Last Sunday Tom Richmond gave attendees of the Success in Comics seminar a sneak peek at art he created for an upcoming MAD Magazine where he was asked to blend caricatures of Honey Boo Boo with the art and style of Bil Keane’s Family Circus.
I have occasionally added cartoon characters in cameos in my parodies for MAD, in which case I try and duplicate the look of the original character as he/she/it is drawn in the source material, but I modify the style so the characters look like they would exist in the same space as my other artwork. This was the first time MAD has asked me to do a feature that called for a complete duplication of another style. This was a bit more challenging, because I had to both ape the Keane style, but also attempt to draw caricatures of the Thompson family within that style. I had to both depart a little from the true Keane look on the one hand, and I had to compromise the likenesses (especially the older girls) on the other hand, in order to meet in the middle with a compromise on the caricatures. Some worked better than others.
HAHAHAHAHAHA!