Tom's Mad Blog
August 19th, 2010 | Posted in General
Illustration done for Minneapolis Star Tribune last fall Oh Boy! Brett Favre is back in town and going to play for the Minnesota Vikings! Yawwwn. I’m a Minnesota guy in most things, but as far as sports go, the only team I care about around here are the Minnesota Twins. I can’t stand the NBA and don’t know or want to know about hockey, so the Timberwolves and Wild hold zero interest for me. Baseball is my favorite pro sport and I love the Twins and all they represent. They play the game the right way, develop their own players and make smart moves that… READ MORE
August 18th, 2010 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
This week’s sketch: pop star Katy Perry. A lot of people seem to dislike her, thinking she’s extremely vulgar and overtly sexual… but I think she’s doing all that over the top stuff with tongue firmly in cheek (insert “tongue firmly in somewhere joke here”). She’s intentionally being a parody of the Britney Spears/Christina Aguilera school of candy-like sex doll pop singers. READ MORE
August 18th, 2010 | Posted in MAD Magazine
This short promo just surfaced for the new MAD show on the Cartoon Network this fall: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEEzuhFDcrE[/youtube] Here’s another shorter one: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hlVYKw1sAg[/youtube] Neither feature any of my work. As you can see the style of animation runs the gamut from traditional cartoons to collage and highly stylized stuff. Many of the “skits” will be only a few seconds long with a single, quick gag. Segments like the TV show parodies I’ve worked on, the movie parodies and some ad parodies are a minute or two long and not part of these short promos. The show debuts on Mon. Sept 6th at 8:30 pm. READ MORE
August 17th, 2010 | Posted in General
I’ve been doing a lot of work over the last two years for filmmaker Ray Griggs, including illustrations, animations and a promotional comic book for his superhero spoof movie Super Capers, storyboards, the movie poster and animated character design for his latest film project “I Want Your Money” and illustration for iPhone and iPad apps like Bobble Rep. In the process Ray has become a good friend… he is a comic book geek at heart. Case in point: Ray has an office on the Warner Bros. studio property in California, and recently got a permit to have a golf cart on the lot. Rather than… READ MORE
August 16th, 2010 | Posted in Freelancing
Nobody like this guy, but…. Some time ago I wrote a blog post about the importance of meeting deadlines as a freelancer. Just the other day my pal freelance writer extraordinaire Mark Evanier posted some excellent advice about deadlines and how not taking them seriously is extremely detrimental to one’s freelance career. Go read that post by Mark. I’ll wait….. I could not agree more. Deadlines are not always absolute, and many art directors (read: SMART) build in room for late delivery of work. However some do not, and every job is unique. The bottom line is that failure to deliver your work at the… READ MORE
August 15th, 2010 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: When you’re drawing, do you usually have anything on in the background (music, TV, movies)? A: That’s a question that has a lot of different answers from a lot of different artists, which I find fascinating. Everyone seems to have their own idea of what kind of environment they need to focus their concentration, creativity and work flow. I know a lot of artists that have the TV going in the background playing either some specific station or DVDs of movies. That is one thing I cannot do… any visual distractions really mess up my ability to focus on my work. It seems to… READ MORE
August 13th, 2010 | Posted in It's All Geek to Me!
The future?…. Here’s a link to an recent CNN article on how the iPad is boosting the appeal of digital comics. I absolutely agree that the iPad and it’s descendants will be the new format for publishing, including comics and magazines. I can see a virtual news stand in the future full of individual issues and subscriptions for magazines, comics, comic books and newspapers… delivered without user effort to your mobile tablet device in a format that is easy and natural to browse, read and enjoy. However I don’t see the iPad being that device, but some other piece of hardware that doesn’t force the… READ MORE
August 12th, 2010 | Posted in Freelancing
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68BEuofLl7A[/youtube] This is a teaser trailer for “I Want Your Money”, a politically conservative film by Ray Griggs that I did a whole bunch of animation character design for. You’ll see a few seconds of some of the animated segments. Unfortunately Ray had a lot of trouble with the animation companies that did the CGI and frankly the final results leave a lot to be desired. I think the modeling and basic characters look fine, but the talking animation part is rough. Here’s one of the segments in full: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBXQhs6kwYc[/youtube] Just an added note- I have nothing to do with the message of this film…… READ MORE
