In the sheer craziness of what is becoming my summer, I plum forgot to post my annual “Happy Birthday” to The MAD Blog, which turned five years old on the 26th of June. So far we’ve had 1,906 posts (five of which have been these lame “Happy Birthday MAD Blog” posts, so actually only 1,901 posts), 7,658 comments, 251 Sunday Mailbags, 242 Sketches o’the Week, and a 100% score on the “total waste of time” meter.  Right now the blog averages about 1.1 million page views a year, a little over 3,000 per day.

Thanks for visiting for the last half decade!

Once again… better late than never. This week’s Sketch o’the Week is Saturday Night Live alum Amy Poehler.

We might be seeing this ugly guy some this week…

I am totally swamped right now, but here’s a recent small project I did that just saw print. This is a spot illustration that appears in the current issue of UTNE Reader (July-Aug 2011). It depicts viral internet rapper “Ms. Peachez” being looked upon with contempt and disbelief by Snoop Doggy-Dogg and Jay Z for her stereotyped, “Southern hip-hop” styling. BTW, Ms. Peachez is actually Mr. Nelson Boyd. It’s hard to tell if the Peachez videos are supposed to be parodies or celebrations of Southern culture. I’m going with the former, since the video the illustration is referencing “Fry that Chicken” is so over-the-top with racial and cultural stereotypes it reminds me of old 19th century black-face skits:

Q: I love the MAD show on Cartoon Network! Its got just enough MAD Magazine in it to seem like part of the “Usual Gang” but is also different and appealing to the “Robot Chicken” crowd. How did the show do? Is there going to be a second season? What did you think of the work you did on the show?

A: I’ve been told MAD on the Cartoon Network did very well in viewership and with viewer response, although I do not have any numbers to back that up. It must have done pretty well, as they announced that it was being picked up back in November. I have already done character design for one of the second season shows, so it is full steam ahead. There will be another MAD panel presentation at the San Diego Comic-Con this year, although I will not be participating in that this time. Scheduled to appear are producers Kevin Shinick and Mark Marek, along with MAD Magazine editor John Ficarra, art director Sam Viviano and “Spy vs. Spy” artist Peter Kuper. (That’s happening Friday, July 22nd from 10:00–11:00 a.m., Room 25ABC). I am not sure when the second season premieres, but I would guess early September.

Working on the show is fun, and I’ve been surprised at how much of my drawing style gets preserved between my character designs and the final animations. The only exception to that was the last episode segment I did work for called the “Big Fang Theory”. There the animators loosely used my designs and put a more zombie-like spin on the segment. I though what they did looked pretty cool, even if my work wasn’t very evident in it anymore.

What I do for the show is definitely not full animated character design. I do a single, full-body pose for each character with a slight 3/4 view using simplified linework and very basic color treatment, and then a few extra heads with different expressions and angles—usually a straight-on and profile view. Then I will do some static poses if called for of either main characters or cameos by other characters. Some episodes have been as few as three to five characters, and some have been as many as sixteen. The animators take these and do their magic on them. I don’t actually see the results until the show airs, so it’s always fun when that happens.

I’m looking forward to working on the show again this year. The people at Warner Bros. Animation are great to work with.

Thanks to Jack V. 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 sources are reporting that director Ron Howard (Splash!, Apollo 13, The Da Vinci Code, etc.) has been signed to direct a live action film based on the long-running MAD Magazine feature Spy Vs. Spy. “Live action” of course means with actors and not using animation. An interesting approach. How much of Spy vs. Spy’s appeal is because of the art style and character design of the late Antonio Prohias? I guess we’ll be finding out.

The new version of the app for which I originally did 540 caricature of every senator and representative in the United States Congress, Bobble Rep: the 112th Congress Edition, is finally out in the App Store. The new edition features links to social media like Facebook and Twitter pages for each congressional member as well as the previous website, physical address and telephone contact info. I did 140 or so new caricatures of the most recent editions to congress for the app—of course with the way our politicians act, I’ll be doing frequent replacements. For example, the developers made the unfortunate choice of using this guy as one of the example screenshots on the app’s page:

I imagine I’ll be doing a new one for his congressional seat soon. In the meantime I updated his Bobble Rep image appropriately:

… okay, that’s unofficial and I don’t think Apple will approve it for inclusion in Bobble Rep 2.0. Still, the app is available now for $1.99!

Made it with 23 minutes to spare. This week’s “Sketch o’the Week” subject: british television personality Piers Morgan.

The book proceeds apace, but it’s slow going as I keep having to put it aside to work on jobs. In fact, plans to have the printed copies ready to go at the San Diego Comic Con are now nixed, which sucks. No helping it, though. It makes no sense for me to turn down paying jobs in order to finish it, because the book will get done eventually and I won’t sell any fewer copies if it ships in August rather than July. Bills continue to be due. My theme park crews are getting mad at me as they haven’t seen me in weeks. I’ve got a six-page MAD parody, character designs for the first episode of season 2 of MAD on the Cartoon Network, a job for SI Kids, a workplace poster and a bunch of art for Jeff Dunham on the board right now. Whew.

All that said, the book is very close to being done. 100% of the writing is done and copy edited. The entire book has been designed and laid out in Adobe InDesign. 50% of the illustrations are done and placed. Many of the remaining 50% of the illustrations are done and just need tweaking, production and placement. I was not planning on releasing the cover until after the book had gone to press, but as it’s now delayed past the planned Comic-Con debut, I thought I might as well show it on The MAD Blog. The cover, including the back, is done, proofed, and already at the printers.

So when will the book be out, and when will people be able to order it?

July 21st, one month from today.

It will be at the printer’s the second week of July, and actually printing during Comic-Con. I still plan Comic-Con as the debut of ordering the book, but I refuse to accept pre-orders until the book is done and at press. On July 21st, I will post a link to the ordering page here, where you can go to order the book using a credit card or PayPal. There will be a few different ordering options, which I will detail later, but the base price will be $24.95 USD plus a flat shipping cost for continental U.S. (I’ll figure out international shipping also). That same day I will be at Comic-Con in booth #4616 with at least one actual proof copy (I’m hoping for several proof copies) for people to look through and taking on-the-spot orders with the special Comic-Con deal of free domestic shipping when ordered there. Credit cards will be taken at Comic-Con.

As for book details, it is 184 pages, full color and includes several hundred illustrations. The information in my tutorials were used as only the base of some of the chapters, and they are greatly expanded upon with new illustrations plus the addition of much, much more information. I expand and add other theories on caricature as a whole, get more in-depth on drawing and caricaturing individual features, continue on to the rest of the face and head beyond the on-line tutorials here, discuss important considerations like the difference in caricaturing men vs. women and other topics, go into specifics on my live caricature techniques, have a chapter on applying caricature in illustration work, and a chapter on how caricatures apply to doing work for MAD, including a complete breakdown of a MAD job from blank layout through pencil rough, sketches, inks and color. The forward is by long-time MAD editor Nick Meglin, and the afterword by veteran MAD artist and current art director Sam Viviano.

In short, it’s worth $24.95.

So, there you have a book update. It’s actually going to happen. I promise. Now get back to work.

On news stands tomorrow and in comic book shops today:

MAD # 510 (August 2011)

• Cover (Mark Fredrickson)
• The Fundalini Pages (Jeff Kruse, Rick Tulka, J.C. Duffy, David DeGrand, Sam Viviano, Michael Grinspan, Evan Dorkin & Sarah Dyer, Anton Emdin, Scott Nickel, Scott Maiko, Kiernan P. Schmidt, Paul Coker)
• Olbermann: The Terminated (Artist: Roberto Parada)
• Green Lunkhead (Desmond Devlin, Tom Richmond)
• When Ventriloquists Go Bad (John Caldwell)
• A MAD Look At Celebrity Life (Sergio Aragonés, Tom Luth)
• Glenn Beck: Terminated, Too- Misjudgment Day (Artist: Richard Williams)
• Bored Bath & Be Gone (Jeff Kruse, Scott Bricher)
• How Does Capt. America Stack Up Against other Legendary Captains? (Artist: Hermann Mejia)
• Spy vs Spy (Peter Kuper)
• Romance Before & After the Economic Slump (Barry Liebmann, Peter Bagge)
• The Strip Club (Jason Yungbluth, Joey Alison Sayers, Phil McAndrew, K.C. Green, Box Brown, Dan Thompson, Peet Tamburino, Dustin Glick, Jacob Lambert)
• Angry Birds: Team Six Navy Seals Edition (Artist: Charles Akins)
• Planet TAD!!!!! (Tim Carvell, Brian Durniak)
• The MAD Vault -MAD #176, July 1975 (Don “Duck” Edwing)
• New Monopoly Cards (Nick Meglin, Sam Viviano)
• MAD Pins Down Some Truly Shocking WWE: Did You Know?s (Desmond Devlin, Tim Hamilton)
• Yawn Stars (Dick DeBartolo, Tom Bunk)
• Terminated: The Katie Couric Chronicles (Artist: Jason Seiler)
• The Shadow Knows (Sergio Aragonés, Tom Luth)
• The Least Interesting Man in the World (Scott Maiko, Irving Schild)
• MAD Fold-In (Al Jaffee)
• Drawn Out Dramas (Sergio Aragonés)

In case you are keeping score, I am now crediting a feature for which the writing is uncredited but for which an artist is getting a credit as “Artist: (insert artist’s name here)”. If there is just one person’s credit after the title of a feature, they are both the writer and artist. Two names means “writer,artist” respectively… unless it’s the Strip Club, then all bets are off.

BTW, my work in this issue was the art for a six page parody of the movie Green Lantern, written by Des Devlin, which I posted a sneak peek of on Saturday.

What are you waiting for, clod?!? Go out and buy a fershlugginer copy already!