Sunday Mailbag- Revisiting Old Work?

Q: As you’ve been revisiting your old work, have you had any OH SH*T moments when you saw something you’d overlooked. I don’t mean things that you look back on and see how you might have done them better, but genuine oversights like “I forgot to give that guy feet”?

A: I have been trying to think of any really “OMG I can’t believe that got by me” sort of things but nothing really egregious comes to mind. I notice a LOT of times where I missed coloring something, so someone’s hand is the green of what’s behind it or whatever, but I’ve can’t recall ever giving someone an extra arm or something like that. That sort of thing can happen a lot easier than you might think. You decide to change something in an image that results in redrawing an area, then you forget to remove the part that was originally there, and merrily ink and color it without noticing.

I do remember a terrible mistake I made on one of those “workplace poster” images I used to do for The Marlin Co. Fortunately the art director caught it before it was printed. The illustration was supposed to be a gag about how important good communication is at work, and the illustration was to have two outfielders on a baseball team trying to catch a fly ball. Because of the lack of communication, the run into each other and neither catches the ball. Here’s the illustration:

See the mistake? If they were on the same team, THEY’D BE WEARING THE SAME UNIFORM! I have no clue what I was thinking.

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!