Mailbag
September 29th, 2013 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I’ve read your articles on the evil of doing work-for-hire art. Isn’t MAD work-for-hire? Why the double standard? A: It’s true, I have railed about the inadvisability of work-for-hire agreements, which are agreements between the artist and the client wherein the client owns not only the copyrights to the work, but all the originals and every scrap of every concept or idea you did for that project, forever. Usually this is not a very good deal for the artist, because that work can become a cash cow for the client with no further payment to the artist necessary. That said, there are some exceptions… READ MORE
September 22nd, 2013 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I have really enjoyed following your blog for sometime now and waited with bated breath for your book to come out. It is nothing short of a masterpiece!¬¨‚Ć Your book is chock full of great drawings and instruction. I know that there is no substitute for Practice. My question is… What methods would you recommend for practicing? Would you find a caricature you admire and practice it over and over? Would you practice individual features over and over? What tips could you give on the best way to get the most out of one’s practice time? A: Great question. Thanks for the kind words… READ MORE
September 15th, 2013 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I know from reading your blog that a caricaturist can use caricatures of celebrities to display their work, but cannot sell them due to the celebrity “owning” their likeness, and that it is not worth the hassle of getting into legal trouble doing it. Having said that, an artist sold a painting of a nude Bea Arthur a few months back- Don’t the same rules apply? Or are exemptions made for “fine” art? A: I’d like to preface my comments below by saying I am not a lawyer and this is not meant to substitute for real legal advice… I’m just a guy who… READ MORE
August 25th, 2013 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: What was the worst freelance job you ever had to do? A: I’m not sure what you mean by “worst”. It could be one where the deadline was so short it almost killed me, or where the pay ended up being far less than the job’s worth ended up being, or where I had a hard time getting paid for the work. I’m going to take it to mean biggest nightmare to complete… a job that went south and kept going until it hit the Antarctic. There have really not been many of these in the grand scheme of things. After a while you… READ MORE
August 18th, 2013 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: ¬¨‚ĆI was wondering what brush setup you use for digital caricature line work. I have tried many different settings and no matter what I try it seems that my line work suffers in digital form. My caricatures seem to lose some “life” due to this.¬¨‚Ć I use a Wacom Cintiq tablet. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. A: I actually use the stock brushes from the PhotoShop brush palette for all my PhotoShop work. My needs are relatively simple since most of what I do is color scanned line art. I very seldom do line work in PhotoShop, much preferring the lines I get… READ MORE
August 4th, 2013 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: In your previous mailbag reply you addressed the large size of your original art for MAD. However my main question to you is, working traditionally is always good, but how exactly do you scan them in? Does MAD scan them for you, or you have a kickass large scanner in your studio? If you do, can you advise on a larger then a4 scanner which is good and reasonably affordable as well online.. I’m from Singapore and its extremely hard to find a larger then a4 scanner here. A: The previous mailbag referred to is here, and briefly the question was why is my… READ MORE
July 28th, 2013 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I saw you at Comic-Con last weekend, great to meet you. I really enjoyed seeing the original MAD artwork of yours you had there. I wanted to ask you about the size you work at. Those pages were enormous! They are much bigger than most comic book art pages are. Why do you work that large? A: Those pages you saw, which were all from movie or TV parodies from MAD, were done at “twice up” or 200% of print size. That means a full printed page from MAD, which is 8 1/8 x 10 1/2 inches, would have an original art size of… READ MORE
July 21st, 2013 | Posted in Mailbag
Rather than doing my usual Sunday Mailbag, I’m instead linking to an interview I did with Michael Cavna of the Washington Post’s “Comic Riffs”, where I am asked and answer a bunch of questions. READ MORE
