Sunday Mailbag- MAD Parody Caricatures?

Q: I’ve heard you mention, briefly, about being able to draw people in various positions, while maintaining a likeness, and have been wondering about your work drawing celebrities (or anyone) for the parodies that you do. Are you doing them from references that are in the pose that you want? Or are you using your knowledge of facial construction to “cheat” the pose? A bit of both? I have found it daunting to find references in a certain position, and have had limited success trying to “cheat” the pose.

A: It’s a little of both, especially with regard to doing a movie or TV parody in MAD. I cover this pretty extensively in my book, but here’s the (sort of) short version:

When I do a movie or TV parody I’m required to draw caricatures of the movie characters in a lot of different poses and angles, and with different expressions… sometimes as many as 12-18 different caricatures of the same subject. It is impossible to find references of these subjects showing me the exact pose, angle and expression I am looking for… so I don’t even try. I use what I call the “keystone” approach.

I gather a bunch of references of the subject, as many of which are them in character from the film or TV show as possible. I’ll supplement these with other references of the actors not in character if need be. I concentrate on finding pictures that show me different angles of their face: Full face, 3/4 views left and right, profiles, and if I’m lucky odd angles like the head tilted back and to one side in 3/4 view, or leaning forward, etc. The idea is to have as complete a reference group as I can get showing the head rotating in space. It’s limited, because MOST pictures of actors/celebrities you see are ones taken with them facing the camera, so it might take some digging (God bless Google Image Search).

Then as I am working on a parody I look for ways to work in caricatures that are done from a specific reference photo. I call this a “Keystone” caricature, because it is one that helps support the others that are not done from a specific reference. I try to have at least one keystone caricature of a main character on every page. Characters in the opening/splash page of the parody ares ALWAYS keystone caricatures as they establish the character and the look of the caricature.

The next step is to identify “keystone features” of the subject. These are important elements of the recognizability of the subject’s face that I want to be sure I focus on with the caricatures I do in-between the keystone caricatures. Head shape is usually an important one. Other attributes might be the size/shape of the nose, heavy brows, weak chin, etc. I want to keep these keystone features consistent from caricature to caricature.

In the “in-between” caricatures I can take a lot of liberties with things like expression because the keystone caricatures establish the likeness and look of the subject’s caricature. The keystone features I carry through are enough to make the viewer see it as the same character, even though I might cartoon up their expressions for humor and storytelling.

In this way I don’t have to worry about making sure the Winona Ryder I’m drawing yelling has exactly Winona’s mouth shape when she yells. The keystone features keeps the illusion of it being a caricature of Winona Ryder (or whoever) rolling into the next keystone caricature, which being done from a specific reference has a strong likeness and re-establishes the character’s believability.

Thanks to Jerry Shippee 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!