Tom's Mad Blog
January 5th, 2014 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: When you are putting together panels for a tv or movie spoof, do you cement the basics first and add the “chicken fat” in the background later, or do you do everything at once? Do the background gags come to you on the spot? A: Certainly I am concerned with the basic layouts, storytelling, caricatures and the scripted gags first, and the “chicken fat” comes second. For those who don’t know what the term “chicken fat” refers to, it was coined by MAD great Will Elder and meant all the background gags he crammed into his panels. From my post after Elder’s passing away:… READ MORE
January 3rd, 2014 | Posted in General
A blog reader emailed me the other day to ask if I’d heard about this news story concerning the copyright regarding the Sherlock Holmes characters. I had, in fact. Being a Sherlockian myself (#1 in Minnesota, #9 in U.S. in Holmes Trivia on “QuizUp”… just sayin’), and someone who has a vested interest in things like copyrights, I found it to be a very interesting turn of events. Some background: Sherlock Holmes has been in the public domain in Britain for years, but not completely so in the United States. The holdup in the U.S. has been the ten stories that Doyle published after 1922.… READ MORE
January 2nd, 2014 | Posted in General
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibiObtFLGyE[/youtube] If you haven’t seen this yet, it’s worth a look. This is a promotional video for Wacom’s portable devices featuring Dilbert‘s Scott Adams and Pearl Before Swine‘s Stephan Pastis. It shows you how the guys and gals behind the comics are often just as funny in person (or on video). BTW, I originally saw this on The Daily Cartoonist, so a tip o’the hat to Alan Gardner and that terrific resource. READ MORE
January 1st, 2014 | Posted in General
Here’s wishing everyone a happy, healthy and prosperous 2014! READ MORE
December 31st, 2013 | Posted in General
Regular readers of my blog know that I almost never accept personal commissions. This has nothing to do with my not wanting to do them, it’s a simple question of not having enough physical time in a day to do it all. Every once and awhile the stars align and I am able to accept something of that nature… a lull in my work on the drawing board coupled with a stretch of my not traveling anywhere and a commission subject that is intriguing plus a client who is not in a hurry to get the art. This all happened a few weeks back when… READ MORE
December 30th, 2013 | Posted in Monday MADness
Now that he’s done being the governor of California and (presumably) knocking up the domestic staff, Arnold Schwarzenegger is “bahk” doing action movies at age 66 including a reboot of the “Terminator” franchise in 2015. Here’s a look back at his last turn (not counting a CGI Arnie in “Terminator: Salvation”) as the cyborg killing machine from MAD‘s parody of “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines” entitled “Interminable 3: Rise of the Bad Scenes”, MAD #432, August 2003. Writer: Dick DeBartolo. Pencil roughs and finished art… clicky any image to embiggen: Actually the above is the finished pencil, not really a rough. I must have… READ MORE
December 29th, 2013 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: Just curious how long you spend on the concept stage of an illustration. I am thinking about the piece you did “Abysmal House” for MAD. would think the conceiving of who will go where and what they will be doing has got to take a huge amount of time for something like that. Are there “super roughs” we don’t see that work out design, body position, etc. and then submitted for approval before proceeding or do you go right to what we are privileged to see as a sketch? Can you describe your process of conceptualizing an illustration? And somewhat related, any tips on… READ MORE
December 27th, 2013 | Posted in General
I have been meaning to post a review of this innovative sketchbook from illustrator and cartoonist Cedric Hohnstadt for some time but just keep on not getting to it. Today I rectify that oversight. Cedric is a fellow Minnesota based illustrator and National Cartoonist Society member, and has a lot of experience in animation character design, creating cartoon characters for advertising, storytelling and illustration in general. Back in August Cedric did a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund the printing of a unique kind of sketchbook he calls a “Sparkbook“. Cedric sent me a copy for review. First off, if you are looking for a book… READ MORE
