image above to see the 60 plus piece of original MAD artwork available! It would make the perfect Christmas gift for that special person you really can’t stand in your life! Don’t delay! This garbage is sure to go fast! Questions? E-mail me

I usually don’t blog much about sports, but I have to say as a lifelong Green Bay Packers fan yesterday’s merciless beating of Brett Favre and the Minnesota Vikings, 31-3 at their home stadium was pretty satisfying. File this one under” “You reap what you sow”. Favre went out of his way to give a big F you to Packers fans, GM Ted Thompson and the Green Bay front office by maneuvering his way to one of their chief rivals. A cushy early schedule in 2009 and an amazing run of good luck and good bounces combined with some admittedly great play on his part to give he and the Vikings a magical season last year, but this year his diva act and Father Time caught up with him. Leaving the Vikings guessing until the came down and begged him to play, skipping all of training camp, refusing to participate in practice, openly disdaining the head coach… once the bounces stopped going his way it all came down like a train wreck.

Did I say “end of the Favre Circus? Don’t bet on it. I wouldn’t be surprised if Favre plays again next year for another team who look like a contender that needs a quarterback… that is if any team is stupid enough to put up with his primadonna act again.

The above revision of my 2009 Star Tribune illustration is dedicated to Frett Bavre… good luck waking up screaming in the middle of the night for the next few years with visions of Clay Matthews bearing down on you.

Q: I’m a caricature artist and looking to make a profit by selling my work online of celebrities. Do I need permission, a contract, or can I just do it blindly?

A: I get this question (or variations of it) quite often, so every once and a while I just answer it again for those you may be newer readers and who don’t slog through years of back posts.

Standard Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and don’t even play on on TV. This article should not be mistaken for professional legal advice, and anyone with legal concerns over this or similar issues should seek the advice of a professional lawyer… I understand there are a few in the Yellow Pages.

The more common variation of this question professional caricature artists ask is “Can I use caricatures of celebrities in my promotional materials and/or website?”. You can find that specific answer here, but the short answer is that yes, using caricatures of recognizable people is the only way to demonstrate your skills as a caricature artist, so using celebrities as samples would probably be considered “fair use” by the courts, and therefore not infringing on the rights of the celebrities depicted. That’s as long as the way in which the images are used do not imply that a specific celebrity is ENDORSING an artists work.

As far as selling the images, that is a more complex issue.

The rights of a celebrity as they pertain to the use of their image is called the “right of publicity”. I have a very detailed and long winded post about this legal issue here. There is a lot of confusion about what the ROP is and what it protects. It isn’t a law that prevents someone from displaying, using or selling the image of a celebrity, either in photography or art. It’s a law that protects the value of a celebrity’s image, or that celebrity’s ability to earn money from their image. Using caricatures as an example, it is immaterial if you are selling a celebrity’s caricature or not, but how you are affecting that celebrity’s ability to sell caricatures of themselves. Some people don’t seem to be able to grasp that point… you could give the caricatures away and still be susceptible to a ROP case. The best way to explain that is with this example: Say an author writes and publishes a novel, and another person makes copies of it and starts giving those copies away for free. That person giving them away might not be making any money from it, but they are damaging the ability of the author to sell copies as those who get the free one will likely not pay for an official copy. That is how the ROP works… by legally recognizing the value of a celebrity’s image and fame and protecting that value to the celebrity. Even if that celebrity is not actively selling their own caricature, their ability to do so in the future is being damaged by someone else selling or giving them away.

All that being said, doesn’t the 1st Amendment guarantee us the right to express our opinions on a subject or person? 1st amendment and “fair use” defenses are the primary counter moves to a ROP suit, but they don’t always apply neatly.

So, how does that apply to selling caricatures of celebrities? There are a lot of factors to consider.

1. Is it really a parody? Some people want to assume that caricatures are making fun of their subjects and therefore protected by the 1st amendment i.e the right of free speech. Not so. I doubt it would be enough to just draw a celebrity in caricature and then call it a free speech issue. What are you trying to say, that Harrison Ford has a crooked nose? That is not OPINION (he DOES have a crooked nose) and highly suspect as a free speech issue. Here are two different caricatures of Tiger Woods:

   

   

   The first caricature is an exaggerated image, but is it enough of an opinion that it should be protected under the 1st amendment? I’d argue no. Yes, there is a “$” on his hat but other than that it’s just a silly picture of Tiger Woods.The second caricature is a little different. This one is more of an indictment of Woods’ beat up reputation and how scandal can damage the brand of a pro athlete. I could probably add some dollar signs flying around Tiger’s head and the gate to “AT&T” or some other sponsor that dumped Woods with a huge padlock on it in the background to make the point even clearer. That would become more than just a picture of Tiger, but a real editorial commentary and therefore a lot more defensible as a free speech issue.

2. The medium of production is important- With regards to a possible 1st amendment defense, how the caricature is produced is an important issue. It’s been shown in a few similar (but not exactly parallel) legal cases that courts take the manner in which the image is produced into account. There are some vehicles of free speech that are well protected by the courts: books, magazines, newspapers, other published materials and fine art. I emphasize “fine” because this is a key point. Original artwork is recognized by the courts as fine art, as are certain forms of reproduction like glicee or other high end prints, particularly if they are numbered as limited editions never to be reprinted. Mass produced things like posters, t-shirts, coffee mugs and other merchandise are NOT recognized as vehicles of free speech, and would likely be considered a product regardless of the image depicted on it and not a protected vehicle of free speech. Likewise prints done on your ink jet printer at home would probably not be considered fine art and a 1st amendment defense would be tough to pull off.

So, can you sell caricature of celebrities or not? Unfortunately, as anything the law, you don’t really know until you or someone goes to court over this exact issue, and even then it’s never a sure thing.

I asked this very question several years ago to a well respected ROP law expert, and received this advice:

If you want to sell prints of your caricatures of celebrities be sure you limit your exposure to a right of publicity case by doing the following:

1. Make sure your caricature is more than just a cartoon portrait, it should contain a clear editorial message about the subject, their profession, their work or some other aspect of their industry.

2. Create limited edition prints of the artwork via a printing process beyond your desktop printer. Clearly indicate this is a limited edition not to be reprinted.

3. Stay away from doing images of well known litigious celebrities or the estates of deceased celebrities like Marilyn Monroe or Elvis Presley. Likewise be careful depicting celebrities in the persona of characters from well known litigious property owners like Lucasfilm, Disney, etc (a caricature of Johnny Depp is one thing, one of him as Capt. Jack Sparrow is another).

If you are contacted by a celebrity threatening legal action over your selling of their image, my advice would be to write them a letter saying that, while you believe you are within your rights to sell this image, you will stop selling it in respect to their request you do so. Do not admit to wrongdoing and specify that stopping the sale of the image does not suggest you think you are infringing on their right of publicity… you are just stopping it out of respect for their personal request.

That last bit of advice is pretty smart. Likely no celebrity will even know or be aware of your selling of their image, and further most will probably not care knowing there is no money in suing you. However a few out there might be aggressive enough to go after a caricature artist selling their image. Following the above advice will most likely avoid the courts, while not preventing you from your other images. Most celebrities will be satisfied that you stop selling their image.

The really important thing to remember here is regardless of if you are in the legal right to sell these caricatures, the reality of the law system in this country is not if it’s legal so much as if you can afford to prove it’s legal. Presumably a celebrity would have a lot more financial resources to pursue a court lawsuit than a humble caricature artist would. Proving your right to sell such an image in court would probably cost you far, far more than you ever could get from the selling of such an image. Therefore it would only make sense to pursue such a case, and the possibility of years of appeals, if you are insanely rich and want to make a point. Otherwise it’s smarter to stop selling the caricature of celebrity “B” and simply continue to sell those of other celebrities, taking any threats of legal action on a case by case basis. The danger here is if you draw a crazy celebrity who is insanely rich and wants to make a point, you might have no choice but to defend yourself in court. Therefore selling celebrity caricatures might leave you financially vulnerable.

Finally, if you want to know my real opinion on whether or not you should pursue selling your celebrity caricatures… look no further than my website. I am not selling my celebrity caricature samples. That should tell you something.

Thanks to AV 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 your questions and I’ll try and answer them here!

Click to visit Anton’s blog for a look at all his GLEE parody art

Anton Emdin is a incredibly talented cartoonist and illustrator from Sydney, Australia who does work for the Aussie version of MAD. I’ve had the pleasure to meet Anton both at the Australian Cartoonists Association’s Stanley Awards last year (where he brought home the Stanley for Best Illustrator, and did so again this year!) and this past year at the National Cartoonists Society’s Reuben Weekend, where we were both nominated for the award for Magazine Feature/Magazine Illustration (we both lost). A few months ago Anton emailed me to say he’d been assigned his first full MAD parody, which was a spoof of the U.S. TV show “GLEE”. He’d heard from the U.S. MAD art staff that I was doing the parody for our MAD. We shared each other’s art after we’d gotten them done… Anton’s take (splash page shown above) is fantastic. It’s fun to see a different artist’s approach to the same subject matter.

I am sure this is just the first of many MAD parodies for Anton, who incidentally also had a spot illustration in the American MAD‘s issue #506. Visit Anton’s blog for lots of awesome arty goodness…