Tom's Mad Blog
November 18th, 2013 | Posted in Monday MADness
I just got back from the Ohio State Festival of Cartooning, where they officially opened the fantastic new Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum… I’ll write a little synopsis of this tomorrow. I was very flattered and privileged to have a couple of pieces in the opening exhibit, as part of a smaller area dedicated to caricature. The two originals were part of a full parody (including pencil roughs) I donated to the library entitled “The Wizard of O”, written by Desmond Devlin and appearing in MAD #505, Oct 2010. Here are the never-before-seen inks and pencil roughs from that job, plus the finals of… READ MORE
November 17th, 2013 | Posted in General
Q: What was the longest amount of time you’ve spent on caricaturing a subject? I sometimes find myself struggling with a subject and can spend days trying to get it right, when others seem to work out right away. I was just wondering if you’ve ever had this problem and how you get past it. A: That happens sometimes, and to everybody. When I’m doing a parody for MAD I will sometimes find one of the subjects seems to elude me, or if I am doing some other project I might find myself struggling with the likeness of a caricature. The odd thing is that… READ MORE
November 15th, 2013 | Posted in Freelancing
Clicky to embiggen… Ventriloquist/comedian and client of mine Jeff Dunham just came out with a new game app called “Achmed’s Bombsweeper” that uses a lot of my artwork throughout, including the giant “RoboAchmed” above. It’s a variation on the old Minesweeper game where Peanut, Jose Jalepeno, Bubba J, Walter and the gang try and prevent Achmed from completing his RoboAchmed terror weapon. You can get the game for free on iOS and Android platforms, or play it on Jeff’s website. READ MORE
November 14th, 2013 | Posted in News
I get a fair number of emails from people asking me if I am ever going to do a DVD or a series of instructional videos on drawing caricatures. Well, the answer is “yes”, and the time frame is “very soon” now. Animator and comic artist extraordinaire Tom Bancroft just announced today the launch of the new art instruction website, TaughtByAPro.com, and I will be one of the instructors and will be doing a series of how-to-draw caricature video courses. Here’s the press release: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Tom Bancroft, well known author and animator, has teamed up with Rich Lanam, an educational technology executive, to… READ MORE
November 14th, 2013 | Posted in General
Shameless Plug Dept. Some of the limited edition stuff I’m hawking online are getting close to the end of their editions, so I thought it might be time to give folks a heads up if anyone is thinking about getting one of these for a gift for somebody this holiday season: “The Mad Art of Caricature” Limited Artist’s Edition Only 16 of 120 left! I just mailed out a batch of these last week, and there are only 16 remaining. Here are a couple of recent ones, with the reference pics I used to do the caricatures (clicky to embiggen): If you aren’t familiar with… READ MORE
November 13th, 2013 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
This week’s subject is conservative political pundit Bill O’Reilly. Good, old-fashioned pencil on paper. READ MORE
November 12th, 2013 | Posted in Monday MADness
Last Tuesday MAD released the latest in their “MAD’s Greatest Artist’s” series- Dave Berg: Five Decades of The Lighter Side Of…¬¨‚ĆAs the title suggests it’s a collection of the best of Dave Berg featuring not only hundreds of examples of the best of “The Lighter Side of…” organized by decade, but also early work that is amazingly diverse in style and execution, book covers, some features he did the writing only on from the brief MAD Kids spinoff, some rare pencil roughs, gag photo ads he appeared in, lots of rare pictures and other fun stuff. It also features a fabulous foreword and portrait of… READ MORE
November 11th, 2013 | Posted in Monday MADness
The 100th episode of “MAD” airs tonight on the Cartoon Network at 8:30 pm / 7:30 pm central time, and they are celebrating with a double-sized episode. This is quite an accomplishment considering it’s only in its 4th season. The show never ceases to amaze me in that is seems to get some very timely gags and humor onscreen despite the enormous time-consuming challenges of it being an animated show. Congratulations to Kevin Schinick, Mark Marek, Peter Giradi and all the talented, funny folks behind the show! I am proud to be a small part of the effort. If you catch tonight’s episode, you’ll see… READ MORE
