Tom's Mad Blog
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
December 19th, 2012 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
Clicky to embiggen… Off on a family trip for the holidays, so I’ll have to cheat this week and post the (very) rough sketch of a recent workplace poster job as the SotW today. I’ll post the final art tomorrow. READ MORE
December 18th, 2012 | Posted in On the Drawing Board
As is somewhat typical over the holidays, pretty quiet on the freelance front. Very little going right now: Marlin Workplace poster Warner Bros product illustrations MAD #520 assignment (forthcoming… not sure what it is yet) That’s about it. The image above is a rare private commission done for General Mills for an executive who was either retiring or getting promoted. I used to do quite a few of these kinds of corporate commissions, including several for General Mills, but not so much anymore. Big companies would commission me to do a caricature illustration of an employee or executive who was retiring, being promoted, having a… READ MORE
