Tom's Mad Blog
October 26th, 2011 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
Once again, a day late and a dollar short. I’ve been working on a MAD job that took far longer to pencil out than I thought it would and didn’t have the time to post a sketch yesterday. Anyway, here’s a drawing of celebrity nutcase Charlie Sheen. I did one of him once before, but I saw a profile/three-quarter view picture of him that was perfect for that pointy nose, jutting chin and neanderthal brow, and couldn’t resist. READ MORE
October 25th, 2011 | Posted in General
Jeff Dunham’s Achmed the Dead Terrorist character I’ve been alluding often here on The MAD Blog for the last year about artwork I am doing for ?¬?ber-popular comedian/ventriloquist Jeff Dunham, but have never been more specific. That’s because, as usually goes along when doing anything for folks in show business, there are confidentiality agreements galore involved. Some of that work is going to start appearing here and there, and Jeff has told me I can fill people in a little (operational word) on what’s all involved. The image above is one of a series of illustrations I’ve done/am working on of his various characters, this… READ MORE
October 24th, 2011 | Posted in General
Click to embiggen This illustration appears on the cover of The UTNE Reader this month, or at least all but the background. I was very unhappy with the way the printed cover looked, and it was all my own fault. I did the color with this vignetted background, and the art department of UTNE decided to lose the background for the final print. Click to embiggen I should have then gone back and reworked the color, because without the intensity of the reds and darkness of the background, the color fell apart. The yellow cast to the facial colors, that were meant to create the… READ MORE
October 23rd, 2011 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I wanted to ask you a question about your Photoshop coloring technique: how do you avoid getting ‘spotting’ in Photoshop when you’re using washes? I’m referring to the crossover area between one wash and another: where they intersect there’s an area of brush-shaped darker color caused by laying down a wash with less-than-100% opacity and crossing over it with another wash of less-than-100% opacity. How do you avoid that? Your finished pieces never have that artifacting, which probably has a better term than “spotting.” The video tutorial, while fantastic on its own, does not have the resolution to show something that detailed. So I… READ MORE
October 21st, 2011 | Posted in News
Last weekend the North Central Chapter of the National Cartoonists Society had our annual fall meeting here in Minneapolis/St. Paul. Here’s a VERY brief rundown of the events: Friday 10/14: In conjunction with the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, we brought Stephan Pastis, the creator of the syndicated comic strip Pearls Before Swine, to the Twin Cities to do a lecture and hang out with us. I know Stephan fairly well… riding together in a Blackhawk above the war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan will do that for you, so it was great fun to have him with us. His evening lecture was standing-room… READ MORE
October 20th, 2011 | Posted in MAD Magazine
As promised, here is a sneak peek at some of the images I did for the “Punitive Damages: A Game of Extreme Justice” feature in MAD #512. The video game “cover” The premise of the article was an mock ad for a video game featuring the U.S. Supreme Court Justices, satirizing their decision to allow ultra-violence in video games being targeted at kids as a first-amendment protected right. In the game, the Justices are trying to get past various opponents and obstacles like: Crazed protesters Monster laws and amendments (yes… nod to Schoolhouse Rock!) Fat, former politicians Zombie Founding Fathers Finally, the winner get’s new… READ MORE
October 19th, 2011 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
I chose this week’s sketch subject to make my wife The Lovely Anna and my youngest daughter, The Effervescent Gabrielle, happy as they are both big fans of the TV show Castle. Nathan Fillion is notoriously hard to caricature. His features are elusive in the same way a young William Shatner‘s features were… at different angles/expressions his face looks very different, almost like another person. His chin, for example, seems to seem quite large in any angle where his head is tilted back even slightly, but in a profile or more upright angle you see it is actually a rather small chin, but it sticks… READ MORE
October 18th, 2011 | Posted in MAD Magazine
This from the editors of MAD via the official MAD Blog, The Idiotical: The postcard you see below depicts MAD founder/publisher William M. Gaines, longtime editor Nick Meglin, and current (and also longtime!) editor John Ficarra “hard at work” in the old MAD office at 485 MADison Avenue. It was illustrated by the one and only Mort Drucker! (Yep, the very same Mort Drucker who used to draw covers for the Bob Hope comic book.) We came across a big stack of them in the stock room, but as you can see, there was a limited number produced: So, Do you want one of your… READ MORE
