Tom's Mad Blog
August 7th, 2008 | Posted in General
Here are a few of the ones I did working at the theme park on Monday. My camera ran out of battery after just a few. You have to love this next one: Grandma rolls this napping baby up in a stroller and insists I draw a caricature of her. I explained I’ll have to draw her sleeping, and he replies “That’s what I want.” <groan>. Ooooookay. The customer is always right! So I did the one above in about 6 minutes. Then I signed it “Steckley”, so just in case it ever gets seen by anyone I know they’ll blame my buddy Ed Steckley… READ MORE
August 6th, 2008 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
I thought I’d try something different this week and do a sketch from a video as opposed to a photo. This week’s subject is the late action film great Lee Marvin. I’ve been really enjoying my home theater lately, thanks to a new projector, Blu-Ray player and Netflicks. Netflicks is a great deal, although it’s lifespan is undoubtably limited as within a few years HD content will be downloadable on-demand from a variety of soruces for your HDTV.. It’s actually available now but the technology for fast downloads isn’t quite there yet. There are a limited number of Blu-ray films available right now but many… READ MORE
August 5th, 2008 | Posted in MAD Magazine
This was all over the internet yesterday… when I first heard about it I thought it might have been a hoax but apparently it was accurate. Hard to believe. This was first reported on The Consumerist website via an anonymous tipster. In MAD #492 there was a 4 page article spoofing a Circuit City Sunday newspaper ad in typical MAD fashion. As it turns out, a few Circuit City stores carry some magazines including, you guessed it, MAD. Overzealous corporate operations executive Elizabeth Barron sent out this mass corporate e-memo (courtesy of The Consumerist): That’s right, she (and by osmosis Circuit City itself) wanted all… READ MORE
August 4th, 2008 | Posted in On the Drawing Board
Currently taking up all my time on the drawing board: MAD Project– Movie parody. I don’t want to give it away as it’s top secret so I am afraid I’ll have to keep everyone in The Dark. Night life will be a luxury I cannot afford for a while, however. 🙂 On Line Game Project– Finishing the last of the character avatars this week. Hopefully it will be on-line soon and I can share the URL. Scholastic job– Three illustrations for one of the Scholastic publications based on Socrates. Stuck in review right now. Workplace poster– Regular job from that client. Speaking of which, here’s… READ MORE
August 3rd, 2008 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: How many of those caricature booth operations do you run? Do you own them yourself or are you acting as contract management with a park or mall (whatever) as the client? How much time do you spend overseeing the artists and/or operations for each setup? A: The retail caricature business is different depending on where you are set up. Malls have a more traditional retail business model base whereas theme parks work a little differently. Currently I have five retail caricature operations, three in seasonal theme parks and two year around in malls, although one is actually in a theme park INSIDE a mall.… READ MORE
August 2nd, 2008 | Posted in MAD Magazine
I didn’t mention anything last week about the 2008 San Diego Comic Con that was going about it’s usual insanity because… well… I didn’t go so therefore didn’t have much to say about it. I’ve only been to it twice. The first time was when I was working for the now defunct NOW Comics and sat at the NOW booth with, among other people, Mr. T who was pimping his comic “Mr. T and the T-Force”. That was…. interesting. The second was a few years ago and I sat mainly at the National Cartoonists Society booth. I’d like to go again someday but the summer… READ MORE
August 1st, 2008 | Posted in General
Every year when the theme parks open up I always say I am going to get at least 6 new samples done to hang up and replace some of my older ones… for a while this year we had one I had done of Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner from “Star Trek: The Next Generation”… with ALF coming out of Data’s open skull!! Circa 1991 I think. Yikes. There is no kid alive today who would recognize Alf. It was busy on Monday but not so busy I was not able to do some new samples for the wall. Faithful readers will recognize them as… READ MORE
July 31st, 2008 | Posted in Freelancing
Yesterday I posted this drawing of Michael Cera and mentioned how it was a “cold” drawing… meaning I had one photo reference to work from and no other familiarity with the subject either from seeing him in a film or on TV, or any other forms of reference. Here’s the photo reference I used: I got a few comments and some private e-mails asking for more details about what it means to draw “cold” and what makes it different from using multiple references or drawing from a live model. I thought it would make a good topic for a more involved post. Drawing caricatures from… READ MORE
