Tom's Mad Blog
September 25th, 2011 | Posted in General
Q:Since I was a kid, I always wondered about Alfred E. Newman. He is one freaky looking guy, with one eye higher than the other. And that creepy smile… ¬¨‚He’s an icon, yet also genetics-gone-awry. Who created him, and when? I’ve always been curious about Mad’s Cover Boy. A: Ahhhh… who created Alfred E. Neumen? That’s a question that has no certain answer, but a lot of interesting history. An ad for dentistry, circa 1910 Pictures like the ones above have been cropping up since MAD first adopted the image of the smiling, idiotic boy who would eventually be known as Alfred E. Neuman. The… READ MORE
September 18th, 2011 | Posted in News
The MAD Blog is going on a short hiatus for this week, because I am changing host servers. Any new posts I do will be lost anyway, so I might as well take a breather until the site is up on the new host. The next new post will be this week’s “Sunday Mailbag”. Until then behave yourselves, Internet . . . and stay out of my yard. READ MORE
September 18th, 2011 | Posted in Mailbag
Q:¬¨‚Ć What advice would you have for someone thinking about getting into live caricature? I’ve been doing them for about 3 years now but still have much to learn. It started out as something I did for fun/practice and lately I have been selling them. The thing is I’m used to having a lot of time, often times days to find a person’s likeness, color, etc, drawing and redrawing until I’m satisfied. Usually in illustrator/photoshop but also paper on occasion.¬¨‚Ć How do I know when I’m ready to go live? Is there a way to get my feet wet first before diving in head first?… READ MORE
September 16th, 2011 | Posted in News
This week’s sneak peek is the opening splash of Chapter Seven: Drawing Live Caricatures. In this chapter, I go over the challenges of doing quick-draw style caricatures from a live model(s), discussing techniques on approaching and executing the drawings, a complete step-by-step of the process, plenty of tips and things to consider like line weights, common problems and pitfalls to avoid, and finally ending with several sample drawings from photos. This chapter is 20 pages long and contains over 55 illustrations. Book delivery update: As I wrote earlier in the week, I have received a couple of advanced copied of the actual bound book off… READ MORE
September 15th, 2011 | Posted in General
I’m in the lovely town of Kenosha, Wisconsin, right now taking part in the first annual Kenosha Festival of Cartooning. As you can see from the poster above, there is a pretty terrific line-up of cartoonists speaking and participating in panel discussions over the three-day festival. Things actually kicked off yesterday, but I did not participate in any of the public presentations. I spoke to an illustration class at Carthage College. Some of the students didn’t even fall asleep . . . or maybe they just didn’t snore. Anyway it was fun and we did a little drawing at the end. Today I will be… READ MORE
September 14th, 2011 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
This week is another of the sketches I did for my “Secret Agent Man” limited edition print (which are still available! :D), this one of Timothy Dalton. I thought I was being very clever when I did the art for that print. I wanted to make sure I did something that would be appreciated by even hardcore Bond fans. I wanted the poses, attitudes, accessories, etc. to be spot on. I underestimated how hardcore those fans can be, however. I was taken to task over several blunders, like the ruffles on George Lazenby’s shirt being horizontal, not vertical. The worst offense was that I put… READ MORE
September 13th, 2011 | Posted in General
About two weeks ago I posted these images briefly because the Cartoon Network’s website listed the “Konan the Kardashian” segment I worked on as airing on Aug. 29th. It turned out that was wrong and it did not air in that episode, but did air last night. So, here again are a few images from that segment (plus one new one): Fun episode to work on… but I always say that, don’t I? READ MORE
September 12th, 2011 | Posted in News
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRfNBI4PVa4[/youtube] Late last week I received three advance copies of my book, The Mad Art of Caricature! from the printer via Fed Ex. These are not proofs but actual, bound press copies from the full print run, and are exactly the same as the rest of the books. The printer sends these out in advance of the shipment of the rest of the books, so the publisher can get a look at the final product. The above is a short video of me paging through one of these copies. I am quite pleased with the printing, especially given the trouble we had with the first… READ MORE
