Q: When doing live caricatures: What do you say to a customer who just cannot sit still and moves the head here and there? A: SHUT THE HELL UP AND SIT STILL!!!! Thanks to Dominick Zeillinger 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! READ MORE
My caricature workshop in Dallas TX just got started a few minutes ago! I’ll be announcing my last two scheduled workshops for 2018 next week, one in Portland OR June 29-July 1 and one in Phoenix, AZ Nov 30- December 2nd. Details to follow! READ MORE
These two sculptured caricatures of me that adorn my studio shelves are by some insanely talented friends of mine. The top one is by Celestia Ward, who along with husband Robert Sundin III (a.k.a. Sundini) own Two Head Studios and are prominent caricaturists in the Las Vegas area. Celestia does 2D and 3D work, among a lot of other creative endeavors. If her name seems familiar to you (and you have read my book The Mad Art of Caricature) that’s because she was that book’s editor!! She did this sculpture for my 35th birthday in 2001. She is depicting me at the drawing board, airbrush… READ MORE
This week’s ’66 Batvillian is Roddy McDowall as “Bookworm”, original available in the Studio Store as usual. BatFacts: Many TV Trivia and information books incorrectly state that actress Joan Crawford played “the Printer’s Devil”, an assistant to Roddy McDowall‘s Bookworm, in the first season episode. This error occurred when one book accidentally misspelled actor John Crawford‘s name. Many subsequent books then used this one erroneous book as a reference without bothering to check the accuracy of the listing. Joan Crawford never appeared on “Batman”, that role was played by John Crawford. READ MORE
The other day I was talking to someone about MAD‘s history and had to correct them about something that is a persistent inaccuracy about why MAD went from a comic book to a magazine: the mistaken belief that the 1954 congressional hearings on comic books and “juvenile delinquency” had anything to do with it. For some reason people think that Harvey Kurtzman and Bill Gaines changed MAD from a comic book to a magazine in order to avoid having to adhere to the then newly formed Comics Code Authority, a self-censoring body the comic book industry created to avoid the government censorship that was on… READ MORE
I often get asked what my favorite job for MAD has been, and while the standard answer is “the last one”, this one I did of the TV show “Breaking Bad” for MAD #516 (Aug 2012) and written by Desmond Devlin is right up there. Here are the pencil roughs for that job, plus all the final art. For some reason I did “full art” on this one and did not ink in the word boxes like I usually do. I honestly cannot remember why I decided to do that, but there it is. READ MORE
Q: I’ve been tasked with creating a multiple page “comic” featuring a client, her family and pets. The project is a secret and it’s been difficult to acquire references of some of the subjects to draw in various poses and at various angles. I ended up gathering a lot of reference from their Instagram, printing it out, and also printing a mirror image. I think I’ll get by, but how do you approach clients about likeness references when bidding a job? A: I’m just very up front about the fact that how well the caricatures turn out is very much determined by how good the… READ MORE
Our 60’s Bat-villains series continues with Vincent Price as “Egghead”! Original available in the Studio Store. BatFacts: When filming this episode there was to be a big “egg fight” in the finale, and Vincent Price was required to hit Burt Ward (Robin) with an egg. According to Price: “The crew was fed up with Burt, so they had me throw two dozen eggs at him, and he had to stand there and take it.” READ MORE
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