Tom's Mad Blog
April 24th, 2008 | Posted in General
I use WordPress blog software for The MAD Blog, and while the only other software I’ve tried is Blogger I like WordPress a lot. It’s easy to use and maintain, and the extensive number of free plug in programs allows for a lot of flexibility to get the blog to do what I want it to do. The MAD blog is self hosted, meaning it’s not a WordPress.com based blog, so when updates to WordPress are released there is always a little anxiety when I finally take the plunge and do the update. A blog’s “theme”, meaning the format and look of the blog itself,… READ MORE
April 23rd, 2008 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
Not very ambitious this week, but here’s a very quick and cartoony study of George W. Bush. It was actually one of several sketches I did early on in a product illustration job that I just wrapped up. READ MORE
April 22nd, 2008 | Posted in On the Drawing Board
Back to the studio tonight, then back to the usual thing. The freelance work doesn’t stop when I’m on the road, and this trip was no exception. I finished a product illustration job while here in Massachusetts using my Wacom tablet for part of it and borrowing my buddy Ed Steckley‘s new Cintiq portable for the last part. I have to say I thought it worked very well and may have to pick one of those up this summer. I also did the above sketch for a workplace poster job while sitting at the theme park in between drawing caricatures and working with the new… READ MORE
April 21st, 2008 | Posted in General
I’ve been at my theme park operation at Six Flags New England since Friday. I’ll be returning tomorrow afternoon. It’s always a big job getting these things up and running… especially this one. Fortunately I’ve got good people taking care of things. I’ve been trying to work with the rookie artists and tweak the details all weekend. Here’s some pics of some of the various locations we have in this park doing caricatures, airbrush t-shirts and airbrush tattoos: Our busiest caricature location in the Harbor area Airbrush T-Shirts, hats and other apparel Temporary Airbrush Tattoos- one of three locations. This one is in the DC… READ MORE
April 20th, 2008 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: What kinds of things do you do to get new work? Online portfolio sites? Sending out postcards? Or have you hit that point where you get most of your work from the work you’ve done before? I’m always interested in how people maintain and grow their client base. A: Honestly I get most of my work through either word of mouth from one art director to another, from an art director seeing one of my pieces in another publication and looking me up or from previous clients calling to do new projects. I do not do any active pursuit of new work other than… READ MORE
April 19th, 2008 | Posted in It's All Geek to Me!
One thing I never really thought much about as far as my computer equipment goes is my keyboard… and what would I? Keyboards are pretty much the same all over, and there’s been little innovation with them since computers became a big part of everyday life. What little innovation they’ve seen has been in the ergonomic department (remember those weird curved keyboards with the keys separated into two sections?) and in adding all sorts of remote function or macro buttons like “one touch” email, play controls for your DVD drive, etc. Despite the fact that keyboards are used everyday and for some all day every… READ MORE
April 18th, 2008 | Posted in News
Christina Beard and Evan Palmer, 2007 NCSF Scholarship winners In 2007 the National Cartoonist Society Foundation, of which I am honored to be a board member and to serve on the scholarship committee as well as chair the investment committee, gave away two scholarship awards to college students studying cartooning/animation. That year the awards were the Herblock and Mendez awards, named after the estates that provided the funds. This being our first year of giving out scholarships, we presented the awards to a single school, the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD), and they were dispersed to two deserving students studying comic art and… READ MORE
April 17th, 2008 | Posted in General
MAD #488 was a fairly significant issue for a number of reasons… the first time they did an all concept issue, The missing Dick DeBartolo credit, etc. One major significant item that slipped a little under the radar was the return of former regular MAD cover artist Roberto Parada, who contributed to the magazine for the first time since he did the cover of MAD #437 in March of 2003. That’s a stretch of 5 years and 51 issues. His issue #488 piece (see below) was part of the “MOMA: The Museum of Monkey Art” catalogue parody. Roberto’s fantastic oil paintings had been gracing the… READ MORE
