Tom's Mad Blog
November 28th, 2011 | Posted in General
Jeff, AJ and me Early in the summer of 2010 I received a call from some gentlemen out in LA who represented world-famous comedian/ventriloquist Jeff Dunham to inquire about my doing some work for him. I was told Jeff was a big fan of MAD Magazine and my work, and wanted to explore the possibility of using some of my artwork for various projects. In the ensuing year and a half, I’ve done quite a bit of work for him, including detailed illustrations of his various characters, some more simplified line-art type work of same, a few things for merchandising/products and some conceptual work on… READ MORE
November 28th, 2011 | Posted in General
Tonight’s episode of MAD on the Cartoon Network will feature a segment I worked on called “Superhero Millionaire Matchmaker”. Check it out at 8:30/7:30 Central time on the CN. I’ll post some of the art I did for it tomorrow. READ MORE
November 27th, 2011 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: Can you share how much time an average project (such as the “workplace posters”) takes you to produce? Does your Cintique make a difference in that timeframe? A: That’s a question I get often and it’s one that is impossible to answer. Each project is different and factors like multiple revisions, complexity of the image and even just “having a bad drawing day” come into play. Specifically, I will say one of those workplace posters take me about 1 1/2 to 2 days to do from sketch to final, although complexity of the scene makes a difference. This one: …took only a long day… READ MORE
November 25th, 2011 | Posted in General
Thinking about ordering a signed copy of The Mad Art of Caricature for Christmas? Better hurry, especially if you are ordering from overseas. We have had a number of horror stories about customs in the destination countries sitting on the package for several weeks before finally clearing it and allowing delivery. In some cases, it has taken as long as 5-6 weeks from shipment to delivery when going overseas… and even just to Canada. There seems to be no rhyme or reason with this… two shipments to same country can vary from delivery in 10 days or so to 5 weeks or longer. Luck of… READ MORE
November 24th, 2011 | Posted in General
For all my fellow Americans out there, all the best on Thanksgiving. I hope you are enjoying it with family and friends. To all the rest of the world, happy… uh… Thursday. READ MORE
November 22nd, 2011 | Posted in MAD Magazine
If you are a fan of MAD‘s Spy vs. Spy, or know someone who is, put Spy vs. Spy: Omnibus on your Christmas list. 10 years ago, MAD put out Spy vs. Spy: The Complete Casebook, which features all 247 Spy vs. Spy’s Antonio Prohias did for MAD, plus all the other articles he wrote/drew for the magazine as well as essays, interviews, preliminaries and sketches, his early Pre-MAD work and a bunch more fun stuff. It’s a great book, but one aspect of it was disappointing… many of the Spy vs Spy strips were printed much smaller than the originally appeared (about 25%…as in… READ MORE
November 22nd, 2011 | Posted in News
The Biography Channel will be airing Jeff Dunham: The Birth of a Dummy tonight at 8 PM/7 PM Central, during which Jeff is going to talk about the creation of one of his newest characters and (I’m told) my role in that process. Try and catch it! READ MORE
November 21st, 2011 | Posted in General
One of the typical things you will find in any how-to book is a definition of the book’s subject. It is cliche but a good jumping-off point. On page 2 of my book The Mad Art of Caricature, I wanted to play the definition card. The problem was that the best definition I ever heard was one I could not for the life of me remember where I had heard it. That definition was: “A caricature is a portrait with the volume turned up.” I spent a fair amount of time trying to find out where I had heard that quote. At the time I… READ MORE
