Tom's Mad Blog
December 30th, 2012 | Posted in General
We interrupt the Sunday Mailbag today (look for a Monday Mailbag tomorrow) to tell everyone to grab their Sunday paper . . . you still get a Sunday newspaper, right? . . . and check out today’s Beetle Bailey comic strip! I make a guest appearance! I got a call late this summer from the Walker Studio’s Bill Janocha asking me if it would be okay if Mort Walker and the gang do a gag featuring me in a Sunday strip. It was a nod to my winning the Reuben this year. Mort is of course one of the earliest members of the National Cartoonists… READ MORE
December 28th, 2012 | Posted in General
As the New Year dawns, we invariably look back at the last 12 months and take stock in the ups and downs of the year. I have a great deal to be thankful for . . . it will be tough to ever top 2012 for me. Here are some of my highlights, with links to blog posts (if any): NCS Announces On-Line Comics Divisional Award– There were some growing pains, but I was proud to have gotten this done with the support of my NCS board. (Look for some news about the expansion of this division next week!) Me on Tall Tale Radio! Always… READ MORE
December 27th, 2012 | Posted in News
From the NCS Website: Brad Anderson, the creator of the comic strip Marmaduke, will be honored with the National Cartoonists Society’s Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2013 NCS Reuben Award Weekend, held this year in Pittsburgh, PA on May 24th-26th. Brad’s amazing career spans 60 years and includes cartoons for many magazines and publications in addition to Marmaduke, which is syndicated by Universal Uclick. In 2010 Marmaduke became a major motion picture from 20th Century Fox, featuring a computer animated Marmaduke alongside live actors. About Brad Anderson (an excerpt from an America Profile article from 2010): Putting pen to paper, cartoonist Brad… READ MORE
December 26th, 2012 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
As frequent readers of this blog probably know by now, I am a bit of a Sherlockian…which is to say I am a devoted fan of, and somewhat of an amateur expert on, the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stories featuring the Great Detective, Sherlock Holmes. I’m not talking about the vast multitudes of ancillary stories, books, films and pastiches that have been done with the character . . . I know next to nothing about that stuff. I’m talking about the original 56 short stories and four novels by Conan Doyle, from which all the rest of it sprung. A purist, in other words. Oh,… READ MORE
December 24th, 2012 | Posted in General
Here’s hoping everyone has a fun and safe holiday, whatever you may celebrate, with family and friends. READ MORE
December 23rd, 2012 | Posted in Mailbag
This is one of the most frequently asked questions I get, so every year or two I repost this mailbag from 2006: Q: How much should I charge for an illustration? A: I get individual e-mails occasionally asking for advice on what to charge on this project or that kind of job, and the problem is that the question in basically unanswerable. It is always “that depends”. By the letter of the law the discussion of how much to charge for the same kind of service or product between two competing sources of said service or product is called “price fixing”, and is quite illegal… READ MORE
December 21st, 2012 | Posted in Freelancing
While I do freelance illustration for a variety of clients including some animation, advertising, product illustration, etc., the majority of the work I do is illustration for magazines. For the under thirty crowd, those are these things that are printed on dead trees requiring ambient light to read, feature no clickable links to anything and do not instantly add your completely irrelevant and often anonymous “opinion” on their articles in a comment section… with magazines those are called “letters to the editor” and take months to get published, if they ever do. Putting the snarkiness aside, I do seem to get a lot of sympathy… READ MORE
December 20th, 2012 | Posted in General
Clicky to Embiggen... As promised, the final art for that workplace poster I posted the rough sketch of yesterday. If anybody is interested, here is the copy that accompanies the image: T E A M W O R K It’s a combination of first-class individual strength and effort … mutual support and encouragement … and a willingness to go down to the mat for the camaraderie and good morale that build success. That’s what these workplace posters I am always doing are… messages about teamwork, customer service, stress management and similar concepts with a humorous (hopefully) image to help make the point. I have been… READ MORE
