Tom's Mad Blog
November 27th, 2013 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Exclusive first look courtesy of perezhilton.com. No doubt more sneak peeks of MAD’s “20 Dumbest People, Events and Things of 2013” to follow on various websites. I can neither confirm or deny I did the art on “Dumb Thing #1”, nor that it has to do with our current U.S. Congress, nor that perezhilton.com is one of the 20 dumbest things of the year… Fa Fa Fa! Cover art by Mark Frederickson. READ MORE
November 27th, 2013 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
This week’s subject is superstar director JJ Abrams. JJ is a huge fan of MAD Magazine, so there is clearly something wrong with him. However, he makes great movies and TV shows, and I recently did a little project for him and sent this sketch to him as a thank you along with the original art. At some point I will be able to share the art I did for him… it was a sort of personal commission so nothing as exciting as a Star Wars illustration. I did ask to be paid for the work by being cast as a Jedi in the next… READ MORE
November 26th, 2013 | Posted in News
Front row L to R: Steve Moore, Jeff Myers, Rick Kirkman, Marcus Hamilton. Back row L to R: Mason Mastroianni, Paul Combs, Jeff Keane, me The Lovely Anna and I spent this past weekend in beautiful Boise, ID, in support of one of the most unique and wonderful programs to help our wounded warriors in action today- The Wyakin Warriors Foundation. I wrote a bit about it last week before we left. A Wyakin is a Native American “spirit guide” that legend says appears to a young warrior during a rite of passage where he is left alone on a mountainside to await a vision.… READ MORE
November 25th, 2013 | Posted in Monday MADness
In honor of the opening of the latest “Hunger Games” film, here’ a look at 2012’s parody of the first movie. As always, clicky images to embiggen. The writer of the parody was Desmond Devlin. First pencil rough Above is the first pencil rough of the splash. This was a complex splash, because all the word boxes were being spoken by one person (Stanley Tucci’s host character “Cesear Flickerman”), there were a LOT of word boxes, necessitating three rows, and most of them described a character that needed to be near the box that describes them. So, I did something I seldom do . .… READ MORE
November 24th, 2013 | Posted in General
Q: In your book you address the problem of nondescript, ‘standard’ faces, and mention finding ‘one outstanding feature. Just one’. My question concerns the opposite scenario – where a subject may have numerous ‘deviations from the norm’ … I suppose we should be driven by a quest for likeness, no matter what. But is this a situation where subjectivity comes into play? A: Caricaturists have a term for a face like you describe… it’s called a “Field Day”. I understand what you are saying, and it is true that if a face has a lot of features begging for exaggeration you can be confronted with… READ MORE
November 22nd, 2013 | Posted in News
Artwork by Paul Combs The Lovely Anna and I are on our way to Boise, ID today to attend the 2nd annual Wyakin Warriors Guardian Ball, along with a gaggle of other cartoonists as seen in the illustration above, drawn by illustrator and my USO cartooning tour comrade Paul Combs. Attending this year are: Bill Amend (FoxTrot) Jeff Bacon (Broadside/Greenside) Todd Clark (Lola) Paul Combs¬¨‚Ć(Firefighter cartoonist) Marcus Hamilton (Dennis the Menace) Jeff Keane (The Family Circus) Rick Kirkman (Baby Blues) Mason Mastroianni (B.C.) Glenn McCoy (The Flying McCoys) Steve Moore (In the Bleachers) Jeff Myers¬¨‚Ć(The Simpsons) Moi The ball is a black tie affair/fundraiser for… READ MORE
November 21st, 2013 | Posted in MAD Magazine
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Brru8ADSPGI[/youtube] MAD‘s Maddest Writer Dick DeBartolo gives ABC TV a tour of the MAD offices and talks about the new Inside MAD book. They zoom in a bit on the splash page I did in conjunction with Judd Apatow’s intro. READ MORE
November 21st, 2013 | Posted in Tales from the Theme Park
I know I just told this story last year here at some point, but it’s a good one and I wanted it part of the series. This one happened about 20 years ago when I had a run in with a theme park manager . . . I was working at one of my theme park concessions in 1992 when one of the newer members of the park’s “management team” came up to the booth and asked if I was the owner. “Yes,” I told her. She pointed at one of the many examples up on the wall, one I had done, and told me… READ MORE
