Chair: Graham Nolan
graham_nolan@mac.com

The Upstate NY chapter hit the road in November and gathered at Pickerel Pound, home of the John Hart Studios, for a wonderful day of fun and frivolity. Seeing so many Johnny Hart originals was amazing and inspiring.

STANDING: Graham Nolan, Patti Hart, Scott Jensen, Hillary Price, Mo Willems, John Marshall, Mason Mastroianni, and Michelle Olie. SEATED: Perri Hart, James Sturm and Mick Mastroianni. (PHOTO: Becky Beagle)

"Cartoonists at Sea... err, Pond!" (PHOTO: Patti Hart)

Hillary Price got the ball rolling and Patti Hart reached out to our chapter to make it a party. I told Patti there’d be no
party without some good craft beer. After a short history lesson on the brewing practices in America, she stocked up the fridge and she hit it out of the park. Thanks, Patti!

Bobby, Patti, Perri, Mason and Mick were wonderful hosts showing us their studio and original artwork. Some of the hardier souls went for a boat ride on the pond (this was in November and it was cold). They weren’t out too long before frostbite started to set in.

Our chapter extends pretty far to the east so it’s not often we get to see members from the central NY region. It was great seeing and meeting members that I only knew by name. We had such a great time we’re talking about doing it again in the summer.

1983 NCS Reuben winner, former NCS president and cartooning/humorous illustration legend Arnold Roth has an exhibit showcasing his 60 plus years of incredible work at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art, now housed in the Society of Illustrators, 128 East 63rd St in Manhattan.

Arnold Roth has been a humorous illustrator and cartoonist all his life and, for most of that time, has freelanced, snatching a living by hustling one assignment after another in a highly competitive market, the wolf kept at bay by ingenuity and energy. And talent. And luck, Roth readily admits—even proclaims—lots of luck.

Please join Arnold on Friday, February 8th for a special NCS New York Metro gathering, open to all, in honor of his retrospective exhibition. RSVP Doug Bratton bratcartoonist1@aol.com, Reservation deadline January 31st, 2013.

The official opening reception of the show is January 23, 2013 from 5:00 – 10:00pm in the Society’s Hall of Fame Dining Room.

The show runs from January 7 to March 2, 2013.

Press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Katie Blocher
kb@societyillustrators.org

 

Society of Illustrators Presents The Pen-Ultimate Arnold Roth: 60 Years (and Counting) As a Freelance
On display in the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art January 7 – March 2, 2013
NEW YORK, NY (January, 2013)— The Society of Illustrators is proud to present The Pen-Ultimate Arnold Roth: 60 Years (and Counting) As a Freelance on display in the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art. Over 45 original Arnold Roth cartoons can be viewed free of charge on the second floor of the Society’s historic headquarters from January 7 – March 2, 2013.

This exhibit highlights work from Roth’s life-long career featuring cartoons from publications such as Sports Illustrated, Esquire, The New Yorker, Playboy, Punch, Southampton Review and many more. For Roth, every drawing represents an artistic challenge as well as a narrative one. “I try to give myself little problems,” he said. “Brubeck, years ago, was on a symposium and somebody asked him, ‘Would you describe what playing jazz is?’ And he said, ‘It’s getting yourself into and out of trouble.’ “I thought that was a good way to put it. If you’re not doing that, you’re really hacking it, doing the same thing over and over. I always want to push it a little.”

A reception will take place honoring Roth and celebrating The Pen-Ultimate Arnold Roth: 60 Years (and Counting) As a Freelance on January 23, 2013 from 5:00 – 10:00pm in the Society’s Hall of Fame Dining Room.

About Arnold Roth

Arnold Roth has been a humorous illustrator and cartoonist all his life and, for most of that time, has freelanced, snatching a living by hustling one assignment after another in a highly competitive market, the wolf kept at bay by ingenuity and energy. And talent. And luck, Roth readily admits—even proclaims—lots of luck. Roth had the luck to be born in 1929 on the cusp of the dawning Great Depression, so he learned the survival value of scrambling for gainful employment while growing up in Philadelphia. He and his older brother shared the same interests and frequented the Philadelphia Art Museum and the Philadelphia Library. They went to exhibitions and shows. Very early, Roth fell in love with jazz and learned to play the saxophone. He also drew pictures and even sold a few.

Upon graduation from high school in 1946, Roth was awarded a full scholarship to the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Arts, but he was expelled at the end of two years because he was always arriving late—he was playing sax in jazz bands until the wee hours of the morning and couldn’t get out of bed in time for class. He started freelancing artwork in the summer of 1948, but until the mid-1950s, his saxophone was a more dependable source of income than his pen. In 1952, he started to get lucky: he got in on the ground floor of TV Guide, married Caroline Wingfield and met the Dave Brubeck Quartet, which soon led to assignments doing record album covers. He was selling regularly enough to such magazines as Glamour, Charm and TV Guide, that he was making a living as a cartoonist.

Roth’s big breakthrough came in 1957 when he started working on Trump, Playboy’s satiric magazine, and on Humbug, a more penurious production, both the inventions of Harvey Kurtzman, founder of MAD magazine. For these enterprises, Roth did what he called “pure humor”—ideas executed solely for the sake of comedy and satire. He also began doing illustrations for Playboy and cartoons for England’s Punch magazine, and he sold a cartoon into newspaper syndication.

Called Poor Arnold’s Almanac, it ran for two years, beginning in May 1959. In each installment of the Almanac, the opening panel announced the topic for the day, and Roth played variations on the theme in the manner of a jazz musician, turning the subject this way and that, inspecting it from every angle and finding inconsistencies in human behavior and naked emperors everywhere he looked.

From the mid 1960s on, his work has appeared regularly in major magazines including Sports Illustrated, Esquire, Holiday, Time, The New York Times, The New Yorker and countless others. In 1983, Roth was elected president of the National Cartoonists Society and the next year received the NCS Reuben award as cartoonist of the year. He has won many gold and silver medals in the Society of Illustrators’ annual shows and was inducted into the SI Hall of Fame in 2009. He appeared on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson several times and on David Letterman’s Late Show. He has lectured at Princeton, Yale, the Philadelphia College of Art, and at other art schools.

—— Adapted from Robert C. Harvey, Author, The Art of the Funnies: An Aesthetic History

About the Museum of American Illustration at the Society of Illustrators

The Society of Illustrators, founded in 1901, is the oldest nonprofit organization solely dedicated to the art and appreciation of illustration in America. Prominent Society members have been Maxfield Parrish, N.C. Wyeth and Norman Rockwell, among others. The Museum of American Illustration was established by the Society in 1981 and is located in the Society’s vintage 1875 carriage house building in mid-town Manhattan. It is open to the public free of charge on Tuesday, 10 am-8 pm; Wednesday-Friday, 10 am-5 pm; and Saturday, 12-4 pm. To learn more about the Museum and the Society, visit www.societyillustrators.org or contact Executive Director Anelle Miller at 212-838-2560 or anelle@societyillustrators.org.

About the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art

The museum’s purpose has been the collection, preservation, study, education, and display of comic and cartoon art. Every genre of the art is represented: animation, anime, cartoons, comic books, comic strips, gag cartoons, humorous illustration, illustration, political illustration, editorial cartoons, caricature, graphic novels, sports cartoons, and computer-generated art. It is the mission of the museum to promote the understanding and appreciation of comic and cartoon art as well as to detail and discuss the artistic, cultural, and historical impact of what is the world’s most popular art form.

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The National Cartoonists Society is starting it’s annual call for entries for consideration for their NCS Divisional Awards recognizing excellence in professional cartooning. As always, you DO NOT have to be a member of the NCS to have your work considered for a divisional award… all that is required is that the work be eligible as detailed below.

NEW THIS YEAR:

- There are now two divisions for Online Comics, Short Form and Long Form. See below for details.

- The Advertising Illustration division has been expanded to Advertising and Product Illustration, which will include not only cartooning for advertising but also for retail products like posters, toy/product packaging, etc.

Below you will find a list of the juries which will judge the categories, the jury chair and the address to which you will send your entry. As always, NO EMAIL SUBMISSIONS WILL BE ACCEPTED, with the exception of the Online Comics divisions, which allows emailed PDF submissions. Below is a short recap of several rules and guidelines, which govern the awards:

Please remember only recent work can be considered. This means work published between the dates of December 1, 2011 and December 31, 2012.

Please submit published tear sheets when possible and document when and where the work was published. Online Comics should provide links for verification of first publication date.

If your syndicated cartoon runs in both strip and panel format you can submit to one of those divisions, not both (your choice).

Your submissions must be submitted to their respective locations by February 6, 2013.

List of Juries and Submission Addresses:

Cartoonists are invited to submit their work (or the work of another professional) no later than February 6, 2013, for consideration for one or more of the following Division Awards:

• NEWSPAPER ILLUSTRATION- Submit up to 6 samples of 2012 published work to: Todd Clark, NCS Great Northwest Chapter, P.O. Box 8264-2264, Boise, ID 83707-2264 (TCtoonz@yahoo.com)
• GAG CARTOONS- Submit up to 12 samples of 2012 published work to: Brian Walker, NCS Connecticut Chapter, 34 Old Forge Rd, Wilton, CT 06897 (hiandlois1@aol.com)
• GREETING CARDS- Submit up to 6 samples of 2012 published work to: Tom Stemmle, NCS New Jersey Chapter, 184 Richards Avenue, Piscataway, NJ 08854 (tomstem@optonline.net)
• NEWSPAPER COMIC STRIPS- Submit up to 12 samples of 2012 published work to: Polly Keener, NCS Great Lakes Chapter, 400 W. Fairlawn Blvd., Akron, OH 44313-4510 (pollytoon@aol.com)
• NEWSPAPER PANEL CARTOONS- Submit up to 12 samples of 2012 published work to: Andrew Farago, NCS Northern California Chapter, 2923 King Street, Berkeley, CA, 94703 (andrewfarago@hotmail.com)
• MAGAZINE FEATURE/MAGAZINE ILLUSTRATION- Submit up to 6 samples of 2012 published work to: Mark Parisi, NCS New England Chapter, 16 Slayton Rd., Melrose, MA 02176 (markparisi@aol.com)
• BOOK ILLUSTRATION- Send up to 6 samples of 2012 published work to: Graham Nolan, NCS Upstate New York Chapter, 162 Godfrey Ter, East Aurora, NY, 14052 (graham@grahamnolan.com)
• EDITORIAL CARTOONS- Submit up to 20 samples of 2012 published work to: Mike Cope, NCS Canadian Chapter, 46 Church Street, Stoney Creek, ON, L8E 2X8, CANADA (mikecope@copetoons.com) NOTE: Allow for extra delivery time to this jury from the U.S.
• ADVERTISING and PRODUCT ILLUSTRATION- Submit up to 6 samples of 2012 published and marketed work to: Doug Bratton, 17 Crestmont Drive, Dover, NJ, 07801 (bratcartoonist1@aol.com)
• COMIC BOOKS- Submit up to 3 samples of 2012 published work to: Bill Morrison, 786 Twillin Ct., Simi Valley, CA 93065 (roswell2@earthlink.net)
• GRAPHIC NOVELS- Submit graphic novel published in 2012 to: James Strum, P.O. Box 125, White River Jct., VT, 05001 (sturm@cartoonstudies.org)
• ANIMATION DIVISIONS
• Both animation categories are accepting submissions of individual artists’ work for consideration. Submissions maybe submitted by the artists themselves, or by the studios or other colleagues on the artists’ behalf. As will all divisions there is no charge for awards submissions.
• Production designers, art directors, character designers, layout artists, background painters, character painters, and all other still art creators must submit five to ten samples of their work from a single production for each application.
• Samples may be physical prints or as JPEG files on a CD-R. If the samples contain work by anyone else, please include a detailed written breakdown of which art is attributed to the applicant.
• Animators, storyboard artists, visual effects artists, and anyone else involved in creating moving or continuity art, please submit a reel of your work on a DVD or CD-R. (Storyboards will only be considered in animatic form.) If the samples contain work by anyone else, please include a detailed written breakdown of which art is attributed to the applicant.
• TELEVISION ANIMATION- All entries must be work created for episodes of a television series that aired for the first time during the 2012 calendar year. Submit one or more samples as explained above to: Chad Frye, 518 E. Cypress Ave. #C, Burbank, CA 91501 (chad@chadfrye.com)
• FEATURE ANIMATION- All entries must be work created for a fully animated feature length movie released theatrically in the 2012 calendar year. Submit one or more samples as explained above to: David Folkman, NCS Los Angeles Chapter, 3625 E. Thousand Oaks Blvd. Suite 287, Westlake Village CA 91362 (folkmanart@aol.com)
• ON-LINE COMICS DIVISIONS- All Online Comics submissions must adhere to the following:
• Must be web only publication (any syndication/third party publication in print should submit to proper print division above)
• Must have shown consistent timely publication over the course of the 2012 calendar year (weekly, bi-weekly, multiple times a week, daily, etc.
• Creator must earn the greater part of their living directly from cartooning/comic art in order to meet the requirement that they be eligible for professional NCS membership
• ON-LINE COMICS:- SHORT FORM- Additional specific requirements:
• Can be strip, single panel, single or partial page format
• Must be mainly self-contained gag, story, or narrative in each short comic, even if also part of ongoing narrative
• Must document date of first posting/release of each submitted comic
• Submit 12 samples, submitted via mail or as PDF with bio/entry form to: Ed Steckley, NCS National Representative, 43-07 39th Place, Apt. 3-F Sunnyside, NY 11104 (ed@edsteckley.com)
• ON-LINE COMICS- LONG FORM- Additional specific requirements:
• Can be posted in single or multiple page format
• Must be ongoing narrative in serial form i.e. continuing comic book/graphic novel storyline
• Must document date of first posting/release of each episode/page/segment
• Minimum monthly release schedule
• Submit 12 samples, submitted via mail or as PDF with bio/entry form to: Tom Richmond, NCS President, 3421 East Burnsville Pkwy, Burnsville, MN 55337 (tom@tomrichmond.com

Submissions should include an entry form and bio sheet.

All winners will be announced at the 67th Annual Reuben Awards Dinner in Pittsburgh, PA, on May 25th, 2013.

Brad Anderson, the creator of the comic strip Marmaduke, will be honored with the National Cartoonists Society’s Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2013 NCS Reuben Award Weekend, held this year in Pittsburgh, PA on May 24th-26th. Brad’s amazing career spans 60 years and includes cartoons for many magazines and publications in addition to Marmaduke, which is syndicated by Universal Uclick. In 2010 Marmaduke became a major motion picture from 20th Century Fox, featuring a computer animated Marmaduke alongside live actors.

About Brad Anderson (an excerpt from an America Profile article from 2010):

Putting pen to paper, cartoonist Brad Anderson, 86, sketches the playful pooch he’s created for 56 (now 59) years, starting with the big dog’s pointed ears, elongated nose, sloppy grin and cheerful eyes before tackling his sizeable torso and long, clumsy legs.

“Marmaduke is very expressive and very active, and he’s always doing something funny or ridiculous or crazy,” says Anderson, adding accent lines that suggest a dog in motion. “He’s always jumping over the couch, chasing after a cat. In the car, he wants to take over and drive.”

Working in his home in Montgomery, Texas (pop. 489), Anderson chronicles the amusing antics of the awkward but loveable Great Dane, creating six single-panel comics and one Sunday strip each week to add to his collection of 20,000 Marmaduke-inspired comics, two dozen books, a 1970s animated TV show and a new feature film.

Universal Uclick distributes Marmaduke to more than 500 newspapers in 10 countries. Every day, people can read Marmaduke and expect to get a little chuckle.

These days, nobody chuckles more than Anderson, who never dreamed he’d still be drawing the canine character that he introduced to the comics pages in 1954. “Every day, I go to work still enjoying the challenge of creating expression and body language,” he says. “It’s never a burden, never a job. It’s just fun.”

Born in 1924 and raised in Portland, N.Y., Anderson nurtured his artistic talent whenever he wasn’t helping his mother garden or his dad in the family’s farm machine business. “My mother said I started drawing before I could talk,” recalls Anderson, whose first words included a repeated request for a “pentil” and whose first vivid memory was using a pencil to draw on the sidewalk at his grandparents’ house.

During high school, he sold his first cartoon to Flying Aces, an aviation magazine. The $3 paycheck was enough to buy a hamburger, a milkshake and a ticket to the movies, where silent films of the day featured visual action and written gag lines—the same approach he’s used for decades in Marmaduke.

After serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II, Anderson married his high school sweetheart, Barbara, and studied art at Syracuse University on the GI Bill, graduating in 1951 and eventually working for a public relations company in Utica, N.Y. All the while, he sold cartoons to Collier’s Weekly, The Saturday Evening Post and other magazines. Commanding payments of $100 and up for his drawings, he became a full-time freelance cartoonist and, while featuring a shaggy dog in a farm magazine series, came upon the idea of a dog as the center of a family comic strip.

“I didn’t want to do another shaggy dog, though, because I had no interest in drawing all that floppy hair,” Anderson recalls. “I wanted a short-haired dog similar to this big boxer that my mother and stepfather had at the time. He was kind of a funny, clownish dog that I used as a model, but I wanted an even bigger dog.”

He initially drew Marmaduke as a large, menacing animal but soon realized that an unfriendly dog wouldn’t win friends. “I took away the scowl and began to give him more body movement and expression, and the whole drawing changed. He became a very happy dog,” he says.

Anderson developed Marmaduke while working five to seven days a week at home in Vista, Calif….

About the Milton Caniff Award:

THE MILTON CANIFF LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD is awarded by unanimous vote of the NCS Board of Directors. It is given for a lifetime of outstanding and accomplished work to a cartoonist who has not previously won a Reuben. It is considered one of the highest honors the Society can bestow.

Congratulations to Brad!