One artist inspired by Doug Sneyd was Dean Yeagle, a relative latecomer to Playboy. Unusually, Yeagle had entered the world of erotic cartooning via the more circuitous route of animation. After leaving High School, Yeagle got his first industry job in small studio in Philadelphia, PA. After serving four years in the Navy during the Vietnam War, he returned to animation and worked for former Tom and Jerry animator Jack Zander’s Animation Parlor, in New York. Here, Yeagle honed his craft before setting up his own studio, Caged Beagle, in 1986. It wasn’t until October 2000 that Yeagle first appeared in Playboy, as a winner in the magazine’s Comix and Animation contest with his sexy fantasy warrior illustration, with his first official commission appearing in the May 2001 issue.
Yeagle’s most popular creation, Mandy (and her pet dog Skoots) was a series of amusing and sexy gag cartoons featuring the fresh-faced, buxom blonde. “An early version of Mandy appeared in a cartoon I did for Playboy,” recalled the artist. “I took that basic look and changed her a bit for a web workshop, gave her the name Mandy, and she suddenly took off as a character in her own right.” In 2003 Yeagle was nominated for Best Gag Award for his Playboy work by the US National Cartoonist Society.
Mostly working in both color and regular pencils, the cartoonist/animator often scans the original drawing and adds color in Photoshop. Yeagle’s light touch and animation background gives every picture an innate sense of movement, with each drawing looking like a still from an “R” rated animated Disney movie.
Unsurprisingly, Yeagle was also impressed by great artists like Dink Siegel, Jack Cole, and Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder who would go on to revolutionize the genre (if not the medium) with their Little Annie Fanny strip, for Playboy…
Dean Yeagle’s first published Playboy cartoon from 2000. The caption reads, “Oh, it’s stylish battle armor, certainly… but I wonder if it’s really PRACTICAL battle armor…”
This beautiful color pencil sketch of tree nymphs reveals Yeagle’s twin loves of Disney animation and erotica.
Yeagle’s popular Mandy character appeared several times in Playboy magazine. This character sketch is one of many he has self-published in his three Scribblings books.