Sketch o’the Week- Big Bang Theory!

I have to cop out this week on a new SotW because… BUSY. However here’s a look at a rare revision on a splash page for MAD. It’s especially relevant since this show just ended a few weeks ago.

I don’t often have to do more than minor revisions for my MAD stuff, because the MAD staff knows what to expect from me and I know what they are looking for. Every once and awhile we have differing opinions on what works and what does not. This was the pencil rough for the splash page of MAD‘s parody of “The Big Bang Theory” from MAD #503, May 2010, written by Desmond Devlin. The concept was that Albert Einstein was going to narrate the parody, and it opens with him at a chalkboard drawing formulas and the five major characters from the show. I though we should do it as you see above, where he uses chalk to actually “paint” the faces. My concern was that if I drew them with white lines it would look like a negative photograph and the likenesses would be tough to see.

The folks at MAD disagreed. They wanted just the chalk lines. So this was my revised pencil:

I still think it looks odd and it’s hard to see the likenesses, but they are the bosses. I do agree with them that the chalk “paintings” seemed too sophisticated artistically for anyone to think Einstein did them. Of course for all I know he could draw like Mort Drucker.

I’ll post the complete final art of this parody in my Monday MADness feature nest week.