I’m still a week away from coming up for air after the big NCS Reuben weekend two weeks ago (!!) Here are some projects I finished and/or am working on since I got back:

• Marlin Workplace poster- My May assignment, final above and sketch/inks below (clicky to embiggen) Completed
• Jeff Dunham Illustration- New one Jeff will use for an upcoming project being released next month. Will fill everyone in on that when it’s out. Completed
• WB Product Illustration- Another Alfred illustration for T-Shirts, etc- Final in Progress
• MAD Movie Parody- 6 Pages, last minute assignment for next issue. Final in Progress
• Marlin Workplace Poster-My June assignment. Sketch Phase
• Jeff Dunham Illustration- Jeff must be ramping up some retail projects. This will be for a specialty clothing item. Sketch Phase

That’s what”s going on right now. Oh, and I have a “Doctor Who” print to do!

Rough Pencils…

Inks…

Here’s what cooking on the drawing board this week:

• MAD Project- A very interesting project for an upcoming book. I can’t give away much, but it’s being written by someone who is famous in the movie biz and will be an original part of a MAD collection book due out this fall.
• Promotional magazine cover/poster image- Repeat client I did an NBA cover image for last year.
• Workplace poster- My usual monthly assignment.
• MAD #522- I am supposed to have something in this issue but haven’t been assigned it yet.

Kind of quiet on the freelance front right now, although with the Reubens coming up this month that’s probably a good thing. I am currently in Massachusetts training new artists for my operation at Six Flags New England. May is by far the worst month for me as far as available time for anything.

Just for fun, above is last month’s workplace poster job final. I actually did two of those last month (I sometimes do extra ones for them). Below is the pencil rough for the above one, plus the roughs and final for the second. As always clicky any image to embiggen.

Pencil rough for first poster job…

Initial pencil for second poster. Interesting premise… they wanted a hospital staff shown exhausted at the end of a shift, being asked to look happy and fresh for pictures. The masks were their idea.

That one didn’t really work too well. I thought the masks were kind of creepy, espeically showing someone with one on. Instead I proposed we have them being handed out but no one actually wearing one. They wanted more exaggerated exhaustion as well. As you can see I did the revised roughs digitally.

Final image. I suggested we lose the actual photographer and replace with a box of “Happy Masks”. The whole thing is still a weird concept…

Pretty busy right now with several different projects:

• MAD book illustration- a super-secret and very fun little job for an upcoming major MAD book. This is still in the early stages but I’ll be working with a writer I’ve never worked with on it, and it will be an original piece for this new MAD book I can’t talk about.
• Workplace Poster- My usual monthly assignment.
• Advertising Illustration- This is a really time consuming but interesting project for the back of a film industry publication. It features caricatures of 60 plus people who work for this movie industry company, and it is a spoof of a famous movie poster. It’s also going to be gigantic—they want it big enough to be on the side of a bus shelter for alternate use. I’ll be able to post it after it’s published.
• MAD Cover!!! Ok, not for MAD itself but for an upcoming MAD special issue.
• WB Product “Alfred” Illustration- one more of these to do for T-shirts and merchandise… in review phase right now.

The drawing board is pretty MAD heavy right now with several side projects for them… and I am probably going to get assigned something for issue #522 any day now. Speaking of WB product stuff, I noticed they used one of my preliminary pencil sketches for the “Alfred Spy” illustration as a t-shirt design:

Here’s a couple of the preliminary sketches for that Alfred Leprechaun design I did… maybe they’ll end up as “sketch shirts”?:

Clicky to Embiggen…

Super swamped right now:

• MAD- Five page movie parody, actually a franchise parody.
• Workplace Poster- My usual monthly assignment
• UTNE Reader cover- This will be my 4th cover for them.
• WB Product Illustration- Another “Alfred E. Neuman as…” for use on merchandise
• WB Animation/Cartoon Network- Designs for another episode segment

The image above was for a promotional poster/publication cover I did over a year ago that I don’t think was ever used. That was way before Howard was traded to the Lakers, so now it’s probably in the round file somewhere. I’m sharing it here for the first time, but I won’t mention the client or the intended purpose just in case.

Clicky to Embiggen…

Right now I have basically nothing on the drawing board, except the dreaded “almost ready” sort of projects:

• MAD Job for #521- Promised to be “meaty”… might mean I am drawing cows. Still in the works in editorial.
• DC Comics job- Previously mentioned forthcoming assignment…
• WB Product illustration- One down on this two illustration job, second one still in development so in temporary limbo
• Workplace poster illustration- my usual monthly assignment, direction not yet delivered

That’s it for certain jobs bound to be on the way shortly, although there are a few “maybe” jobs in the works as well. I don’t mind, as The Lovely Anna and I are off to the beautiful island of Maui today to escape the Minnesota winter for a week. Thanks to the magic of pre-dated posting, Tom’s MAD Blog will continue on it’s usual arc of incoherent rambling.

Above is my latest workplace poster illustration, below the pencil rough and inks. Clicky to embiggen any image. Mahalo.

Inks

Pencil rough…

Things are starting to heat up in the studio already this year:

• MAD- A very different assignment for me for issue #520. Extremely fun on a personal level.
• Warner Bros Product Illustrations- This one is held up with some conceptual rethinking
• Marlin Workplace Poster- My usual monthly assignment
• Limited Edition Books- Have a new batch to get done this week!
• Book Illustration- In negotiations but pretty much a done deal.

The image above is the last of my Dave Navarro spots for his column in Penthouse, which should have been in the most recent issue.

As is somewhat typical over the holidays, pretty quiet on the freelance front. Very little going right now:

• Marlin Workplace poster
• Warner Bros product illustrations
• MAD #520 assignment (forthcoming… not sure what it is yet)

That’s about it.

The image above is a rare private commission done for General Mills for an executive who was either retiring or getting promoted. I used to do quite a few of these kinds of corporate commissions, including several for General Mills, but not so much anymore. Big companies would commission me to do a caricature illustration of an employee or executive who was retiring, being promoted, having a major anniversary or just needing congratulations for some accomplishment.  They would then have framed and present it to them as part of some celebration. The lady above worked with Oprah Winfrey and Martha Stewart for a series of “Bake-Off” competitions, with lots of prize money, and was known as the “Bake-off Queen”.

The last month of the year is usually a quiet one for the freelance biz. Magazines and publications have often blown their budget for illustration for the year by the end of November. Their “end of the year” issues that come out on the stands in December are often bigger and more costly to produce, and were done back in October or in early November. Thus, around the holidays it is usually a bit slow. Here’s what I have on the board right now-

• Penthouse Spot Illustration- The last of a series of caricatures of Dave Navarro for a column he is doing in the magazine.
• Workplace poster- my usual monthly assignment
• LOTS of drawings for the Limited Artist’s Edition
• Odds and ends . . . might do a family Christmas card!

The above is my latest Marlin poster. Below is the pencil rough.

I just wrapped up a bunch of jobs over the weekend including a three page magazine spread, a magazine spot illustration and a workplace poster jobso things are a lot less hectic than usual. Here’s what’s still currently on the drawing board:

• MAD movie parody (seven pages!)
• Penthouse spot illustration
• Another Workplace poster illustration
• Lot’s of caricatures for the “Limited Artist’s Edition” of my book

Speaking of those workplace posters, here’s the final from my past assignment with them:

Clicky to Embiggen…

Can’t seem to get ahead . . . a great problem for a freelancer to have but I am going to be doing a lot of traveling this summer and the drawing board just keeps getting crazier and crazier. Here’s what’s on the board currently:

• Marlin Co. Workplace poster- Doing finals today. They allow me to post the results right away so perhaps tomorrow on that.
• Jeff Dunham art- More finished illustration for some future products, also finishing today
• Utne Reader cover- just got this assignment, pencils due tomorrow, final next week.
• MAD Parody- The Avengers for MAD #517! Usually I have to keep what I am working on a secret, but writer Dick DeBartolo let the Asgardian out of the bag online, so it’s open season. due first week of July.
• Cover of The Cartoon!st- The cover of the post-Reuben weekend issue of the NCS newsletter is is always done by the winner of the Reuben Award . . . That’s me!

I know I’m forgetting something—hopefully I’ll remember what it was before the deadline.

This weekend I wrapped up a Penthouse illustration, and last week I finished a huge book illustration project for Simon and Schuster, which I will be able to elaborate on when the book is announced or at least when it’s released this fall. It’s a pretty high-profile book with a tie in to a major television series, so I hope it will be a big seller. It was a fun project that had me working in all sorts of different styles as part of some specific parody elements.

Back to the drawing board!