By: Tom Richmond
December 7th, 2014 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I have a question which might be a little more atypical than what you usually get. I admire how a cartoonist can draw things like floor lamps, armchairs, automobiles, etc -and give them each their own personality or quirky fun shapes. Since this is something I struggle with, I wanted to ask how much of your rules for caricature can be applied to props, vehicles, plants, or other inanimate objects? How do you decide on which parts of a floor lamp (for example) to exaggerate, and which parts to de-emphasis?¬¨‚Ć Do you have a few rules I could follow, or advice on what to… READ MORE
December 6th, 2014 | Posted in General
I’ve been known to Cosplay a bit… Late this week a minor brouhaha ensued after comic book artist Pat Broderick posted a lot of negative comments about the rise of “cosplay” at conventions. Bleeding Cool covered the story and some of the arguments both in support and disagreement with Pat’s take. Pat was more than a little harsh, saying cosplayers bring “no value” to conventions and convention promoters that focus on cosplay as a draw for their shows are doing a disservice to the industry. To provide some context, Pat is just returning to comics after two decades of doing art in other media venues… READ MORE
December 5th, 2014 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Every year MAD Magazine does a feature called “MAD‘s 20 Dumbest People, Events and Things” of the year. The 2014 edition of the MAD 20 will appear in issue number 531 (cover above), which will be on newsstands on Dec. 16th and (supposedly, but not yet) on the iPad today. The last few years MAD has been giving various website exclusive sneak peeks of various parts of the MAD 20. Some have begun to crop up already. Here’s two of them: Courtesy of Brietbart.com: This one from Craveonline: In case you are wondering I did one of the MAD 20 this year. Can’t share it… READ MORE
December 4th, 2014 | Posted in Freelancing
The other day writer extraordinaire Mark Evanier posted an interesting article on his must-read blog about making a living as a writer. Some of the post is about how people you might think are rolling in money are actually struggling to get by, but the gist of his message is that in order to make a living as a writer (or anyone in the creative field), you need to write (or do whatever your creative skill is). That sometimes means you take on jobs that others looking from the outside in might think to be “selling out” your artistic integrity. Mark tells a story… READ MORE
December 3rd, 2014 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
Our “Walking Dead” series concludes this week with Michael Cudlitz as Abraham Ford. I might pick these back up as the February second-half premiere approaches. READ MORE
December 2nd, 2014 | Posted in General
The great Jack Davis is 90 years old today! This from a post here in 2006: Any conversation about the greatest and most influential cartoonists of the last half century must, at some point, include the name Jack Davis. From the notorious E.C. horror comics of the 1950?s to MAD Magazine to TIME and TV Guide covers, record covers, movie posters, advertising, animation design and even US postage stamps, Davis’s art has entertained, amazed and inspired generations. John Burton “Jack” Davis Jr. was born in Atlanta, GA on December 2nd, 1924. An incurable doodler, the young Jack Davis drew on textbooks, writing tablets and anything… READ MORE
December 1st, 2014 | Posted in Monday MADness
Totally Useless Fax Dept. You would think it a fairly common occurrence that, in the process of doing movie and TV parodies for MAD, I would often end up drawing the same actors over and over in different shows or films. Actually outside of when an actor appears in the same role in sequels or movies series, that hasn’t happened all that much for me. I remember drawing both Gene Hackman and Owen Wilson in the spoofs of “Behind Enemy Lines” and then “The Royal Tennenbaums” just a couple of issues later. I drew Hugh Jackman in “X-2” and then “Van Helsing” less than a… READ MORE
November 30th, 2014 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: When teaching people to draw caricatures, do you have them draw a hundred variations of a nose, eyes, chin, etc., or do you have them jump right in and attempt to draw caricatures. In other words, what’s the best way to practice drawing caricatures? A: While practicing individual features on their own is a useful exercise for learning to draw those features convincingly, it doesn’t really help you get any better at drawing caricatures. A good caricature is the sum of the parts, not the parts themselves. The exact same nose on one person might be exaggerated in a completely different way on another… READ MORE
