Mailbag
September 26th, 2022 | Posted in Mailbag
Don’t go getting your quarks all in a bunch… I know it’s Monday and that means it’s time to get our hadrons on and examine more of the decaying matter that was my work for MAD Magazine. This week we pick up where we left off last Monday, and look at the other piece I had in MAD #503, May 2010. That was a very short parody of the TV sitcom “The Big Bang Theory”, written by my CLAPTRAP cohort Desmond Devlin. The part about this job I remember most was trying to figure out the best way to handle the “chalkboard” caricatures that were… READ MORE
February 13th, 2022 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: What size do you work at for your MAD pages? There’s so much detail… I imagine you work much larger than the printed page size. A: Much bigger. Twice the size, in fact. Typically comic book artists work on 11 inch x 17 inch art boards with a “live” art area of about 10 x 15. With a comic book page print size of around 6.625 x 10.125 inches, most original art is done at about 148% enlargement, meaning the artist is working at a size about 148% bigger than what the art will print at. My MAD pages are done at 200% of print size,… READ MORE
January 30th, 2022 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: For your most recent MAD cover (issue #23), did MAD tell you to draw in your older style? I noticed that it resembles a lot of your early MAD work. The line width, colors, and shading kind of resemble your earlier MAD work, I’ve noticed that’s the style in many of your older assignments. A: Here’s the cover in question: No, MAD didn’t ask me to work in anything other than my usual style. Actually I am not quite sure what you are seeing in this that seems like an “older” version of my work. To me my earlier MAD stuff looked stiff and… READ MORE
January 16th, 2022 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I love your work but I really wish you would attach a name to your caricatures, they look so sweet but I’m not sure who some of your caricatures are depicting. I usually do identify who my caricatures are depicting when I post them online either in the post title or in the description copy. However I almost never write the name of the person being caricatured as part of the actual artwork. I figure if the viewer can’t figure it out then A) they are not familiar with the subject or B) it’s a bad caricature. Either way writing the name of the… READ MORE
December 26th, 2021 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: What are your stances on the comic artist training grounds (CalArts, Kubert, SCAD et al) regarding their value overall for the students? Have you met grads of these institutions and discussed their experiences? I tend to find a lot of worth in spending the money to learn from artists you look up to but I’m curious overall about what industry professionals think about how well a place like Kubert does at helping their grads find work in comics/design/storyboarding/animation etc. A: I get asked about art college a lot, but not about the specific topic of if art schools help their graduates get work. If… READ MORE
December 5th, 2021 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: What is going to be your approach to the parody of “Toy Story 4” in the upcoming CLAPTRAP book? How do you “caricature” cartoon characters? And how will you fit in a caricature of a real human (backer) in a cartoon story? A: A timley question… I happen to be working on that very parody right now! I have done a few “Pixar” parodies for MAD in the pst, and I am taking a similar approach to the art in the spoof of “Toy Story 4” in CLAPTRAP. Essentially since the characters are all animated characters I do not seek to “caricature” them in… READ MORE
November 21st, 2021 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: You’ve drawn so many caricatures of famous celebrities. However, has there ever been a celebrity that you were unable to draw because it was too difficult? A: No such thing. You can caricature anybody. How far you can push the exaggerations and how good the recognizability is is all about your observations and execution of the caricature. Some faces may be more elusive to you than others, but all are solvable. Sometimes I’ll find a caricature just rolls off the end of my pencil without much effort, and others I’ll do several sketches and try several different approaches before I am satisfied. It’s hard… READ MORE
November 14th, 2021 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: How has the experience of doing parodies for your book CLAPTRAP without the art department and editors from MAD’s involvement been like? A: Those schmucks? It’s been like a giant weight lifted off our shoulders! Like running through fields of flowers on a sunny summer day with the birds chirping and a song in our hearts! We hate it. All kidding aside there are pros and cons to not working with the MAD editorial/art department on these parodies. The pros are that we can do whatever we want, and are free to maybe take some risks or try different things that would likely not have flown with the… READ MORE
