Sunday Mailbag- Toys for Reference?

Q: I heard a great tip from Lynn Johnston that she uses toys for references. I always thought that was such a great tip. You can use toys from different angles and can give your more depth than looking at a photo and…some toys can be cheap. I recently bought a farm animal toy pack from Walmart for $3 and a matchbox truck for $1! My question is…do you use toys for references? If so, any examples you can give us when you did?

A: Toys and props are great for references, especially these days where they are often VERY accurate to the real thing… but I seldom use them. Unless it is something I know I am going to have to draw many times at many different angles, I don’t bother getting toys or other three-dimensional objects to use as references. Photos do nicely. For example, in the movie parody of “The Dark Knight Rises” I did for MAD #519, I only needed to draw the “Bat Wing” and “Bat Pod” vehicles once in any detail:

There were some nice toys out there that I could have bought (not cheap, though) but I really didn’t need them.

I do have a couple of prop guns, however. These aren’t really toys but realistic blank-firing props made for the stage. I frequently need to draw people with guns in movie and TV parodies, so having those are very handy. One is a prop revolver and one is a prop semi-automatic pistol. I would use these anytime I needed to draw someone with a gun where the exact make of gun is not important. I used the prop revolver for reference for this piece:

and I used the other prop for this page:

From Z-People #1- Pencils and inks by me, color by Glenn Whitmore

I’ve used the same props as reference on many other occasions. I know I’ve gotten toys and used them before, but I am blanking out on specific examples. I kind of remember buying an Iron Man action figure when I did the first Iron Man movie parody but I don’t know what happened to it nor specifically remember using it. Anyway, toys do make excellent references in certain circumstances.

Thanks to Chris Hill 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!