The Holidays through me for a loop, so I am very busy playing catch up on several projects right now:

• Cover illustration for Reason Magazine
• finishing 6 page TV show parody for MAD
• Over 100 new congressional faces for the “Bobble Rep” app
• finishes of illustrations for comedian/entertainer who can’t be named
• January Marlin poster illustration

Speaking of Marlin workplace posters, here is last month’s illustration (click any image for a closer look)-

Final artwork

Pencil rough

Finished inks

As an illustrator, and especially one who does a lot of caricature work, I often spend a lot of time preparing reference for a given project. I’ve written before about how the internet and image searches like Google image have revolutionized that process in recent years. In the “old days”, illustrators had gigantic “morgue files” stuffed with clipped pictures of people, places and things where they went to find reference for some given subject they needed to draw. I used to have two file cabinets full of celebrity pictures clipped from entertainment magazines that I’d pull out when I needed to do caricatures of somebody. I threw all those files out years ago in favor of internet image searches and DVD image captures. MAD used to send me page after page of printed references for parodies I was assigned. They stopped doing that years ago as well, partly because their art department staff keeps getting smaller and smaller but also because it was just as easy for me to do it myself.

While that is certainly a lot easier than keeping a morgue file, there was still a lot of busy work involved. First, I had to wade through page after page of search results looking for different angles that would given me a nice mix of a subjects face, and if I got lucky some different expressions as well. Image capture from DVD or downloaded video was a problem for me being on a Mac, because Steve Jobs and his Apple gestapo have seen fit to prevent a Mac user from making simple screen captures from commercial DVDs or downloaded video for “copyright protection”, even though my purposes for making these screen captures are 100% legal under “fair use” exceptions to copyright. I had to work around this using a program like VLC to do screen captures, which is clumsy and far from ideal… and that doesn’t help for video I get through iTunes. Finally, I was still a slave to printing out physical references on my studio printer because it is too awkward to put a computer monitor next to my drawing board and use a mouse to bring up whatever picture I need to look at out of a hard to navigate folder full of different images, then look back and forth as I try to draw. So, I would download a bunch of pictures and open, resize and place them in a PhotoShop page, and then print them out. Here’s an example I printed out for the parody of “30 Rock” I did a few years ago:

Well, technology marches on. Thanks to advances in hardware and software, last week I went 100% digital on my illustration reference for a big MAD TV parody I am working on… no printing, easy captures from any video source and a convenient and easy to navigate collection of photos simple to organize and access right next to my drawing board like a printed reference. It worked great and I can’t imagine going back to the hours I spent creating reference pages like the one above.

Here are the elements that have enabled me to make this happen:

Capture It!- I found this little shareware program recently after doing a search to see if someone had finally created a capture program that worked around the stupid and pointless Apple rules about capturing video on a Mac. You can capture any window or selection on your screen, INCLUDING video windows from DVDs or iTunes video, and automatically saves them in the format of your choice to the folder of your choice. Whatever you are not capturing is darkened on the screen and active areas follow your cursor around the screen without interfering with whatever you are doing, and doing a capture is as easy as a keyboard shortcut. The program also captures screen movements as video, which would be great for doing computer tutorials… of course many other programs do that. However this is by far the best and easiest for doing video screen caps. Highly recommended.

Apple iPad- Combined with iPhoto, the iPad makes an ideal way to organize and view your references. I collect all my references, be they screen captures or internet search images, into folders split up into one for each character and things like environments, objects, etc. A simple drag and drop onto my iPhoto icon places those references into iPhoto and each folder becomes a separate “Event”, keeping them organized. Then a sync of my iPad transfers them to that device.

Organization and access to the references couldn’t be easier or faster. No more endless digging around the piles surrounding my drawing board for the one page of reference I can never seem to find when I need it. A simple touch of any “event/folder” brings up a screen of thumbnails that allows me to easily scan my reference collection for whatever picture I want, then a quick touch brings up that image. I can use the “pinch” and “spread” movements to zoom in or out as desired, and swiping across scans to the next or previous image instantly. Touching the back arrow goes back to the thumbnails or back to the list of folders again to find other images. Best of all with the iPad, it literally sits next to my drawing board like a piece of printed reference so it’s easy to draw from.

I’ve got to say, this was a breath of fresh air for me on this latest job, which is packed with different characters and lots of environments that demands a lot of specific reference to get right. Not only did it save maybe as much as a day of copying, pasting, resizing, organizing and printing, I saved a lot of paper and ink not printing out a bunch of pages I’m just going to throw out when the job is done.

I also discovered that Apple either forgot to place the same restrictions on it’s iPad or realizes the policy of preventing screen captures of video is dumb, because you can do screen captures from any video directly on the iPad by pausing the image, then pressing the “Home” and “Power” buttons at the same time for a second or so. You hear a “click” like a camera and the entire screen is saved to your iPad’s iPhoto program, even iTunes video stills. Using a simple image editor allows you to rotate the picture or crop it if you need to. Unfortunately there is no way to move these pictures into new or existing folders within iPhoto, but they will reside in your iPad’s photo folder, so they are still easy to access.

Finally, the images themselves are fantastically clear and bright… no muddy printing to get in the way.

The only drawbacks are that I can only view one picture at a time… which I have to admit I do miss as it makes doing caricatures of a given subject a little easier when you have to do multiple caricatures of the same person and do not rely on a separate reference for each unique caricature. The other drawback is that my iPad’s power charge will eventually run out after a lot of hours of using the screen and browsing pictures. We are talking many, many hours though, and hooking it up to a charger when I take a break usually keeps it charged up enough to keep me going. At worst I can plug it in while I am using it, although the cable limits your moving it about somewhat.

After so many years of having reference pictures or printed pages littered about me in piles, it’s odd to have such a concentrated source of reference and such an uncluttered work area. I loved it though, and won’t be going back. 21st century indeed!

Penthouse Magazine assigned me a series of illustrations to use as a “header” (pun not intended) for a new monthly feature column by musician/celebrity Dave Navarro. These spot illustrations will accompany Dave’s articles in each issue. The one above is in the latest issue, and I have two more “in the can” as they say in the biz for future issues.

I haven’t been able to get caught up since coming back from the USO trip… plenty to do and still a lot ahead. Here’s what’s currently cooking in the studio:

• Feature Illustrations for Honolulu Magazine- A full page and several spots for an annual year end article. Might be hard to wrap my head around Hawaiian imagery in the midst of Minnesota winter.
• Column Header illustration for Penthouse- Several spots for a new monthly celebrity column in the magazine
• MAD TV parody- Just got assigned a 6 page parody of a show that’s been begging for the MAD treatment for a few seasons now. Sorry, can’t divulge the name of the show but the parody will be in MAD #508 due out in February. BTW, this will be the 6th issue in a row in which I will have done a movie or TV parody (if you count “Toyota Story” from MAD #504), which is great news… MAD is definitely stepping up its frequency of these kinds of features after a year or two of not seeing as many of them.
• New Members of Congress for “Bobble Rep”- after the U.S. election last month, there will be a new crop of bobblehead caricatures in the iPhone app I did last year… 106 new ones to be exact.
• Workplace Poster- My usual monthly assignment.
• Character Illustrations- Several pieces of art for a well known comedian for possible use in products, etc.
• Odds and Ends- Doing a Christmas card for a very good client (and friend), a caricature illustration of a popular morning show cast for a little side endeavor I am working on and a few other little projects.

Speaking of my usual workplace poster assignment, here is last month’s illustration, obviously scheduled for distribution in February… Click any image for a closer look:

Pencil Sketch

Finished Inks

Final Artwork

SWAMPED… and as I am leaving to an undisclosed location(s) on another of those USO trips on the 5th, the blogging might be a bit on the light side for a while…

• MAD- A 6 page movie parody!!! Woot!
• MAD Animated show- Back to work on some new episodes.
• Penthouse- Series of illustrations for an ongoing celebrity column
• Advertising job- series of caricature illustrations for a big corporation
• Workplace Poster- My usual monthly assignment

Speaking of workplace posters, here’s last month’s illustration. Click for a closer look:

The pencil sketch

Finished Artwork

Q: I Really love your work, especially the detail you put in. Your pictures are never taken in at a glance – there is something interesting going on right into the corners. So I have a question about your attention to detail. Obviously it’s important for caricatures that the details are as accurate a depiction as necessary to make the image recognizable, but how important is it to you that the details of the less essential elements in a scene are similarly as accurate? If you draw a car in the background do you like the car to be recognizably a Toyota or a Ford if all that is necessary is it be a car?

A: First off, thanks for the kind words about my work… I’m very glad you enjoy it. Now, on to your question…

I’ve learned an awful lot about illustration and cartooning working for MAD, but if someone was to ask me the single most important piece of advice I’ve ever gotten from anyone on cartooning/illustration, the answer would be this very simple but crucial bit of wisdom I got from MAD art director Sam Viviano:

“Your background elements should look as convincing as your foreground elements.”

I’m actually paraphrasing there, because Sam never says anything in one sentence, but that is essentially the point he was conveying. We were discussing my work and what I could do to improve it… this was before I had done my first MAD job and when I was furiously trying to “break in” to the magazine (which is not to be confused with my attempts to break in to the MAD offices… those efforts are a part of public police records). He pointed out to me that there was a noticeable difference between my caricatures of celebrities i.e. people who were supposed to “be somebody” in my illustrations and those who were just background or secondary characters. It was very apparent in my drawings who were representations of real people, and who were made up out of my head. His point was that this difference was noticeable to the point of distraction, and although I didn’t need to necessarily do full blown caricatures of real people for every face in a panel, I should make them look like they COULD be a real person… that they have enough presence and individuality to be a believable person, even if they are not the focus. I started using books of modeling agency head shots and stock photography books to get ideas for my background character’s features, hairstyles, look, etc. and also adding in people I know just for fun.

I combined that bit of advice with another that I consider the second most important thing anyone ever taught me about cartooning and illustration… this one came from long time MAD editor Nick Meglin, again prior to my doing work for MAD. I was having lunch with both he and Sam at the Society of Illustrators in New York, my having come to NYC to show them some of my latest work. Nick explained to me the importance of having a coherent look to the way you draw anything. His example was an artist who’s work can always be counted on to be an example of how to do it right… the great Jack Davis.

“Everybody knows Jack draws people and hands and feet and things like that very distinctively, and you can instantly recognize a Jack Davis hand or a Jack Davis foot… but you can also instantly recognize a Jack Davis chair, or boat, or cow, or baseball glove, or parking meter, or…”

Nick went on for about 15 minutes, kind of like Bubba in Forrest Gump about the different ways to cook shrimp. I think Sam eventually kicked him in the shin under the table and then he stopped.

Anyway, his point was that an illustrator draws the world as he/she sees it through their eyes, and it’s as important that your drawings of chairs or boats or parking meters look like they belong in the same world as the more important stuff you are drawing. So many caricature artists out there don’t understand this, having what I call “Live Caricature Disease”, or LCD. LCD is a condition in which the live caricaturist, through years of conditioning, believes the entire universe starts at the top of a person’s head and ends at their neck. The rest of the world needs to be described just as much as those faces do… and placing those faces in a world in which they look like they belong makes the caricatures all that more strong.

So, I do think it’s important that the details are paid attention to. Your example of drawing a car is a good one. No, I wouldn’t necessarily need to make sure the make and model of every car I draw be recognizable, but it should look like a convincing car. If I don’t know enough about the way a car (or any object I need to draw) looks I will get a picture and get a feel for it. I won’t necessarily draw the exact car in my reference photo, but I will use that picture to draw something that is not only unmistakably a car but one that contains convincing details like hood seams and air intake grills and such that it looks substantial and not like a cardboard cutout of a car put in for a prop. You don’t want to over-detail your secondary elements in an illustration to the point they distract from the focus of the image, but it can be equally distracting to have some odd looking thing that is SUPPOSED to be a car but which is so badly misproportioned or has some other flaws as to look out of place. Buildings are another good example. When I draw a building I want it to look not only like a real building but one that is appropriate for the environment I am drawing. It would not make sense to draw the facade of some New York brownstone if the scene of my illustration was in the French Quarter in New Orleans. There details are crucial, even though buildings are seldom part of the focus but usually background elements. Again, too much detail can be distracting but an overall convincing look enhances that believable world you are trying to describe with your drawings. I wouldn’t want to draw every brick in the facade or other minute details, but I’d want to get the essential elements like the molding, window casings, placement or elements and overall look accurate and enough details drawn or suggested to give it a convincing and substantial look.

Thanks to Jamie Littin 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!

Q: With all the work you do for the MAD parodies, have you ever contributed your own jokes/gags? Or have you ever done any written and illustrated pieces? Do you have any aspirations to write a comic strip or something like that?

A: I guess that depends on what you mean by “writing”. If you mean do I put words down in a script to contribute jokes and gags, then no… I have never done that for MAD.

However when asked this question I do feel confident in saying I “write” for MAD in a certain sense… meaning I do contribute a lot of humor to the features I draw for them in the form of visuals and background gags. I often mention my affinity for the late classic MAD artist Will Elder‘s “chicken fat” style, where he would cram every available space in a panel with a gag sign, visual, character or what have you to add multiple layers of humor to the feature. All those extra gags are really writing… just with pictures not words. Sometimes a MAD writer will specify some background gag they want me to include, and in that case they “wrote” that gag because they came up with the idea and it was in the script. When I write I just cut out the “script” part and put it directly into the art. You can see many examples in just about any parody I have ever done for MAD… some have more gags in the background than others but I am always looking to add something. Which are my contributions and which are the writers? Having the writer call for a background gag is unusual… they usually leave that for the artist… so if there is a gag or joke incoprprated into the art of a panel that does not have anything to do directly with the dialog in the word boxes, there is a 99.9% chance it’s the artist’s gag, unless it’s really funny in which case it’s probably the writer’s gag (heh). Any hand lettered signs or words are also usually the artist’s contribution.

As for “real” writing, I have not been credited specifically as a writer for MAD, but back in my Cracked Magazine days I wrote two of the parodies I illustrated. One was of the 1998 remake of “Godzilla” and the other was of the HBO show “The Sopranos”. The second I co-wrote with my friend and fellow caricaturist/cartoonist Jim Batts, who contributed several gags and had a lot of advice for me on the show’s characters as I had (at the time) not seen many episodes.

In the interests of full disclosure, I have dug up the decrepit old files of those two old Cracked features from early 1999, and here they are with all their artistic inadequacies intact. The first one of “Godzilla” I actually did to show newly minted MAD art director Sam Viviano in an attempt to get into MAD, but he was singularly unimpressed. Cracked, by contrast, not only liked it but immediately bought it and published it in the magazine (you can read about my Cracked adventures here). Click on any of these for a closer look:

Page 3

Page 4

Page 5

Page 6

Incidentally the original title of that paordy was “God-Awful”, which makes more sense with the intro title. However I actually only did the first 4 pages to show Sam and when Cracked asked to buy it I had to finish it, so I came up with the Hillary Clinton joke later and changed the title to “God-Hilla”. After that one, Cracked asked me to do a parody of whatever I wanted (obviously their standards were pretty low at the time). “The Sopranos” was really hot and all over the news so I decided on that one and called Jim for some assistance, whereupon he sent me a box of recordings of the show and embellished the story with a number of gags. Again, click on any of these for a closer look:

Page 3

Page 4

Page 5

And that is the total of my writing credits in humor magazines. As Alfred might say… big deal!

Thanks to Gavin Aung Than from Australia 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!

Lots o’stuff cooking on the drawing board right now. Nothing “big” but a lot of smaller projects add up:

• Workplace Poster Illustration- My usual assignment for The Marlin Company
• Character Illustrations- Sort of a personal commission job doing individual illustrations of his dummies for ventriloquist and comedian Jeff Dunham
• Feature Article Illustration- Full pager for School Library Journal
• Couple of personal commissions- Stay tooned for details on an official personal commission format and availability…

I’m currently “between” assignments for the MAD animated show (wrapping production on a series of episodes prior to beginning on some new stuff) and MAD Magazine… although no doubt they’ll be a-callin’ soon.

Here’s a couple of assignments done recently that I have permission to share:

Click for a closer look…

Click for a closer look…

Small product Illustration of Dennis Kucinich for a deck of cards

Last week the Sunday Mailbag question was about how I seem to do a lot of political type work. Well, it IS an election year, and so I’ve been getting my fair share of projects relating to politics. I must say the conservatives are spending a lot more money than the liberals this time around… almost all my projects recently have been for the right side of the aisle. Here is a the progression of one from last month. This more painted style caricature of Sen. Harry Reid is being used for some kind of campaign promotion:

This is one of a few rough sketches that the client approved to go forward. I wasn’t trying too hard with the likeness in any of them… the point was trying to get the “scene” down. Sorry seem to have trashed the other sketches.

Here’s the tighter sketch for final approval. Click for a closer look,,,

Click for a closer look…

The image above I saved and sent out to the client because they asked for a rare look at the work in progress. I hate doing that and usually discourage it, because invariably the client comes back with a “please make sure the final is nice and clean without pencil lines and with a tighter painting”. Then I have to bite my tongue and say “Never fear, this is just a partially finished image and the final will reflect my usual finished work quality” when instead I am thinking “No shit, Sherlock. YOU are the one who asked for a look at an unfinished piece. Sheesh.”

Here’s the finished artwork. Click for a closer look…

Q: So I really want to pursue my passion for caricature and cartooning. I want to give it a go but Sunday is my only day off so live gigs are hard to come by. I look on E Lance and Solo Gig but seems like a lot of professionals are on there. So my questions are, should I capture what is going on in local news and submit my work to the A.D. Of the local papers, without contacting them first? Undercut everyone on E Lance? And last, I need to create a portfolio and needed to know what to include. Should it be online, on disc or hard copy?

A: I’m not very familiar specifically with E Lance and Solo Gig, but in general online resources for finding freelance work and workers like that are still fledgling and are not very productive. Most of the stories I’ve heard from those who have gotten some work from these sources is that the clients they are put in touch with are looking for work done very cheap or for nothing. Those who go to these sites looking for freelance work are often new to hiring freelancers or, more often, one of those “I’ve got a million dollar idea and only need an artist/writer/programmer to do it” types that want to pay by splitting the phantom profits with the freelancer or, worse yet, working for “exposure”. Maybe these types of resources will eventually become a great resource for the working professional, but right now they aren’t quite there.

That said, for someone trying to break into the business it might be a good place to start. You can always say “no” to someone looking for your skills to do a job if you don’t feel the time and effort is worth the rewards. However I would not pay a single dime for any of these services… you’ll get better results by doing a little leg work on your own.

As far as doing live gigs, by which I assume you mean live caricature, being only available Sundays is a major problem. Do you work evenings every day?? Because most events and parties that look for caricatures as entertainment happen in the evenings. It would be inexpensive to print a single page flyer and send it out to all the members of your local Chamber of Commerce advertising your services for company parties and events.

You mentioned sending your work “cold” to the art directors of local papers… by that I assume you mean editorial cartoons based on local politics and news. Certainly you should do that if you have the inclination… editorial cartoons targeting local topics are something newspapers SHOULD be desperate to get their hands on, but their budgets for that kind of thing are pretty small. Don’t expect to get paid a lot if your cartoons are picked up by a single paper (it’s getting syndicated that makes you the money) but appearing in your local paper, even the suburban type small community papers, can get your name out there and net you work in other areas locally. In fact, suburban newspapers are a relatively untapped source of publication for an ambitious cartoonist with local ties. Most suburban papers are printed by a single company that does a dozen or more different local editions. Doing cartoons that are about local city topics can get you in several of them at a pop… grab a copy of your local small paper and look up the publisher.

Finally, I’d concentrate on a digital, online portfolio. The days of schlepping around a leather bound portfolio are long over. It’s easy, cheap and quick to put together a simple portfolio online where you can change the content 24/7 within seconds at your leisure. Your business card with the URL of your online portfolio becomes your portfolio itself, and anyone can see your work at any time.

Check out these past posts for more info on portfolios and breaking into the freelance cartooning/illustration business:

Getting started doing freelance illustration

Modern Portfolios

Marketing yourself as a freelancer

Thanks to Billy Melago 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!