Tom's Mad Blog
September 14th, 2021 | Posted in General
As promised, here’s the cover of Des Devlin and my upcoming book, CLAPTRAP. Like the rest of the book, this was a collaborative effort. The concept was mine but Des contributed a good number of the gags (okay, he wrote all the funny ones). This is a “wraparound” cover so I had to consider the spine and fold areas in the center when doing the composition. This was a nice breather from doing the interiors, but it’s back to that tomorrow! READ MORE
September 13th, 2021 | Posted in MAD Magazine
You don’t have to be a psychic to know that today is Monday, and it’s time for another look back at my work for MAD Magazine. Today we part the mists of the paranormal with a look at MAD‘s spoof of the TV show “Medium”, first appearing in MAD #454, June 2005, written by Dick DeBartolo. The show starred Patricia Arquette, Jake Webber and Miguel Sandoval. I’ve always like this splash page. I had a lot of fun with the lighting using two opposing light sources of very different colors. I also liked how the sleeping dog turned out. Patricia Arquette’s feet?… not so much. Take a look at the intro… READ MORE
September 12th, 2021 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: Do you ever create non-cartoon/caricature drawings such as portraits or landscapes? If so, how do you manage to shift gears so drastically? A: Very seldom these days. The art college I went to had no cartooning classes. Occasionally in one of my illustration classes I would be able to get away with doing a cartoon image for a certain project, but that was mostly frowned upon. I was trained in classic drawing and painting instead. This actually helped my cartooning (in my opinion) as it forced me to develop my drawing skills, and when I then turned back to cartooning I think my skills… READ MORE
September 10th, 2021 | Posted in General
I took this picture (and maaaaaaybe did a little photoshop work on it) years ago as part of a gag for a presentation I was doing on cartooning. Then I posted it on my blog. It’s become a frequently used meme image and not a week goes by without someone sending me an email saying they saw it on Reddit or Facebook or wherever and did I know someone was using it? Yes, I do. Can I do anything about it? No, I can’t. It’s out there and there is no reeling it back in. I think if I had a dime for everytime someone… READ MORE
September 9th, 2021 | Posted in Illustration Throwback Thursday
Cartoon Network had an animated show called “MAD” that aired from 2010-2013. It was a kind of animated sketch comedy show that was only 11 minutes long, and consisted of all sorts of different styles of animation from flash based to traditional to claymation, etc. I contributed to a number of episodes, usually working on some kind of TV or movie “mash-up”… like this one! This segment mashed up “The Big Bang Theory” with “Twilight” in a bit called “The Big Fang Theory”. The work I did consisted of simplified caricatures of the different actors in character and sometimes some extras. Here are the character… READ MORE
September 8th, 2021 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
Here’s another classic sitcom star that was conspicuously missing from that “History of the Sitcom” illustration I did for CNN… the “Great One”, Jackie Gleason! As always, the original is available in my Studio Store. READ MORE
September 7th, 2021 | Posted in General
My CLAPTRAP cohort Desmond Devlin and I have been keeping our work on the book purposefully under wraps after revealing the splash pages for four different parodies, but this week we thought we’d give you another sneak peek at some of the book… this time part of the cover art! Last week I decided to take a break from working on the interiors of the book to tackle the cover. I had to wait to do the cover until we had all our target movies selected, and once we did I decided to wait a bit longer so I could have a bunch of the… READ MORE
September 6th, 2021 | Posted in General
This is traditionally the last day of summer in the U.S. Enjoy. As they say in Westeros… “winter is coming.” READ MORE
