Tom's Mad Blog
December 29th, 2008 | Posted in Surf's Up Dept.
I’m busy working on a few jobs right now, but here are some tidbits from the last week of interest around the interwebby: Who Blotches the Watchmen Dept. Fox, that’s who. On Christmas Eve Judge Gary Allen Feess issued a ruling in favor of Fox in the rights dispute case over the new Watchmen movie that is supposed to premiere on March 3rd. Fox alleged that they owned the rights to produce and distribute a Watchmen movie, and that producer Larry Gordon was breaking a contract between himself and Fox guaranteeing those rights by producing the Zack Synder film and distributing it through Warner Bros.… READ MORE
December 28th, 2008 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: While in school at Syracuse I heard (maybe from Nick Meglin) that the artists of MAD were not paid that well. Essentially they traded exposure in MAD to secure freelance work from other sources. Can you tell me if that was true and if it is still true? If not is payment in accordance with the Graphics Artist Guild standards. Also there is the usual gang of idiots but does Mad negotiate on a separate basis for say a “visiting artist” i.e.. CF Payne? A: This is a bit of a delicate subject, because I am not sure if it is proper to discuss… READ MORE
December 27th, 2008 | Posted in Freelancing
Just a quick post today. Here is this week’s political caricature for The Independent. It will appear in tomorrow’s column both online and in print. I’d love to do more newspaper illustration. Unlike magazine work, it’s much more of a “quick and dirty” sort of exercise. Often you get only a day or so to do the job. It’s less intense because the images need to be relatively simple due to the restrictions of printing on newsprint, and the short deadlines mean you donlt have time to rethink everything over and over. It doesn’t pay all that well (especially these days) compared to magazines or… READ MORE
December 26th, 2008 | Posted in News
A screen capture from “The Watchmen” motion comic I’ve written in the past about the exciting work that my friends Michael Jantze and Kelly McNutt are doing in exploring the transformation of static comic strips into a format for the 21st century. The challenge is to figure out a way to translate the traditional strip comic into a multimedia format that keeps the original feel and function of the strip and is both visually arresting and relatively quick and inexpensive to produce. The idea is to bring strips into the age of the internet by making them deliverable by e-mail, web or cell phone in… READ MORE
December 25th, 2008 | Posted in General
Merry Christmas to all, and Happy Holidays to those celebrating other occasions this time of year. I hope the season finds you happy and healthy in the company of family and friends. For those looking for a little Christmas inspiration, this post from last year about a special Christmas gift that TV personality Rachel Ray gave our autistic daughter Elizabeth (without even knowing she did) says a lot about the simple power we all have to make the world a better place for those who need a little help. READ MORE
December 24th, 2008 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
This week’s sketch is a theme-park style study of Mary-Louise Parker of Showtime’s “Weeds”… another show I hear is good but that I don’t watch. My “theme park” style of drawing is spontaneous, loose and cartoony using a 3mm 4B lead in a lead holder, a blending stomp and a lot of arm movement. I’d make this into a park sample with a little work on the likeness but I’d have a tough time coming up with the “pot” gag that would get past the theme park police. READ MORE
December 23rd, 2008 | Posted in On the Drawing Board
Two big jobs wrapped up yesterday, which leaves a new project for Penthouse (no naughty stuff, just funny) and more of the column header caricatures for The Independent on the board right now. I can’t share the Fade In job until publication, but as always the client for the workplace poster jobs doesn’t mind my posting the images I do for them upon completion. So here is the latest of those posters: Initial Pencil The job was to do an image of a harried looking nurse thinking about a relaxing getaway on a beach, being served hand and foot. The first pencil rough above needed… READ MORE
December 22nd, 2008 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
I did this warm up sketch yesterday and, since I am extremely busy with a few jobs that need wrapping up today it’s all I have time to post. The subject is actor Samuel L. Jackson. This was from a small picture out of an entertainment magazine that jumped out at me as a good representation of him. Often reference pictures just do not capture a subject in a way that really speaks to the viewer of the subject’s complete persona. This is especially true of certain “rubber faced” actors or ones who change their looks drasticlly from role to role. Jackson can look very… READ MORE
