Tom's Mad Blog
October 28th, 2010 | Posted in General
An Aston Martin DB5 built for the filming of the 1965 James Bond film “Thunderball”complete with (mostly) functioning gadgets was auctioned off yesterday in London. The famous modifications include front machine guns that shoot blanks, an ejector seat (that doesn’t work), radar navigation, a nail spreader, tire shredders, bullet shield and a revolving number plate. Man, I really wanted that car, but as it went for $4 million it was exactly $3,999,990 more than what The Lovely Anna allows me to spend in online auctions. For about seven years I had the cheapest of all the Bond cars, a BMW Z3 convertible like the one… READ MORE
October 27th, 2010 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
I recently rewatched Peter Jackson‘s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy with Number One Son Thomas who had inexplicably never seen any of the films before, and was captivated all over again by how good they are. Easily they set the bar for fantasy films. Here is a quick study of Sir Ian McKellan as Gandalf. It looks like the LOTR prequel “The Hobbit” might finally be in production in earnest. Actually this is not Sir Ian’s first appearance in the SOTW. Some years ago I did this sketch of him from the film “Richard III”: READ MORE
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
