Tom's Mad Blog
June 18th, 2013 | Posted in General
I took my three youngest kids to see Man of Steel over Father’s day weekend. Overall, I liked the film quite a bit. I was a little surprised at the volume of angry fanboy reaction online… most seemed to think Christopher Nolan and Zack Synder missed the boat on the character. I read some comments saying Superman was a “homicidal monster”, “soulless” and that there was “no character development”. They must have been watching a different movie than the one I saw. SPOILER ALERT!! I cannot examine the character decisions at the root of this film without revealing major plot moments, since they define the… READ MORE
June 17th, 2013 | Posted in Monday MADness
Clicky to embiggen… I finally got permission to be able to post a peek at the art I did for MAD #521 for the article entitled “Casebook: Spyfail- The Battle of the Bonds”, written by Desmond Devlin. It took a little longer this time because the exclusive first sneak peek at the article was promised to another website, who didn’t bother to run it, so I had to either wait until they did run it or until enough time had passed that it didn’t matter. This was a fun project in that I got to draw all the actors who have played Bond throughout the… READ MORE
June 16th, 2013 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I just recently downloaded a drawing app for my iPad (Sketch Club) and picked up a fairly cheap stylus from Amazon. It’s my first experience doing any kind of digital doodling but it’s proven to be a fun place to start. Because of the whole touch pad scenario, I’ve found on more than one occasion that my hand would rest on the screen and inadvertently draw strokes I didn’t intend. As a result, I hold the stylus much differently than I would a regular pen and it’s slightly altered the style of my drawings (for the better. I think). Is this something you also… READ MORE
June 14th, 2013 | Posted in General
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June 13th, 2013 | Posted in Freelancing
Of the many interesting things that happened with respect to self-publishing my book, one of the most surprising was finding a very unexpected market for it: wood carvers. Apparently caricature is something many wood carvers are interested in, either by actually carving caricatures out of wood or using some of the principals of exaggeration and expression found in caricature art in carving fictional characters and anthropomorphic animals. I have several woodcarver shops that buy books directly from me wholesale to sell in their shops, or at their booths at the many trade shows and conventions dedicated to this art. Last month at the Pittsburgh Cartoon… READ MORE
June 12th, 2013 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
I am really swamped right now coloring a big job on the computer, so this week we are going to have to go with a quick digital warm up sketch of an easy target. Here’s Ian McKellen in his role of Gandalf from the Lord of the Rings and the recent first installment of the Hobbit films. This took about 12 minutes including the gray washes. I did a Gandalf for the SotW some years ago but never really liked that take… even though this is a loose, speed drawing I think the results are better. READ MORE
June 11th, 2013 | Posted in News
It’s summertime and that means convention season, amid other things, and as Comic-Con is coming up next month I thought I’d list some of the places I’ll be showing up and possibly doing some speaking the rest of this year: San Diego Comic Con July 18-21, 2013 I’ll be selling copies of my book as well as my upcoming limited edition print at the National Cartoonists Society booth (usually #1307/1309). I’ll also have some original pages from MAD for sale and will be doing caricatures as well. Drop by the booth and you’ll see posted schedules for artist appearances. I’ll be there at least 2… READ MORE
June 10th, 2013 | Posted in Monday MADness
This week’s Monday MADness features the pencil roughs and a couple of the final panels from an article called “Is Our World Really All That Different From The Matrix?” written by Greg Leitman from MAD #436, Dec. 2003 (clicky any to embiggen): The gag got changed a bit from the original pencil rough on the Britney/Madonna panel . . . ewww. READ MORE
