Mailbag
January 8th, 2012 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I am just starting my career as a freelance artist/illustrator. I just completed a project with a credit union for a character design that they used in their advertisements. When the obvious discussion of pricing came up, I wasn’t sure where to begin. We settled, quite quickly, without any problems. I was just curious if there is any method to the madness? A: This is a question I get pretty frequently, so every once and a while I re-post this answer from a few years ago.. simply because it’s still as good an answer as I can come up with: I get individual e-mails… READ MORE
December 18th, 2011 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: Do you do personal commissions? I’d really like to get a caricature done of my wife for a Christmas present. If you do, what does it entail and how much does it cost? A: Many years ago I stopped doing personal commissions for a number of reasons. First, I didn’t have the time. I am usually swamped with publication work and it’s hard to squeeze in personal commission jobs around the edges. If I were to take them on, it would be at the expense of publication jobs. The second reason is that I’d have to charge an outrageous fee to do personal commissions.… READ MORE
December 11th, 2011 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: Knowing that you’re a huge Batman fan, which version of Batman (TV or movie) do you feel came closest to living up to the character and who would be your favorite villain? Also, I know you’ve had some of your work animated, but did animation itself ever appeal to you as a career? A: Please forgive the self-indulgence of answering a more personal opinion question here. Let’s take the second one first, as it’s the more pertinent professional query. I never considered animation as a career because I don’t have the patience for it. I might have been able to do character design given… READ MORE
December 4th, 2011 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I was really impressed with your book, and I also appreciated the reasons you gave as to why you decided to self-publish. I am wondering, though, how are you fulfilling your orders? Are you packaging them up yourself, or using some shipping service? What problems have you encountered in shipping your orders? A: Actually that was one aspect of the self-publishing process I meant to mention but forgot to in that post you cited. It’s another example of how today’s technology enables a self-publisher to operate as efficiently and quickly as an established distributor. PayPal has it’s faults, but the tools it brings to… READ MORE
November 27th, 2011 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: Can you share how much time an average project (such as the “workplace posters”) takes you to produce? Does your Cintique make a difference in that timeframe? A: That’s a question I get often and it’s one that is impossible to answer. Each project is different and factors like multiple revisions, complexity of the image and even just “having a bad drawing day” come into play. Specifically, I will say one of those workplace posters take me about 1 1/2 to 2 days to do from sketch to final, although complexity of the scene makes a difference. This one: …took only a long day… READ MORE
November 20th, 2011 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: What advice would you give on preparing and showing a portfolio for obtaining freelance work? A: This question isn’t really from anybody specifically, but last week when visiting the Savannah College of Art and Design I did a round-table portfolio review for a group of students, and I thought some of the questions and information disseminated there would make for a good Sunday Mailbag post. First off, let me say that the era of hauling around and showing a physical portfolio to art directors in pursuit of work is all but over. The term “portfolio” used to mean the leather case containing the bound… READ MORE
November 13th, 2011 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: You must have accumulated a ton of digital artwork since you’ve been working as a professional illustrator. How do you go about saving, backing up and archiving your files so that you never lose them? A: That’s one of the things that sucks about digital artwork…you are one electrical surge away from losing it all unless you are careful to back things up. I tried several methods to make sure I properly backed up all my work. First, I would pick up my computer, open the drive bay door and attempt to shake out all the 0’s and 1’s that made up the binary… READ MORE
November 6th, 2011 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I know you do a lot of different kinds of humorous illustration, but you are primarily known for doing caricatures. What first got you interested in drawing caricatures? Was it something you started doing as a kid, or did you discover it later? A: I started typing out an answer to this one, then realized that the following excerpt from the preface of my book said it better, and I’d already written it!… From The Mad Art of Caricature!: When I was a young man, drawing caricatures for a living never struck me as something I was interested in doing. I never opened a… READ MORE
