Tom's Mad Blog
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
October 17th, 2010 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I Really love your work, especially the detail you put in. Your pictures are never taken in at a glance – there is something interesting going on right into the corners. So I have a question about your attention to detail. Obviously it’s important for caricatures that the details are as accurate a depiction as necessary to make the image recognizable, but how important is it to you that the details of the less essential elements in a scene are similarly as accurate? If you draw a car in the background do you like the car to be recognizably a Toyota or a Ford… READ MORE
October 15th, 2010 | Posted in News
Today is “opening day” for the movie “I Want Your Money“, a conservative film by filmmaker Ray Griggs for which I did a bunch of artwork including the caricature of Obama for the above movie poster, character designs for the animated sequences as well as storyboard for those segments. This movie is getting quite a bit of press. The Lovely Anna called me this morning (I’m in Ohio for the OSU Festival of Cartoon Art”) to say there was a feature about the film on the Today Show this morning that was mostly clips of the animation using my character designs. I’ve also gotten a… READ MORE
October 15th, 2010 | Posted in General
I’m currently in Columbus, OH for the Festival of Cartoon Art, a once-every-three-years celebration of the art of cartooning held at Ohio State University and the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library. You can read all about the event in this post. Should be a great time with plenty of terrific panels and speakers. Full report next week… READ MORE
