Sunday Mailbag: MAD Caricatures?

Q: Do you think about caricatures differently when you are working on a MAD parody with multiple faces, as compared with caricaturing a single face. For example, do you consciously play the faces off against each other to see how they differ, and how those differences might help with your choices about exaggeration? Do you think the relationship to other faces in a parody causes you to make different choices than if you were caricaturing a subject on their own? Does this also apply with caricaturing couples or groups in a live setting (or maybe more so apply in those settings)?

Very seldom would I do that in a MAD parody. Caricatures within the structure of a MAD parody have certain constraints you need to abide by in order for them to be most effective, the primary one being a consistency of exaggeration and facial construction from panel to panel.

When an artist does a single image caricature of someone, that artist often relies on a single picture as their main reference source. They may have supplemental pictures they also look at, but mostly it’s based on a single image. The exaggeration choices are therefore skewed to the information that image provides, which might not be accurate for other angles of the face. For example, say the photo reference has the subject looking down their nose at the camera, with their head tilted back or the camera being at a dramatic upward angle. The result will be a smaller forehead, a shorter nose, a larger chin/jaw area, etc. A single caricature can be effective with exaggerations based on that information, but it is really exaggerating the angle and the expression of that moment in time. The exaggeration choices are not based on the real physical attributes of the subject.

If you sculpted the caricature into a bust out of clay, it might look great at that angle. If you rotated the bust to show a profile, however, you’d probably completely lose the likeness because the exaggerations are based on a visual trick of angle, not the real face. Here’s an example:

In a MAD parody, I need to make sure the caricatures look consistent from panel to panel, so to do an exaggeration like the one above in one panel and then make other choices in the next panel would take the reader out of the story because the characters would not match up as the story progressed. I need to make each caricature in a parody look like it is the same character, as if the drawing in the panel before was rotated to whatever new angle it is at in the current panel. Only with extreme expressions or at moments when I want to do something crazy to “sell the gag” or for a specific effect would I stray from that consistent approach.

As a result, each subject’s caricature choices are self contained and not easily influenced by the caricatures around it. Only with extremes, like if I had two leads where one was rail thin and gaunt and the other round and plump, would I seek to use the differences to comedic effect in the caricatures, and then I would still keep the exaggerations within somewhat realistic limits so they would work at other angles. I’m more apt to exaggerate difference in height or bulk than to play on the differences in sizes of noses.

Your final question asks if “this also applies with caricaturing couples or groups in a live setting ?” Yes, it absolutely applies to live work. Drawing “doubles” is a lot more fun and offers you a lot more room for “comparative exaggeration” than a single person in an image.

First off, when you draw two faces you absolutely want to compare the two and look for differences you can apply to the exaggeration. Head shape is the obvious one. If one of the subjects has a thin, long face and the other a short, round face, that is something you can push in your exaggerations. Sizes of individual features is another… one person’s squinty little eyes compared to the other’s big wide ones. Less obvious are things like the distances between features. Say one subject has a mouth quite close to their nose, and the other one quite far away. You can exaggerate those differences.

The great thing about drawing a double is by comparing the two faces you will notice things about both you might have missed when they were just one at a time. The contrast helps you see. When looking at a shape floating in giant void it can be hard to really see the shape, but when you have a second, different shape floating next to it, both shapes become more distinct in your head because you can compare the two.

Thanks to Lincoln Eddy for the question. If you have a question you want answered for the mailbag about cartooning, illustration, MAD Magazine, caricature or similar, e-mail me and I’ll try and answer it here!