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Since I missed last week’s SotW, this week it’s a two-for-one! In honor of writer extraordinaire Mark Evanier‘s ongoing series “Great Photos of Stan Laurel and/or Oliver Hardy” on his blog, here is my take on the Great Stan and Ollie. These might be the two most caricatured/cartooned film stars in history.

Phase two of the marketing of my book, The Mad Art of Caricature! is on with the listing of the book on Amazon.com. As I discussed in this post, listing the book through on-line retailers like Amazon (and soon Barnes and Noble) brings the book beyond the relatively narrow audience of this blog and offers it to the world-at-large. The trade off is that Amazon takes a whopping 55% of the cover price, and I have to pay to ship the copies to them, so the amount of profit I realize on a sale through them is significantly less than when I sell it directly through Deadline Demon Publishing. That’s retail, though. Of course those buying it from Amazon don’t get it signed (big deal!) nor can they get an Alfred sketch.

I am asking my readers here for two favors:

1. If you bought a copy of the book from me directly, please review it for me on the Amazon page. Well, only if you liked it. If you thought it sucked, then just ignore this entire post. Reviews increase the exposure of the book and the ranking on search terms. We’ve sold and shipped almost 1,000 copies of the book directly, so if even 10% of buyers took a few moments to post a quick review, we’d have almost 100 reviews! No expectations, but it would greatly appreciated. Please review it today!
2. If you have not bought the book yet and are thinking about it, please do so through Deadline Demon Publishing directly. Amazon is selling it for the same cover price (although they still have not processed my first shipment to them, so they are showing it “out of stock” right now), and while you can save a few bucks on shipping if you are an Amazon “Prime” member (we are matching standard Amazon shipping costs of $3.99 for U.S. orders), note that it will not be signed. If for no other reason, if you are a reader of The MAD Blog!, buying it directly from us or directing people you are recommending the book to to do so helps support the blog. We are still seeing multiple orders per day, and I hope that will continue despite the other outlets that are going to start cropping up.

I’m happy to sell the book through Amazon, of course. If I wasn’t I would not have listed it there. However we’ve been working hard to ship direct orders within a day of placement complete with signatures and personalization, so we are just as efficient and convenient as Amazon… and a whole lot friendlier!  I am hoping those who frequent this blog will help support it by continuing to buy directly, and recommend others to do so.

** Thanks to the many who have already posted positive reviews on Amazon. Frustratingly, the book still does not appear AT ALL on a search for “how to draw caricatures” on Amazon. ???! I can understand being at the bottom of the list as a new item, but NOT AT ALL???!

As promised, here are some of the character art I did for last night’s episode of MAD on the Cartoon Network for the segment “Superhero Millionaire Matchmaker”:

Christian Bale

Rachel from “Millionaire Matchmaker”

Patti from “Millionaire Matchmaker”

Robert Downey Jr.

Destin from “Millionaire Matchmaker”

 
Jeff, AJ and me

Early in the summer of 2010 I received a call from some gentlemen out in LA who represented world-famous comedian/ventriloquist Jeff Dunham to inquire about my doing some work for him. I was told Jeff was a big fan of MAD Magazine and my work, and wanted to explore the possibility of using some of my artwork for various projects. In the ensuing year and a half, I’ve done quite a bit of work for him, including detailed illustrations of his various characters, some more simplified line-art type work of same, a few things for merchandising/products and some conceptual work on some possible new characters. It has been a lot of fun working with Jeff and his group.

As I posted last week, the Biography channel aired a two-hour bio on Jeff entitled Jeff Dunham: The Birth of a Dummy. I was told part of the show would follow the creation of one of Jeff’s newest characters, Achmed Jr. (aka “A.J.”) from concept to final figure, and that my part in that process would be mentioned. Sure enough, they talked about how Jeff came to me to do the initial conceptual drawings for A.J. based on Jeff’s descriptions of the character. After a few rounds of sketches, I did a turnaround of the concept and Jeff took it from there. Jeff gave me permission to post the images that appeared on the show here:

Some of the early rough sketches

Click for a closer look

Initially Jeff wanted AJ in a turban, but he abandoned that idea as the character took form in his sculpting phase. Jeff made a number of other changes as well as he progressed. This is really his character design, not mine. I just helped give him a jumping off point. Jeff’s a talented sculptor and took the best aspects of my conceptual drawings, added his own elements and made a character that is both funny to look at and that he can make come to life in his inimitable way. It was fun to be a part of that.

How big is Jeff Dunham in terms of pop-culture and entertainment world popularity? Here’s a little story to illustrate that:

The night after the Bio show aired, I took three of my kids out to dinner and to the movies (we saw The Muppets… can’t get enough puppetry, apparently). I was standing by the restaurant bar, waiting for our table and paying for a round of sodas when a man sitting there asked if he could see the back of my jacket. I was wearing an old MAD jacket circa 1995 from the now-defunct Warner Bros. Store. He told me he was a MAD fan from way back (guy was about 40). Then he asked me if I knew who Jeff Dunham was. I said I did. He preceded to tell me he’d seen this documentary last night and was surprised to find out that the people from MAD Magazine designed one of Jeff’s new puppets. I told him I had heard something about that. By then my kids were seated at our table and when I told them the story they didn’t believe me.

Here’s a segment of Jeff introducing AJ to Achmed. It’s from his recent Controlled Chaos touring show, which we were able to catch last winter up in Duluth (that’s where the top picture was taken, backstage after the show) and which is now available on DVD. Warning: there are some four-letter words in this clip, so keep the kids’ ears plugged:

Tonight’s episode of MAD on the Cartoon Network will feature a segment I worked on called “Superhero Millionaire Matchmaker”. Check it out at 8:30/7:30 Central time on the CN. I’ll post some of the art I did for it tomorrow.

Q: Can you share how much time an average project (such as the “workplace posters”) takes you to produce? Does your Cintique make a difference in that timeframe?

A: That’s a question I get often and it’s one that is impossible to answer. Each project is different and factors like multiple revisions, complexity of the image and even just “having a bad drawing day” come into play.

Specifically, I will say one of those workplace posters take me about 1 1/2 to 2 days to do from sketch to final, although complexity of the scene makes a difference. This one:

…took only a long day to do. This one:

…took closer to three days. A page in MAD takes about 2-3 days from rough to final colored art. Splashes about 3-4 days:

Click for a closer look…

Painted illustrations like this one:

…take me a lot longer. I can basically noodle away on these things forever. The one above probably took two days to paint, but I could have spent two more days tightening it up further.

It’s all relative. Some days things just flow off the end of the pencil almost effortlessly, and some days I wear out a whole eraser trying to get one stupid hand right. As for the Cintiq, at first it actually slowed me down as I spent too much time rendering things that ended up printing so small the detail was wasted. Now I have my technique with the Cintiq down, which includes doing most of the rendering/coloring at 50% of zoom, so it does help make things go faster.

Thanks to Nick Nix  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!

Thinking about ordering a signed copy of The Mad Art of Caricature for Christmas? Better hurry, especially if you are ordering from overseas. We have had a number of horror stories about customs in the destination countries sitting on the package for several weeks before finally clearing it and allowing delivery. In some cases, it has taken as long as 5-6 weeks from shipment to delivery when going overseas… and even just to Canada. There seems to be no rhyme or reason with this… two shipments to same country can vary from delivery in 10 days or so to 5 weeks or longer. Luck of the draw with customs, I suppose. To make matters worse, the “tracking” involved with these USPS International Priority packages often stops with the initial scan here in St. Paul. The destination countries do not necessarily participate in the global tracking databases and the package can still be listed with USPS.com tracking as being in St. Paul, MN when it is actually sitting in customs in the destination country, or even after it’s been delivered to the buyer! Long story short- order a copy right away if you intend to have it in time for a Christmas gift. The good news is that no book has ever been actually lost. Taking a long time, yes, but never not getting there.

For domestic delivery, the books are shipped USPS Media Mail, which takes between 2-9 days for delivery. Still plenty of time for that, but the sooner the safer.

For all my fellow Americans out there, all the best on Thanksgiving. I hope you are enjoying it with family and friends. To all the rest of the world, happy… uh… Thursday.

If you are a fan of MAD‘s Spy vs. Spy, or know someone who is, put Spy vs. Spy: Omnibus on your Christmas list.

10 years ago, MAD put out Spy vs. Spy: The Complete Casebook, which features all 247 Spy vs. Spy’s Antonio Prohias did for MAD, plus all the other articles he wrote/drew for the magazine as well as essays, interviews, preliminaries and sketches, his early Pre-MAD work and a bunch more fun stuff. It’s a great book, but one aspect of it was disappointing… many of the Spy vs Spy strips were printed much smaller than the originally appeared (about 25%—as in four to a page).

Spy vs. Spy: Omnibus corrects this, printing all the material from The Complete Casebook but at full size, and throws in a few other extras like a gallery of tribute illustrations from other notable artists, additional sketches and roughs. It’s also printed on much nicer paper and in hardcover. Having all 247 of Prohias’ Spy vs. Spy in their full-size glory is worth picking this up even if you have The Complete Casebook. If you don’t own that one, then get this one because it is the BOMB… pun intended.

The Biography Channel will be airing Jeff Dunham: The Birth of a Dummy tonight at 8 PM/7 PM Central, during which Jeff is going to talk about the creation of one of his newest characters and (I’m told) my role in that process. Try and catch it!