Better late than never…

This week’s Sketch o’the Week is the late, great lead singer of Queen, Freddie Mercury.

As promised, here is some of the character design work I did on last night’s episode of MAD on the Cartoon Network. The segment was called “The Big Fang Theory” and was a mash-up of Twilight and The Big Bang Theory TV show. It is pretty hard to recognize this art in what ended up on the finished segment… they obviously went in a different direction and only used my designs very loosely, although I did like the more graphic look they came up with:

Today at Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference, the company unveiled a new feature for their upcoming iOs 5 mobile operating system called NewsStand:

iOS 5 adds NewsStand, which is going to be huge for readers and publishers. Demoed at WWDC today, NewsStand looks just like the iBooks app but this is for Magazines and daily papers.

Working a bit like the Kindle magazine system, News Stand will update your Magazines when they are published without any fiddling around by users. Magazines can be read offline, and Apple has apparently signed up a boat load of magazines and newspapers.

Emphasis added by me in quote above. Back in February of 2010 I wrote this post envisioning what I thought needed to happen to make devices like the iPad become the next generation of magazine-content delivery, where I said in part:

I am talking about a universal format for magazines like the ePub format with true multimedia interaction, easy and intuitive touchscreen navigation, and invisible, while-you-are-sleeping push delivery of your morning paper or monthly issue of your favorite magazines waiting for you when pour your breakfast cereal. No need for a constant internet connection. No need to surf about. It’s all there waiting for you, and using the slim touchscreen pad is a joy.

I’d love to take credit for the idea, but it was an obvious one and many others said the same thing, calling for an iMag store where a reader can subscribe to their favorite publications or newspapers, and have it waiting for them whenever a new issue is released without the need to go “get it”. The virtual mailbox or doorstep. Makes perfect sense.

The price point and reading format are still question marks, but the delivery system is in place for full color magazine content at your digital fingertips.

Warner Bros. Animation and the Cartoon Network just announced the release of Season One, Part One of MAD on DVD. The first 13 episodes will be included on the disc, to be available on September 20th. That should include many segments I worked on including “CSiCarly”, “uGlee”, “Ben Ten Franklin”, “The Batman Family Feud”, “Extreme Home Makeover: Fortress of Solitude Edition” and “Malcolm in Middle Earth”.

In other CN MAD news, there will be a new episode on tonight with a segment in it I worked on called “The Big Fang Theory”. I’ll post some of that art tomorrow after the show airs this evening.

Q: I noticed on MAD‘s website they mention that they don’t want any one submitting ideas to send in movie/TV parodies. I can fully understand this, but I was wondering how does someone eventually break through and get to cover these things? Your second published article in MAD was a TV parody. For writers, do they use the same again and again?

A: I’m not a part of MAD‘s editorial staff, so all I can tell you is my personal experience and how I understand it usually works.

You have to work your way up to doing things like the movie and TV parodies in MAD. Nobody starts out jumping right into them… there is too much involved with those jobs. It goes way past just being able to draw well, do constantly good caricatures or even do good comic-style storytelling. You have to demonstrate the ability to understand the tone and direction of the writing and craft your artwork to reinforce it. You need to be able to prove you can do your homework and bring something more to the parody besides just doing some funny faces by writing visual gags that work within the scope of the satire. You need to show you can “sell the gag” that the writer has written in each panel or series of panels. Your storytelling, pacing and the”acting” of your characters must be strong within the framework of also being funny. Finally you have to show you can meet deadlines and are able to produce this kind of complex work under time constraints. That’s a lot of stuff that the editors really only find out about an artist by working with them. Most of all, though, I think the movie and TV parodies are very special features of the magazine, and you have to earn your way into doing them.

For the record, it was actually my fourth published article that ended up being my first MAD parody (Malcontent in the Muddle, MAD #403), and if you count the article I did that got “evergreen-ed” and didn’t see publication for 9 months, plus the two website-only jobs I did, my first parody was really my seventh job for MAD. Even so, it was unheard of to be fast-tracked like that into doing parody work. I was lucky to come in at exactly the time they needed artists to do color parody work, and I had a digital color technique at the ready plus had done several for Cracked. Had that not been the case, who knows how long it might have been before I got that opportunity?

As far as writing goes, MAD has three freelancers that seem to be doing the bulk of the parody writing lately: Dick DeBartolo, Arnie Kogen and Des Devlin. I can’t remember the last time someone other than one of those three writers did a TV or film parody script, but there have been others in the past. I don’t know if that means they don’t want to use anyone else, or they just don’t find the need or opportunity to. That’s a question for the MAD editors.

You may notice that MAD says the following on their submission guidelines page on the website:

Here’s what we’re NOT looking for:

1. Movie & TV Satires: Unless they’re entirely different in format and approach from the ones we’re currently using.

So, they do say they (in a round-about way) that they would be looking for submissions that take a different approach. I think that, considering so many people are so familiar with MAD and their regular features, it is pretty easy to mimic their approach. MAD doesn’t need to see that. They have plenty of freelancers already doing what they usually do. They want to see something fresh.

I always encourage people wanting to work for MAD to start small. The Strip Club feature is a good place. Spot gags for the Fundalini Pages is another. Artists and writers have started out there and eventually graduated to more involved features for the magazine.

Thanks to Calvin Vinlac 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!

Bill “Weg” Green and his burglar. Photo: Craig Abraham

From the You Can’t Make it Up Department:

A burglar broke into the home of an 82 year old man in Heathmont, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia, back in January, 2008. The offender got away after pushing aside the homeowner and stealing his grandson’s bike.

Little did the crook know that the man he brushed aside was Bill “Weg” Green, a well known sports caricaturist. When police arrived, he drew a caricature of his intruder. 15 minutes later the burglar was picked up for an unrelated crime but quickly identified as the man who had broken into Green’s home thanks to what police said was a “fantastic” likeness in the caricature.

It just goes to show you… don’t mess with caricaturists.

That reminds me of this hilarious video I linked to many moons ago:

…this time on E-Junkies.info. This is a website devoted to ecommerce, small business, self-publishing and creative stuff on the internet. They have an interview with an artist each week…

This isn’t really a sketch, but I did this ink and watercolor piece as a gift from the rest of the National Cartoonist Society’s board of directors for outgoing NCS president Jeff Keane (The Family Circus). The stuff laying on the floor represents the four different locations Jeff hosted the Reuben Awards in during his two terms as president: New Orleans, Los Angeles, New Jersey and Boston. The other members of the board signed the original and we presented it to him at our board meeting. I understand it’s already on eBay…