Tom's Mad Blog
June 7th, 2009 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: You’ve noted that a bad caricaturist can get trapped using a set of pre-defined exaggeration points – enlarging a chin, making a nose bigger, giving the eyebrows an odd slant, etc. – and that when you are working you try to find something more personal or a little more interesting and less “by the book”. When you are on the clock, where do you draw the line between making the subject look like the typical caricature one might see vs. something YOU find satisfying? A: I think what you are referring to is what I call “generic caricature”, where a caricaturist basically draws the… READ MORE
June 6th, 2009 | Posted in General
I just placed my order for this eagerly anticipated collection of the entire run of Humbug Magazine. I have never seen a single page of this publication, but being that is was edited by Harvey Kurtzman and features work by Jack Davis, Al Jaffee, Arnold Roth, Will Elder and Wally Wood, it is undoubtedly pure genius. Humbug was Kurtzman’s second attempt to recapture the magic of his early MAD work, the second being the VERY short lived (2 issues) Trump! Magazine published by Playboy‘s Hugh Hefner. Humbug was actually published by Kurtzman and the creators themselves, which makes it as pure a creative effort as… READ MORE
June 5th, 2009 | Posted in News
News broke yesterday on the LA Times Blog and was further confirmed on The Comic’s Reporter and Heidi MacDonald‘s The Beat that Viacom is canceling Nickelodeon Magazine effective immediately. From LA Times Blog: Viacom is shutting down Nickelodeon Magazine this week and will lay off about 30 staffers. Launched in 1993, the magazine, with a circulation of more than¬¨‚Ć1 million and a total audience of more than¬¨‚Ć6 million, was for many years an important promotional platform for the¬¨‚Ćchildren’s cable network and provided a steady stream of cash. The magazine even once was a National Magazine Award finalist and also led to a few spin-off products.… READ MORE
June 4th, 2009 | Posted in General
One of our caricature locations at Six Flags New England I’m traveling back from visiting my operation at Six Flags New England today. We’ve got a great group of artists there this summer doing airbrush t-shirts, airbrush tattoos and of course caricatures. The park is located between Springfield, MA and Hartford, CT in a small Massachusetts town called Agawam. If you happen to visit the park this summer stop in and say hello to the artists. EDIT- I should mention I also have caricature operations at Valleyfair in Shakopee MN, Six Flags St. Louis in Eureka, MO, Sy. Louis Union Station in St. Louis, MO… READ MORE
June 3rd, 2009 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
This week’s victim is tabloid queen and “why is this person a celebrity?” poster child Tori Spelling. Tori is having a little trouble with her breast impants these days… some rapid weight loss has caused them to migrate into new positions, kind of like the earth’s tectonic plates. The scan is a little rough as I used a borrowed scanner I was not familiar with since I am currently on the road in Massachusetts visiting my theme park operations at Six Flags New England. In fact this sketch was drawn sitting in one of my caricature booths this morning. READ MORE
June 2nd, 2009 | Posted in General
Well, ask and ye shall receive… sort of. I promised on Sunday I would dig up an old video montage I had made back in 1993 of me doing several caricature samples in time-lapse format for my caricature locations. The father of one of my caricature artists did video editing work, and put together this demo video for me. We used it as a looping display at my booths in the Mall of America and at Underground Atlanta, and in between each “sample” there was text telling people how long they took, etc. This video is ancient… to give you an idea it was originally… READ MORE
June 1st, 2009 | Posted in General
It’s no secret that I am a big fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle‘s Sherlock Holmes, the great fictional detective. I’ve done numerous Holmes illustrations for audiobook collections, designed a Sherlock Holmes pen and am somewhat of a scholar on the “Canon” i.e. Conan Doyle’s original 56 short stories and 4 novels. However I am not very well versed on the thousands of works by other creative people with Holmes as their subject including the numerous films, TV series, stories books and comics. Shame on me, perhaps, but I’ve always felt that while you can certainly enjoy the interpretations of any source material you can… READ MORE
May 31st, 2009 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: When drawing live caricatures (theme park) how do you decide whether to have a couple or just a single person be drawn in the 3/4 view or frontal? If it’s a couple do you draw the woman first, or does is not matter? Also, do you have or can you put up a video of you doing a live theme park caricature to show us how your technique is done? Since it’s officially the theme park caricature season I thought these might be some good mailbag questions today. When drawing live caricatures (theme park) how do you decide whether to have a couple or… READ MORE
