Sam Viviano facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Sam Viviano |
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Viviano at the 2012 New York Comic Con
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| Born | March 13, 1953 Detroit, Michigan |
| Nationality | American |
| Area(s) | Caricature, Art Director |
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Notable works
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Mad magazine |
Sam Viviano (born March 13, 1953) is a famous American artist. He is best known for drawing caricatures, which are funny pictures of people where some features are exaggerated.
Viviano's caricatures often show people with very wide jaws. He says this is because he combines both front and side views of a person's face into one drawing. He is also known for his skill in drawing large crowd scenes. For one magazine, he once drew sixty different caricatures in only nine days!
Contents
Early Life and Education
Sam Viviano grew up in Detroit, Michigan. He was a very good student and went to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He graduated with the highest honors, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.
Career as an Artist
Getting Started in New York
In 1975, Viviano moved to New York City to become a professional artist. He showed his portfolio, which is a collection of an artist's best work, to different companies. At first, he didn't get any jobs drawing.
He took a job designing patterns for fabrics while trying to figure out why he wasn't getting hired. He realized he needed to specialize in one type of art. He decided to focus on caricatures because he enjoyed them the most.
He started placing ads for his caricature work in special books for professionals. This led to his first big job: a full-page ad in the New York Times. The ad was for the James Bond movie Moonraker.
Working for Mad Magazine
Viviano began drawing for magazines published by Scholastic, like Dynamite and Bananas. His friends told him he should show his art to Mad Magazine. The editors at Mad liked his work but didn't have any openings for new artists.
However, in 1980, Mad editor Al Feldstein called him. The magazine's main cover artist had died, and they needed someone new. Viviano's first cover was for Mad #223 in June 1981. It showed a character from the TV show Dallas.
Viviano was so nervous about his first Mad cover that he drew it twice. Unfortunately, that issue did not sell well. Because of this, he didn't get more work from Mad for four years. After the editor retired, Viviano started contributing regularly. He became known for drawing the magazine's famous movie parodies and fake ads.
Becoming Art Director
Viviano has also created art for companies and for magazines like Rolling Stone and Reader's Digest. He even created the first-ever digital illustration for Mad in 1994.
In the late 1990s, the editors at Mad asked him to become the magazine's Art Director. This time, he accepted the job. As Art Director, he was in charge of a team that designed the look of the entire magazine.
From 1981 to 1992, Viviano also taught a caricature class at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. He taught his students that the point of caricature is to exaggerate features to show a person's true personality.
Personal Life
Viviano is married and has a daughter. He sometimes includes his wife, daughter, and other family members in the backgrounds of his drawings. He is also a cousin of the author Benedict Viviano.
