Tom's Mad Blog
June 4th, 2008 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
This week’s sketch is of the incredibly frightening prop-happy comedien Scott “Carrot Top” Thompson. This is an example of why you should not take steroids. Juice monkeys have a certain look to them… and this is it. As if the eye makeup and hair wasn’t scary enough… Here are the two pics I used as the reference for this drawing, just so you can see I am not exaggerating much. Look at the deformity in his shoulders and the thin skin. You can’t see it but his legs are stick thin… It’s guys like this that give bodybuilding a bad name. READ MORE
June 3rd, 2008 | Posted in General
Today is a sad anniversary. Sixteen years ago today MAD founder and longtime publisher William M. Gaines passed away at the age of 70. Working for MAD is great. The people and staff there really respect the tradition and history of the magazine. However I will always feel that I missed out on something special in that I never met or knew Bill Gaines. I started for MAD about 9 years after Bill’s passing. While MAD has of course continued since his death a chapter of its history closed on June 3rd, 1992. In his time as publisher I’ve heard that nearly every page of… READ MORE
June 2nd, 2008 | Posted in General
Well, not literally…. although with the spring we’ve had in Minnesota I wouldn’t bet against snow in June. I mean snowed under with jobs right now. I finished my MAD job but have two other major projects that are coming due right now so this week and next are going to be a continuation of the same old story. I wanted to post my thoughts on the season finale of LOST, which I finally got to watch last night… but I really cannot justify that time right now. I just couldn’t bring myself to post the Dreaded Deadline Demon again today, so instead here is… READ MORE
June 1st, 2008 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: Whenever work gets slow, I always think about trying to get an artist’s rep to circulate my work around. Have you ever used one, and if so, what do you think of them? A: Reps are great if you can get a good one. I’ve heard horror stories about bad ones, so you need to be careful. I’ve never had a real rep, although I am a part of Cagle Cartoons’ small stable of custom illustrators, and have gotten a few jobs from them over the years. For those who may not know what a “rep” is, the term is short for “representative” and… READ MORE
May 31st, 2008 | Posted in General
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May 30th, 2008 | Posted in News
This morning I got a phone call from my friend, NYC illustrator Ed Steckley, who informed me my website was acting strangely. It was insisting on installing a program that his anti-virus software was jumping up and down and yelping about being a very naughty program. I couldn’t even open the website at all on my Mac. A few e-mails to my excellent webhosts, A2Zhost.net, and it was discovered that someone hacked my blog this morning and inserted some Javascript code to require a browser to download some kind of virus, adware or spyware something or another. The folks at A2Z fixed it all up… READ MORE
May 30th, 2008 | Posted in News
I forgot to mention one other good thing to come out of the Reuben weekend was that the NCS addressed the Orphan Works legislation at their annual business meeting on Saturday morning. Stu Rees, the NCS’s official unofficial lawyer to the membership, educated those at the meeting about the bill and what it could mean to them. It’s a larger problem for some of the long time cartoonists who have done tens of thousands of gag cartoons or illustrations over the years who could easily find their work being used without their consent or without the chance to negotiate a fair rate for it, as… READ MORE
May 29th, 2008 | Posted in On the Drawing Board
I’m really up against it right now, but here’s a poster illustration from last week, pencils, inks and color: Click for a closer look Click for a closer look I’m currently killing myself on a MAD job due tomorrow, followed by the finals of the “Super Capers” movie job and then the web game design job. Then….. ????? READ MORE
