Sunday Mailbag: How Long for a MAD Parody?

Q: How long does it take you to do a movie/TV parody for MAD?

A: This is probably the number one question I get whenever I am on a panel or speak about my work for MAD. The only truly correct answer would be “It takes as long as they give me”. I’ve had as long as 5 weeks to work on a parody and as little as 10 days. Either way I turn it in at the absolute last second. Just ask my art directors while they are sticking pins in a Voodoo doll with my name on it.

However, no one is ever satisfied with that answer. They seem obsessed to know how many hours I am physically parked at my drawing board working on these parody projects. Since some parodies are more complex than others and therefore take more time, I can only give you an average. It takes me a full day to “research” the entire piece, gather reference, and lay out the basics. I can “rough out” two pages a day, revisions and tighter pencils and then inks take a full day per page and I can color two pages a day (long days however… 12-14 hours). So with some tweaking and rethinking here and there I estimate 2.5 days per page. That does not include the research I do prior to starting like going to watch the film a couple of times or watch a lot of episodes of the TV show. A six page parody probably takes me on average a solid two weeks of work. That is excluding all other work, though.

Sadly the first answer really is the true one. If I have a long time to work on a project I don’t get started right away, or I start but let other things get in the way, until the deadline starts to press. When that deadline pressure hits the breaking point I shut down the rest of my life and work on the project 24/7 until I get it done. I’ve tried to modify this behavior but I find without the pressure of a deadline my creative juices just do not get flowing and nothing is working on the page. I’ve come to grips with the fact that this is the creative process that works for me, and as long as I am happy with the results why fight it? Although my art directors and their Voodoo dolls may disagree.

Thanks to many people 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!