This week’s sketch is of Harrison Ford, the aging star of the new Indiana Jones movie, “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull“.

Am I the only person in the world who has zero interest in this film? I’m old enough to be able to say I sat in a real theater as a fifteen year old kid and watched with my jaw hung open as “Raiders of the Lost Ark” exploded on the screen in 1981. The other two movies were also enjoyable (although they had their problems as well) and worth making and watching, but nothing will ever be able to match the sheer fun and excitement of seeing Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones in that first, unforgettable film.

Do I really want to see a Harrison Ford that looks more like my dad than Indy creaking across the screen in an attempt to recapture the magic? I don’t think so. Maybe 10 years ago they could have pulled it off with a story about an aging Indy who goes on one more adventure, but Ford is WAAAAAY past the age of being a believable action hero now. Just watch “Firewall” or “Air Force One” if you don’t believe me. It’s too late to do another Indy film. They should have left well enough alone.

Ford himself seems to be getting tired of hearing about his age. I read a quote the other day in an interview where he responded to the length of time since the last Indy movie with a little profanity: “Yeah, I’m 19 years older. You’re ^%$#&@ 19 years older too!” That’s right…. I am. However I am not trying to convince the world I can swing across a gaping chasm on a bullwhip, crash through the windshield of a speeding truck and shrug it off with a smart ass quip. At age 65, Ford probably has to get up three times a night to take a piss, much less survive that without breaking his hip. Suspension of disbelief is a part of action films, but come on.

Maybe I’m being too hard on the team behind the new Indy. They might have a brilliant script that really does the characters justice and makes everything make sense. I hope so. I’d hate to see this movie being a final sour note in one of the most beloved film series of all time.

• MAD Movie parody- Working hard on that right now. Pencil rough stages.
• Super Capers- Titling images nearing the final stages, movie scene image next and then wrapping up the “turnarounds”. This job is much more involved than I originally expected it to be.
• Website Gaming Images- Still in the concept stages on this one, but progressing.
• Workplace Poster job- My usual assignment.

I also did a couple of very quick and simple illustrations in the last week or two for other clients that I can probably now share here, as they are either in print or nearing production:

This is an illustration that will be incorporated into a logo for a moving company.

A small spot illustration for Scholastic.

These last two demonstrate how some jobs are just very simple and quick projects to suit a client’s specific needs. I do a fair amount of these kinds of jobs, fitting them in when I am waiting for reviews or approvals on other, more involved projects.

In the photo above there are two Sebastian Krüger’s that I recognize.
The others are of varying styles as well.

Krüger’s Stallone, as well as Joe Bluhm‘s Tom Cruise. On the display
in the background I can see my Julia Roberts.

Joe’s Tom Cruise again and an old Tom Cruise of mine
in the lower right with someone else’s Nicole Kidman.

I wish I could say this is an odd occurrence. Here are some pictures I’ve displayed here before with some more examples of street artist’s using examples of mine and others on their displays:

From two different artist’s display boards in Time’s Square, New York City.
My Marilyn Monroe and an old Will Smith.

I saw the above display board at the Place de Tertre, Montmartre in Paris. That’s my Busta Rhymes, Julia and Marylin again. I’ve had reports from friends who’ve seen my work in a similar fashion in London, Greece, San Diego, San Fransisco, etc. etc. These were all taken from my website, many from the old version as I don’t even have most of these caricatures anymore.

Why do these street artist’s do this? If they can draw well enough to do it for money in a place like Times Square, Rome or Paris, why not do their own samples?

I can’t answer that for certain. For some, it’s a matter of simply not being a very good caricaturist. Some of those Times Square artists are awful, and can barely draw at all. They sell their wares the same way the people next to them sell watches that look like Rolexes but stop running within a week. They show one thing (like other people’s samples) and then sell another and rely on tourists getting confused or not wanting to create a scene to get their money. Those people have no choice but to show other people’s work as their display art, as they are incapable of doing their own. They, incidentally, give real street caricaturist a bad name.

Others, though, have the art skills to do their own samples. So why the rip-offs? I think it’s just plain laziness. They don’t want to spend the time needed to work up good looking samples… they’d rather steal another artist’s work as opposed to doing it themselves. Maybe it’s because they know they aren’t as good as Krüger (who is???) so they show his work rather than display their own honest skill.

A few years ago I was visiting the local Renaissance Festival here in Minnesota and happened on the cart of a caricaturist there who i had met only briefly but knew by reputation as a fairly good local artist. I was shocked to see many of my samples on his board, redrawn to some extent but very clearly copies of my work. I did not confront him about it on the spot, but wrote him a letter asking that he remove my samples. I received a very apologetic response from him and his only excuse was that he was having personal difficulties and did not have the time to do all his own samples. To his credit he removed the copied samples and I never heard of him using my work that way again. He was extremely embarrassed.

I have a feeling that is a rare exception… someone who is actually embarrassed by doing something like that when caught. Most of these artists could care less, as evidenced by the fact that some have the hubris to have the same ripped off samples on their board as the artist drawing only feet from them also has displayed! They must really think tourists are stupid.

There are some caricaturists who respond to this by saying “you should be flattered. They must think a lot of your work to do that!”. Sorry, but those artists are not showing any respect or admiration to the artists they are ripping off. Quite the opposite, in fact.

I don’t begrudge anyone the chance to make a living, and despite this post I don’t get worked up over seeing my stuff being used in this manner. No, I don’t like it and don’t condone in, but I am a big believer in Karma and the old adage “what goes around, comes around”. If these folks want to still be doing caricatures on a soggy street corner 20 years from now for a few euros a pop, then they are going about it the right way. It’s very sad, actually. I feel sorry for them… but I still wish they wouldn’t steal my work nor that of my colleagues.

A: I can certainly tell the story of how I got started in cartoning but it wouldn’t apply much to today’s market. Circumstances change with time and what was true then is no longer true now, just as breaking into the cartooning field in the 60’s was different than it was when I did it in the late 80’s.

I went to college at a small art school called the School of Associated Arts in St. Paul, MN, where there was zero cartooning in the curriculum. I was on my own when it came to learning cartooning or incorporating it into my career plans. What made an eventual cartooning career possible for me was getting a summer job doing caricatures at a theme park near Chicago, IL. I worked with some very talented cartoonists and artists, including illustrator Gary Fasen, current DC Comic’s superstar Doug Mahnke, WB animator and children’s book illustrator Dave Kamish and many others who went on to have successful art and cartooning careers. I learned a lot about cartooning, caricature and humorous illustration working with those artists and applied what I’d learned to my schooling where and when I could. My first freelance cartooning job was doing caricatures for a morning radio show advertisement that I did for one of my college professors who had a design firm.

In 1989 went on to manage a caricature art concession at Six Flags, Atlanta for Fasen Arts, and while there I “broke” into cartooning via a comic book company called NOW Comics. One of my fellow caricaturists, Chuck Senties, had gotten a job drawing a title called Ralph Snart for NOW, and had let me know they were looking for an artist to draw another title for them called Married… With Children. I sent them some sample pages and became the penciler on the book.

That was really my first big break in the field, but it was a combination of luck and circumstance. The luck was hearing about it and applying at a time they were looking for an artist capable of humorous comic book work and caricature. The circumstances which made it possible were several. First, in 1989-90 the comic book field was in a golden age where comic books sold by the millions of copies and almost anybody who could breathe and draw even a little bit could get a job in comics. Second, NOW Comics had a bad reputation for not paying or paying late, and no one with any real experience wanted to work for them. Third, in the meantime I opened up my own caricature concession operation at Underground Atlanta and had that and my Six Flags jobs to pay my bills so I did not care much about that second point.

Anna and I, and our baby daughter, moved back to Minnesota in 1990 and I opened up another caricature concession at a small theme park called Valleyfair. I was still doing Married… with Children and did a miniseries for Marvel called The Coneheads as well, and I also started to pursue other freelance work by showing my portfolio around the Twin Cities and talking to other illustrators. I got a few local jobs for publications like Minneapolis/ St. Paul and Twin Cities Business magazines, but quickly realized the local market was too small for me to make a go of it with freelance. I started advertising in a source book called the Directory of Illustration, a nationally distributed illustration ad book. I didn’t get many clients from that ad, but I did get a few that gave me a lot of work, chiefly among them Business and Legal Reports where I did several comic book style booklets for school distribution on anti-smoking/drinking/drugs and similar themes. This client wanted digital files so I was forced to learn to use the computer for my work, something I had not ever done before. That would prove important.

Each year I continued to build my freelance clientèle slowly, adding a few new clients each year and gradually building my income from freelance up over time. I also added caricature operations in Missouri, Louisiana and Massachusetts along the way. A few jobs doing the images for some humorous CD-ROM games from Parotty Interactive and Hasbro got me deeper into the computer illustration end of things. Some more high-profile clients like Time Digital, National Geographic World, Detour, General Mills, Broadcasting and Cable and several pro sports team magazines helped increase my visibility. Continued advertisement in the DOI source book would get me a few new jobs and one or two new clients a year.

Eventually I got serious about working for MAD, and pursued that for about a year before they acquiesced and gave me a few assignments. It’s hard to believe but it was eight years ago next month I got my first MAD assignment. Since then MAD has been a steady client (among others) and many other clients have come and gone. Freelancing is both a blessing and a curse.

Two things were crucial in giving me the means and tools to eventually make a living as a freelance cartoonist / illustrator.

The first was the caricature art concession businesses I at first worked for and then my own that I started up and ran. That experience at first exposed me to some talented and knowledgeable cartoonists from whom I learned a great deal and through that job I developed my caricature and cartooning skills far more than I would have in art school. Opening my own businesses doing caricatures allowed me the financial freedom to pursue my freelance career at my own pace, not having to worry about house or car payments, or buying shoes for my kids. Without that, I’d have had to resort to a “day job” and likely would never have been able to keep at the freelance thing long enough to make a go of it.

The second element was my being forced to incorporate the computer into my work. Fortunately I was fascinated enough with the computer to take the time and put the thought into how to make the computer work for me in order to accomplish what I needed to with my commercial work. There is no question that the coloring techniques and digital delivery that is a part of most of my work today got me more than a few jobs over the years.

Thanks to Philip Wiley or 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.

I was talking with illustrator great C.F. Payne about the bill the other day, and he brought up another problem with the bill I had not considered. Chris is a tireless advocate for professional illustrators and their rights, and he knows of what he speaks. He mentioned a potential serious issue wherein an artist may find himself being sued for “infringing: on his own artwork! H.R. 5889 contains the following clause concerning “derivative works”:

‘‘(f) COPYRIGHT FOR DERIVATIVE WORKS AND COMPILATIONS.—Notwithstanding section 103(a), an infringer who qualifies for the limitation on remedies afforded by this section with respect to the use of a copyrighted work shall not be denied copyright protection in a compilation or derivative work on the basis that such compilation or derivative work employs preexisting material that has been used unlawfully under this section.’’.

What this means: Anyone who goes through the process of declaring a work “orphaned” (i.e. they could not find the author via a “reasonably diligent search”) can then use the artwork as a basis for a “new work” known as a derivative work. They can then copyright the new work and sell it to whomever they like. Even IF the artist comes forward and says they were the original creators of the work the new work was derived from, they are powerless to dissolve the copyright of the derivative work’s creator.

Here’s a scenario: An unscrupulous stock art company employs a dozen researchers who scour old magazines, publications and the internet looking for work without immediate identification. They go through the process of finding it “orphaned” (a process that is still vague and ambiguous). They then hire a group of artists to create derivative works in the same style, changing it just enough to be legally called “derivative” (only 10% according to precedent). Now they copyright it and have a large body of stock illustration that they sell to publishers at cheap prices, damaging creator’s livelihoods and dampening the creation of new works. Under this scenario, I could sell someone the rights to use my caricature of Snoop Dogg for an article and find myself at the wrong end of a lawsuit by a stock house claiming I infringed on their copyright, as they have a rip off version of that same caricature done by a copycat artist and copyrighted in their stock art collection. As long as they could show they performed the steps to find that caricature orphaned, I can do nothing under the language of this bill even if it’s proven it was my work used as the basis of their derivative. I can open up a magazine at any time to see that rip off of my caricature staring back at me and can do nothing about it.

The bills are now introduced and will be a part of the legislative session. Below is a link to take easy action to let your US congress representatives and senators know you oppose the bills and raise the concerns needed. I’m not a big fan of form letter communication, but if you don’t have the time or inclination to write an actual letter to your elected officials, then this is better than nothing.

This link will take you to a selection of form letters from which you can choose. By entering your address it will be forwarded automatically to the appropriate congressional and senate representatives. Do so today and add your voice to those who are justifiably concerned about this serious issue.