Tom's Mad Blog
October 26th, 2010 | Posted in On the Drawing Board
SWAMPED… and as I am leaving to an undisclosed location(s) on another of those USO trips on the 5th, the blogging might be a bit on the light side for a while… MAD– A 6 page movie parody!!! Woot! MAD Animated show– Back to work on some new episodes. Penthouse– Series of illustrations for an ongoing celebrity column Advertising job– series of caricature illustrations for a big corporation Workplace Poster– My usual monthly assignment Speaking of workplace posters, here’s last month’s illustration. Click for a closer look: The pencil sketch Finished Artwork READ MORE
October 25th, 2010 | Posted in News
I never met Jess Rubio, but as a live caricaturist and the owner of several theme park caricature operations I sure heard about him. Rubio was the “face” of caricatures and art concessions at the Walt Disney theme parks. He started as a fill in portrait artist in 1957 at Disneyland, and a chance meeting with Walt Disney when Rubio came in early to set up his location started him on a road that led to his being the exclusive art concession operator in all the Disney theme parks in California and Florida. For about 40 years after, if there was ever consideration of a… READ MORE
October 24th, 2010 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I am a longtime fan of MAD Magazine and my favorite parts of each issue are the movie and TV parodies. I hope you’ll forgive me but I have several questions about that. I know you have been doing both types for a long time… which is your favorite to work on, a movie or a TV show, and why? Do you like doing parodies more of shows you love or hate? Finally, are we ever going to see MAD return to having at least one parody in every issue? They used to always have one movie and one TV show spoof in each… READ MORE
October 22nd, 2010 | Posted in MAD Magazine
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ri1Vz37omA[/youtube] Some time ago I wrote about a documentary in the works about the great Will Elder, who’s work for MAD helped set the tone and style of humor the magazine would become famous for. I recently got an e-mail from the film’s creator Gary VandenBerg telling me about a donation site they have put up in order to try and raise funds to finish the film and get it out to the public. If you are interested in helping out, you can visit this site for more details. They’ve got about $14,000 and change to go and 46 days to get there. Different donation… READ MORE
October 21st, 2010 | Posted in General
A week or two ago I attended the annual meeting of my chapter of the National Cartoonists Society, which featured a bevy of guest speakers, panels and other great presentations. The featured speaker was Josh Cooley, who was co-sponsored by our chapter and the Kaneko art center. Josh is a story artist at Pixar who did a lot of work on “Cars”, “Ratatouille”, “UP” and the forthcoming “Cars 2”, and he did both a presentation of this work and conducted a workshop on “story art”… which is sort of like storyboarding but in Pixar’s case is a lot more central to the creation of the… READ MORE
October 20th, 2010 | Posted in General
While visiting the theme parks here in Orlando this week I got the above idea for a possible promotion Disney could do for the upcoming “Cars 2” movie by modifying their motorized rental scooters. Something tells me not to bother submitting it to Disney World for consideration… READ MORE
October 19th, 2010 | Posted in Freelancing
One of the things that director Ray Griggs wanted me to do for the animation segments in his movie “I Want Your Money” was to add in some MAD style background gags. One of the gags was making fun of the fact that Obama has a pop culture celebrity image like that of no other president and is perceived as playing up to it. Thus I had some fun putting his face or head on recognizable pieces of famous art or awards. You can spot a couple of them in this picture, including CG versions of some of the ideas I suggested in that vein… READ MORE
October 18th, 2010 | Posted in General
What the ?!? Yes, this time I’m off to Orlando and the House of Mouse with the family for a little vacation. I know I promised a report on last weekend’s Festival of Cartoon Art at OSU in Columbus, OH, but as I was forced to leave a day early due to a couple of emergency jobs coming in I could not pass up, I barely got to experience any of it. In fact, I only got to hear the presentations of Paul Levitz, James Sturm and Dan Piraro and hang out with some cartoonists pals for two nights, so I will leave the reporting… READ MORE
