Tom's Mad Blog
January 20th, 2012 | Posted in News
My signed/numbered limited edition print “Secret Agent Man” has sold out completely, so that’s that. I have deleted the high resolution color file, and the original inked artwork was sold months ago, so the 250 numbered prints out there in the hands of the rubes lucky folks who purchased them are all that there will ever be. Thanks to everybody who bought one, and to those who helped spread the word about it! This worked out pretty well, although I think I may do a smaller number or prints next time. There definitely will be a next time. For San Diego Comic Con 2012 I… READ MORE
January 19th, 2012 | Posted in News
Team Cul de Sac is the brainchild of Chris Sparks, who has worked tirelessly to organize this fundraising program for Parkinson’s research. It’s a part of TeamFox, the Michael J Fox Foundation’s fundraising arm, which in the last year alone raised almost 4 million dollars for research. The fundraiser revolves around the brilliant comic strip Cul de Sac by Richard Thompson, an incredibly talented cartoonist who happens to have Parkinson’s. Oh, and he just won the Reuben for “Cartoonist of the Year” from the National Cartoonists Society last May. Chris and Team Cul de Sac invited professional cartoonists, illustrators, artists and animators to donate original… READ MORE
January 19th, 2012 | Posted in News
The internet is abuzz with righteous indignation over the proposed “anti-piracy” legislation currently under consideration by congress, namely the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). I won’t bother to describe the bills…if you don’t know about them by now then welcome to your first time on the internet! As a creative professional, I hate online piracy and copyright infringement, but I am not willing to kill the patient to cure the disease. These bills are going to be largely ineffective at best, and at worst very damaging to legitimate websites because they allow too much room for abuse. Internet piracy… READ MORE
January 18th, 2012 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
This week’s SotW subject is Saturday Night Live alumni Chris Farley. I did a few studies of various late, portly comedians as part of a project I worked on… maybe another one will show up next week Wednesday. READ MORE
January 17th, 2012 | Posted in General
Michael Cavna of the Washington Post‘s Comic Riffs blog on cartoons, comics and culture posted his list of the Top 12 Books of 2011 That Made Us Smile… and The Mad Art of Caricature! tops the list! Thanks, Michael! READ MORE
January 16th, 2012 | Posted in News
Anybody wanting to learn how to earn a living in comics in the 21st century would be well served to attend this if they can: Comics Seminar to be Held in Las Vegas February 25th & 26th How to make money with comics Chad Carpenter, the cartoonist behind the popular newspaper comic strip Tundra, and Bill Kellogg, Tundra’s marketing director who has managed to get Tundra in over 500 newspapers in less than six years, are hosting a seminar in Las Vegas on how to make money with comics. They hosted this seminar for the first time just over a year ago and it went… READ MORE
January 15th, 2012 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I’m enthusiastically working through your book. Aside from enjoying the art and fantastic tips, I’m really interested what you said about it taking 500 faces to really get the nuances of caricature / portraiture. So to fully understand…. maybe naively so, I have set out to draw 500 faces. I really want to at least begin to recognize all the subtleties you mentioned… and to overcome some of the challenges I’ve faced while drawing portraits. A friend of mine said that it takes 1,000 attempts at a particular activity to beome an expert. My goals isn’t really to become an expert (a half expert… READ MORE
January 13th, 2012 | Posted in General
I read over on Mark Evanier‘s excellent blog that the short lived Bob Newhart sitcom series Bob is about to become available on DVD. It’s billed as “The Complete Series”, which is a bit of a joke as it only lasted 33 episodes, or about a season and a half. I remember the show very distinctly because it was, in a way, a moment of TV fame for the little group of theme park caricaturists I was a part of. Kind of. Sort of. We went with it, anyway. Set in present day (at the time 1992), the show’s premise was that star Bob Newhart’s… READ MORE
