Tom's Mad Blog
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
May 30th, 2009 | Posted in Freelancing
I received this link courtousey of fellow caricature illustrator Patrick LaMontagne‘s blog. The funniest thing about this video, which depicts “real world” equivalents to some all too typical examples of client/creative freelancer interactions, is that it’s basically spot on with some of the things clients occasionally try to pull. Fortunately for me I have a lot of terrific clients that treat me as professionally as I treat them. I’d be lying, however, if I said some of the things in this video do not remind me of a few past clients. READ MORE
May 29th, 2009 | Posted in On the Drawing Board
After the intensity that was the book job I had prior to Memorial Day, I actually don’t mind having a light board right now. I’ve got a small project for MAD #501 to finish up, and then no other jobs pending. Just in time for me to turn to my theme park operations and give them a little attention. I just finished up this poster job for The Marlin Co., which they allow me to share on the blog right away. Due to some of the layers being merged and then saved I don’t have a copy of just the inks, but here is the… READ MORE
