Mailbag
February 17th, 2013 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: Can you explain what rights you give your clients for artwork most of the time?¬¨‚Ć Also, how does that affect pricing?¬¨‚Ć Are there any rules to follow to price work properly? I find that a lot of people expect full rights most of the time.¬¨‚Ć I always have a hard time pricing my illustration work because of this. A: I can’t discuss actual pricing with you as that violates U.S. Antitrust laws specifically “price fixing”, but I can give you plenty of general comments. Many people get confused about what an illustrator is actually selling to their client. Unless there is a separate agreement… READ MORE
February 10th, 2013 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I love your background people. They all have distinct personalities. Do you keep files on faces, or just make them up? A: I know I have told this story a few times on the blog, but one of the most valuable pieces of advice I ever got on my cartooning came, independently,¬¨‚Ć from longtime MAD editor Nick Meglin and longtime MAD artist (and now fairly longtime MAD art director) Sam Viviano. Both told me that there was a disconnect in my early work between the caricatures I did of specific actors and the drawings I did of people who were not specific people but… READ MORE
February 3rd, 2013 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I have been doing a lot of projects lately that are fairly involved, similar to the monthly posters that you do. Getting through the roughs and revisions and finally the inks is –depending on the decision making abilities of my client- fairly expedient but when it comes to adding the color it seems TO TAKE FOREVER. I expect that the color side of things would take some time but DANG!!!!!! I am just curious as to how long it takes you to get through the color process of your average poster or even a MAD project? A: The time it takes to color something… READ MORE
January 27th, 2013 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: You have mentioned several times that before you went freelance, you started your own caricature stands in theme parks, but I don’t think you’ve ever taken us down the road of how that came about, and what you had to do to make it happen (or if you have, I haven’t come across it yet). What’s the story? A: I have told parts of it here and there, but never the whole tale. I’ll try and keep it brief, as it’s a long story in detail. Back when I was a student at the University of MN, I was skipping a particularly pretentious art… READ MORE
January 20th, 2013 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I am an illustrator and cartoonist at heart, but since college I’ve been stuck working as a sign designer. I loved doing it at first, but over the last few years I’ve become pretty unhappy with it. The work I’m doing it’s really limiting and not where I really wanted to be. I’ve taken some time to get back to the work I enjoy doing, which is caricatures and cartoons. The reason for my email is I was wondering how you broke out into the scene? I’d like to get out of the design job and freelance full-time. A: Your story is a very… READ MORE
January 13th, 2013 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: Any good horror stories about dropping your pen on the page when you’re 99% done with inking a drawing? Any other ‘Oh s*#%t’ moments while working on (important) paid work? A: Most freelancer have one or two of those sort of stories, but I fortunately do not. Only once did I have a piece I was working on ruined so badly I had to start over, and it was when my 2 year old daughter got into my studio and took a marker to a comic book page I was working on back in 1992 or so. My fault for not locking my studio… READ MORE
January 6th, 2013 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: Regarding submitting work to MAD, I read your blog post about “breaking into MAD”, but the links to the submission guidelines are dead ends. Considering that there’s no submission section on the website, is it fine to mail the submissions to the address you mentioned under the FAQs section on your blog? Or MAD is not accepting submissions anymore? I am not a caricature artist (I’m more of a vampire caricaturist, I so suck at it). But, I can do cartoons and I can also do funny realistic portraits featuring Neuman in different forms, like those typical MAD covers. However, I read on the… READ MORE
December 31st, 2012 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: Before you worked for MAD, was it your goal to work for MAD? And at this point, did you really believe you would work for MAD? How did you get your first gig with them? A: Working for MAD was a relatively late goal of mine, although once I became focused on it I went all out. Here’s the short version of the story: Like many American boys I had a time when I was really “into” MAD Magazine. This was between 5th and 7th grades, so I would have been 10-12 years old. My friend had a subscription, so when his copy arrived… READ MORE
