Tom's Mad Blog
September 8th, 2008 | Posted in Freelancing
Deadlines conquered… again. I had to pull an all-nighter last night to wrap up that MAD job but as they say in the business it’s “in the can!” (okay, that reference is actually from the movie business reffering to when filming is complete and the film reels are in their metal containers, but who cares?). I sometimes get comments from fellow cartoonists and/or illustrators about the amount of work I do, and it’s assumed I must work very fast to squeeze in that kind of volume. In truth I don’t really work that fast, and any reputation I may have for being prolific is much… READ MORE
September 7th, 2008 | Posted in Mailbag
Q:¬¨‚Ć What do your contracts look like? Do you get paid for all the work you put in on a job, or only for a finished project? Once your pencil hits the paper, do you get paid for each step along the way? A: Let’s tackle the middle question first. It’s a bit of a common misconception that an illustrator gets paid for the artwork they create. Technically that is not true. What an illustrator gets paid for, or more accurately what they sell, are the rights to use the artwork they create. A magazine illustrator sells the rights to reproduce their artwork to a… READ MORE
September 6th, 2008 | Posted in General
I originally posted the DDD today but forgot about this “poster” that the folks at MAD released early from an upcoming issue. It’s another in their series of political parody movie posters: This is of course a takeoff on the poster for “Forgetting Sarah Marshall“, a forgettable movie from this year. Last issue they did two posters, one bashing Obama (The 40 year old Polititcal Virgin) and one McCain (No Country for Old Man). MAD has been “leaking” these images on the internet recently. These poster parodies are a smart idea for MAD, serving as a way to combat the challenges of publishing a time… READ MORE
September 6th, 2008 | Posted in General
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September 5th, 2008 | Posted in General
Still really under the gun… I won’t be coming up for air until Monday. I ended up working at Valleyfair on Labor Day and remembered to bring my camera, so here is a sampling of some of the live caricatures I did that day: READ MORE
September 4th, 2008 | Posted in General
My husband Tom asked me to do him a favor. This is not unusual, most days, at least once, I get a request for a favor. Usually it’s to help with paper work, run to the bank or post office, or deliver supplies to one of our booths. Being that I can’t draw or even ink the boxes for his MAD pages, (Yes, this was attempted and I failed miserably) I try to help out where and when I can. Anything so that he can keep working on the deadline. Today’s favor had to do with The MAD Blog. He is trying to finish up… READ MORE
September 3rd, 2008 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
This week’s sketch is a 10 minute warm-up study of my coincidental obsession, Christina Applegate. She’s been in the news recently because of her sudden fight with breast cancer, which it looks like she has beaten. God bless her. I say “coincidental obsession” because for some bizarre reason the Universe has chosen me to be Christina’s official publication caricature artist. I’ve related this story before after I did her latest sitcom as a parody in MAD. Back in the early 90’s I did the pencil work on a comic book series called “Married… with Children” for NOW Comics, and naturally drew Christina all the time… READ MORE
September 2nd, 2008 | Posted in General
This is a holiday that you will find on no official calendar, but it’s one all theme park caricaturists adore. Read that last link if you don’t understand… you need to spend at least one entire summer sweating out on the midway drawing endless lines of snot nosed kids, vain teenagers, drunk couples and surly art critics in order to get it fully. As a theme park concession owner, that goes double for me. Yesterday I was ultimately responsible for 12 art concession locations in three states with a combined work force of about 60 artists. Today… Nada. Nothing. Zero. Oh, except I have a… READ MORE
