Tom's Mad Blog
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
May 28th, 2008 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
Click for a closer look I ran across this partially completed ink drawing of “The X-Files” stars Robert Patrick and Gillian Anderson (this was when David Duchovny had left the show for his brilliant film career) from a number of years ago and thought, given the new movie coming out, it might be somewhat timely. I did the drawing just for testing out some new ink nibs and different kinds of ink when I was experimenting with different tools. You can see I used a sepia ink for some of it, which I found way too watery. In fact there are four different inks on… READ MORE
May 27th, 2008 | Posted in General
Another Reuben Awards in the books. This was our 10th time attending… The Lovely Anna and I have never missed one since I became a member in 1999. Cartooning is a strange business and occupation… it’s one where you strive to communicate with the world through humor via words and images, yet most do it sitting alone at their drawing table with little or no interaction with others. It’s a solitary process and the feedback you get can be little to none. That’s what makes the NCS such a great organization, and the Reubens such an important function to so many. It’s the one place… READ MORE
