Tom's Mad Blog
September 1st, 2008 | Posted in News
Last week I wrote about the Walt Disney Hometown Toonfest event in Marceline, MO and how my chapter of the National Cartoonists Society is going to have our fall meeting at the event. Since I wrote that and began organizing our chapter’s meeting I have been tapped by the Toonfest organizers to both emcee the speaker’s presentations on both Friday (Student Day) and Saturday as well as do my own speaking presentation on both days. Looks like I just went from a spectator to a spectacle for the weekend event. Here is a link to the speaker lineup for the event, and here is the… READ MORE
August 31st, 2008 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I worked doing retail caricatures I know that it is hard to hire someone trustworthy and is a good artist. Especially to be a manager at one of your concessions. Here in L.A. we always had someone (even managers) pilfering from the till. Are the artists permitted to display their own samples? Will you ever acknowledge them (not the criminals but the worthy artists) on your blog? A: I don’t often write about the business side of the retail caricature business here because I don’t think that is a topic that anyone but a very small few might care about or get anything out… READ MORE
August 30th, 2008 | Posted in On the Drawing Board
Whew… No matter how much I try and guard against it, every once and a while a freelance job “get’s away from you” and ends up being 10 times the amount of work you thought it would be. I just finished such a project tonight that has been on my board, at various stages of concepts, pencils, approvals, revisions, reviews and finals for about 4 months. It didn’t seem like such a big job when I took it on, but it ballooned into a lot of work. Fortunately the clients were very patient, and were willing to adjust my compensation when it became apparent the… READ MORE
August 29th, 2008 | Posted in General
Eccccch! READ MORE
August 28th, 2008 | Posted in General
Here’s another of those oddball advertising jobs that come along, you do them and get paid for them, but they never get produced or used in the way intended. This project was done a few years ago for an ad agency. They wanted a “superhero” team designed in a style somewhat reminiscent of the Bruce Timm animated look for some ad campaign pitch to Canon, the photocopy/consumer electronics company. I got the job via referral from a fellow illustrator. I needed to design 5 heroes, two of which were a hero/sidekick combo. I honestly don’t remember the exact details but the leader of the group… READ MORE
August 27th, 2008 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
I thought I’d do something different for “Sketch o’the Week” this week. I’m a member of an international organization of caricature artists called the National Caricaturists Network, which I occasionally blog about here. Part of membership is access to a private forum where ideas, opinions and artwork are shared concerning caricatures and the business of caricatures. One of the forum sections is called “The Firing Squad”, where members post pictures of themselves and other members draw their caricature. A lot of the caricatures in my “Me Gallery” come from there. This week I thought I’d take a person from “The Firing Squad” and do a… READ MORE
August 26th, 2008 | Posted in General
As long as we are on the subject of Batman movies… If you happen to have an extra $110,000 laying about, head over to eBayландшафт and bid on this ’89 Batmobile. The seller describes it as one of the 5 original cars built for the Tim Burton 1989 film starring Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson. From the interior it sure looks authentic… there are a few batmobiles of this type about that were built for Six Flag’s stuntshows but the interior of those were minimal with a space for a hidden driver to make the car appear like it was remote controlled. I’ve always loved… READ MORE
August 26th, 2008 | Posted in News
Regular blog reader Chip O’Brien sent me a link yesterday to this article about how “Iron Man” star Robert Downey Jr. disses “The Dark Knight” in this article on Moviehole.net. “My whole thing is that I saw ‘The Dark Knight’. I feel like I’m dumb because I feel like I don’t get how many things that are so smart. It’s like a Ferrari engine of storytelling and script writing and I’m like, ‘That’s not my idea of what I want to see in a movie.’ I loved ‘The Prestige’ but didn’t understand ‘The Dark Knight’. Didn’t get it, still can’t tell you what happened in… READ MORE
