Tom's Mad Blog
April 8th, 2009 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
The International Society of Caricaturist Artists does a daily sketch challenge on thier private forum where they pick a celebrity who’s birthday is that day, and a bunch of artists do a caricature of him or her. Lots of fun and some great sketches. I wish I had time to participate more, but alas that’s impossible. Yesterday as I was searching for a subject for the “Sketch o’the Week” I checked into the ISCA forum and found April 7th’s birthday target was the great film director Francis Ford Coppola, so I thought for once I’d participate via my weekly sketch. So here is my stab… READ MORE
April 7th, 2009 | Posted in On the Drawing Board
Here’s a job I did a month or two back that is now on the stands so I can show some of the process and the end result. I used my new “colored line” technique, which is really growing on me, and also seems to be a hit with clients. The job: Cover illustration with a “survivor” theme showing how library budgets are getting squeezed and cut, but the libraries are “surviving”. They wanted a mixture of calm definace and some anxiety on behalf of the librarians, with sharks (aka budget cutters) eating away at their resources. Here are three initail rough sketches. They really… READ MORE
April 6th, 2009 | Posted in General
Although they’d like to scout the Far East like many other teams do looking for phenoms playing in Asia, the Minnesota Twins are too cheap to send their talent scouts any farther east than Peoria, Illinois… (from MAD #416) Ah…. Baseball. The Great American Pastime. The 2009 season starts today and, as always, hope springs eternal for the Hometown Nine… at least for a little while. Pro sports for the most part really turn me off. I like and follow the NFL mostly because being born and raised in Wisconsin I am hardwired as a Green Bay Packer fan, but the prancing, posturing players make… READ MORE
April 5th, 2009 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: When you do the splash page for say the “30 Rock” satire you did, how do you figure out how the background fits in reference to the characters? is there some simple geometry that you use? I always seem to have too big of a space, or everything looks like its getting crammed in. I am not really used to drawing characters in an environment, do you have any advise? Also when you do a big ensemble do you ever cheat and draw characters separately and add them or do you keep them the same from the rough stage? A: Here’s the “30 Rock”… READ MORE
April 4th, 2009 | Posted in News
It was recently announced by the International Society of Caricature Artists (ISCA) convention organizers that, for the first time ever, non-ISCA members are able to attend the main speaker presentations and panels for only $99.00 (cheap!). So come to beautiful… uh…. downtown Sandusky Ohio this November to listen to a bunch of MAD artists make fools of themselves. Speaking of MAD artists making fools of themselves… back when we was just a young and impressionable lad of 15, long before he became a world famous caricaturist, illustrator and MAD artist/art director, a beardless (!) Sam Viviano paid a visit to the DC Comics offices to… READ MORE
April 3rd, 2009 | Posted in On the Drawing Board
For a one-armed artist I am staying pretty busy. Here’s what I’ve got going right now on the drawing board: NCS Reuben T-shirt Illustration– Wrapping this up over the weekend. I will share it once I get the okay from NCS president Jeff Keane. Cover art for Stay Tooned #4– I was honored to be asked to do the cover for John Read‘s terrific magazine. That I will finish next week. MAD job– Two pager that got bumped from issue 500 and will now be in #501, so a ton of time before that is due. Workplace poster– My usual monthly assignment from The Marlin… READ MORE
April 2nd, 2009 | Posted in Surf's Up Dept.
Interesting video from Wimp.com. The “icons” they cite as evolutionary seem to fluctuate between Batman’s chest emblem from various film/animation incarnations and the logo used on a given comics title, film poster or mini-series cover graphics. It’s not really an “evolution” of the “bat symbol” as much as a collection of different takes on it from different sources in roughly chronological order. Sorry, can’t embed the video so click on the image or this link to see it. Nicely done, although I find it interesting the creator refuses to let you embed the video but has no problem violating U2’s copyrights for the music. Top… READ MORE
April 1st, 2009 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
Continuing the theme of 80’s rock stars I liked as a kid as they look today, here’s a sketch of everyone’s favorite heavy metal elf, Ronnie James Dio. Dio had (still has, I think) this amazingly powerful voice that looked downright bizarre coming out of a 5’4″ slip of a guy who must have weighed barely 100 lbs. He gained stardom as the lead singer of Rainbow, did two studio and one live albums with Black Sabbath after Ozzy left, then headlined his own band Dio. I still love the Sabbath albums. In case you haven’t noticed, I was a serious metal head in high… READ MORE
