Sunday Mailbag- Perspective?

Q: I am impressed with your use of perspective even in your more cartoony/humorous work. Do you use the old school methods of “vanishing points” and map everything out, or do you just wing it?

A: Mostly I just eyeball the perspective, and the results are far from perfect. My main goal as far as perspective goes is to draw something that does not feel “odd” or “off” so as to distract the viewer from the main focus of the illustration or panel. That seldom needs perfect two or three point perspective… just getting it in the ballpark usually does the trick. If I’m having trouble with the scene I will sketch in a couple of basic guidelines that indicate the general perspective and eyeball the rest. However if I am drawing some kind of complex or involved cityscape or environment where perspective that is a little “off” will really stick out, I will work things out completely with vanishing points and the like. There is nothing worse that having noticeably bad perspective ruin an otherwise good panel or illustration.

… and thanks for the kind words about my perspective skills. Believe me, sometimes the eyeball method results in some pretty messed up perspective, so I would not recommend it until you have a good grasp of how to construct an accurate perspective setup with any kind of scene.

Thanks to Toni Shockley 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!