News
May 25th, 2007 | Posted in News
Once again it’s time for the National Cartoonist Society‘s annual Reuben Awards, this year in sunny Orlando, FL. We arrived last night and today begins the festivities. There are some great speakers lined up in Sam Gross, Bud Grace, Jerry Van Amerongen and Mort Walker, as well as lot’s of other fun stuff. They’ll be a few MAD men around as well including art director Sam Viviano, former editor Nick Meglin and who knows who else. As I wrote in this post, I am nominated for a few divisional Reuben awards in “Magazine/Magazine Feature Illustration” and “Advertising Illustration”. I’ll find out on Saturday night if… READ MORE
April 9th, 2007 | Posted in News
The Wonderful Wizard of ID- Johnny Hart, the cartoonist behind the long time and popular comic strips B.C. and The Wizard of ID, passed away on Saturday apparently from complications after a stroke. I never met Mr. Hart but he was a member of the National Cartoonist Society and the target of many gags at events about the later religious themes in his work. I always enjoyed the dry and irreverent humor of his strips, which seemed a lot more sarcastic than the straight gags of many of his contemporaries. Drawings from Beyond the Grave– This bizarre item, which I got from Drawn!, claims that… READ MORE
March 29th, 2007 | Posted in News
New Photoshop Arriving Shortly- Adobe officially announced the newest version of their Creative Suite (CS) applications on Tuesday, which includes a new version of Photoshop called CS3. Some of the software will be shipping in April with the rest in the third quarter of 2007. I’m not a big fan of getting the latest versions of software upon release. There are ALWAYS bugs and issues that need ironing out, and there is invariably a service release several months later. Plus it’s tough to justify the expense of upgrading when the product version I currently use is doing the job nicely. And with Adobe, it’s VERY… READ MORE
March 23rd, 2007 | Posted in News
NCS President Rick Stromoski released the names of the Reuben Award nominees for 2007 on Thursday. They are as follows: REUBEN AWARD for Cartoonist of the Year Bill Amend Dave Coverly Dan Piraro REUBEN DIVISION AWARDS – NOMINEES (listed alphabetically) Feature Animation Peter De Seve, Character Design (Fox) “Ice Age 2: The Meltdown” Carter Goodrich, Character Design (Sony) “Open Season” Tim Johnson and Karey Kirkpatrick, Directors (Dreamworks) “Over The Hedge” Magazine Feature/Magazine Illustration Steve Brodner Tom Richmond Jean-Jacques Sempe Comic Book Cancer Vixen by Marisa Acocella Marchetto American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang Chicken With Plums by Marjane Satrapi Newspaper Illustration Sean Kelly Robert… READ MORE
March 21st, 2007 | Posted in News
Artwork for the 2007 Reuben Speakers T-shirt. From left: Bud Grace, Sam Gross, Mort Walker and Jerry Van Amerongen. Click image for a closer look Every year the National Cartoonist Society hosts a gala wards weekend called the Reubens at some swanky hotel. I’ve been a member since 1999, and have attended Reuben Weekends in San Antonio, New York City, Boca Raton, Cancun, San Francisco, Kansas City, Scottsdale and Chicago. This year’s awards will be held in Orlando, Florida on Memorial Day Weekend. Visit the NCS website for peeks at previous awards weekends. I wrote about last year’s Chicago experience here. These are a lot… READ MORE
March 14th, 2007 | Posted in News
Last year I received an e-mail from a design firm I did a 2004 cover job for, who told me a cover we had done won an award though neither she or I were notified. Today I found out a different cover illustration I did last year for Infoworld Magazine won a gold medal for best cover illustration of 2005 from TABPI (Trade Associations Business Publications International). This was the 2005 award winner (!!??) Don’t get me wrong, it’s very nice to be recognized but this isn’t a particularly great piece of art, so it’s being deserving of any award is a little questionable to… READ MORE
March 1st, 2007 | Posted in News
Back before I got my first assignment for MAD I did a few jobs for longtime MAD knockoff Cracked Magazine, as I recounted a bit in this blog post. Over a year ago the rights to Cracked were bought by a group of investors, and there ensued a total makeover by a newly assembled team of contributors (several from the Harvard Lampoon) that lead to the debut of the new Cracked in August of 2006. Looks like Cracked Magazine‘s big comeback lasted a whole three issues. Read an open letter from Jay Pinkerton concerning Cracked’s ceasing publication (via theapiary.org) I didn’t care much one way… READ MORE
February 26th, 2007 | Posted in MAD Magazine
MAD and Running Press are going to be releasing the first of a series of complete collections entitled “MAD’s Greatest Artists”, where they presumably collect all the art of each featured artist that appeared in the magazine. The first volume is called MAD’s Greatest Artists: The Completely MAD Don Martin. The article linked above comes from Scoop, a website for news about collectibles, does not go into too many details other than to say it will be a two-volume slip-cased special edition and will include every single work Martin created for the magazine, weighing in at over 1000 pages and 17 pounds. The edition also… READ MORE
