Tom's Mad Blog
February 24th, 2008 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: As a college art student, or a freelancer, one is faced with many late nights in a row working to meet deadlines. I’ve had many of these instances and I found myself very sleep deprived, but I still had to push on through. I found that the motor skills start to detiriorate after several days of little to no sleep. Inking becomes very difficult and even sketching can be a challenge, not to mention trying to be creative in such a state. Have you ever experienced this, and how do you deal with it. A: Monster Lo-Carb. Seriously, I know what you are saying.… READ MORE
February 23rd, 2008 | Posted in General
Still crazy busy with deadlines for multiple clients, so today I am just going to post this reminder again about my guest speaker appearance and inking workshop March 2-5th in St. Louis. It’s my last reminder, I promise… although I’ll be posting reports on the event after it’s over. It’s not too late to register and attend… in fact you can do it at the door (just not with a credit card). You do not need to attend the entire three day event as they have special admission fees for just a workshop or some of the seminars that will be held. There are some… READ MORE
February 22nd, 2008 | Posted in General
I’m paying the price right now for spending too much time doing tutorials on the blog. Ugh… Meanwhile <insert shameless plug here> don’t forget to visit The MAD Blog Store to get your very own T-shirt, poster, clock or other piece of crap with the Dreaded Deadline Demon or The MAD Blog logo on it! READ MORE
February 21st, 2008 | Posted in Tutorials
This series of “How to Draw Caricatures” tutorials are a just a small taste of a larger and much more in-depth book I wrote called The Mad Art of Caricature! The book is 175 full-color pages, lavishly illustrated and contains greatly expanded explanations of the concepts presented in these tutorials, as well and a great deal of additional material on caricaturing other facial features, posture, hands, expression and more, techniques on drawing from live models, doing caricature for freeplace illustration and for MAD Magazine. This is a must have book for anyone interested in caricature, cartooning or humorous illustration. You can order it online here.… READ MORE
February 20th, 2008 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
This week’s sketch is a quick study of “Firefly” and “Serenity” star Gina Torres. I never really watched the TV show but I did see the movie, and I find her face very fascinating… her eyes are sleepy but intense and her mouth has a perpetual pursed look to it. Lot’s of fun to draw. READ MORE
February 19th, 2008 | Posted in It's All Geek to Me!
The high definition disk format war is basically over, and HD DVD is down for the count. All that’s left is to see if the “winner”, Blu-Ray, will eventually win the bigger battle… taking over for standard DVD as the next generation of entertainment media. After the surprise announcement several weeks ago by Warner Bros. Studios that it was dropping support for HD DVD and going exclusively Blu-Ray, it’s been one knockout punch after another for HD DVD. In the last week alone, Netflix announced it was dropping HD DVD offerings through their on-line mail based movie rental business, Best Buy said they would recommend… READ MORE
February 18th, 2008 | Posted in News
The official brochure for the upcoming 62nd Annual National Cartoonists Society Reuben Awards weekend is now arriving in member’s mailboxes, so it’s safe to share the artwork I did back in December for this year’s event (text designed by Steve McGarry): Humans (from left to right): Mike Peters, Sandra Boynton, Mark Tatulli, Mort Gerberg, Tom Batiuk. Cartoon characters: uhhh… you figure it out. Click image for a closer look… As always the art will be on the official Reuben Weekend t-shirts and other stuff, but this year it’s also serving as the cover of the brochure and program. It’s always a pleasure to do this… READ MORE
February 17th, 2008 | Posted in Freelancing
Q: What do you do to keep yourself motivated and avoid burn-out? A: That’s a tough one, because frankly I don’t stay motivated and avoid burn out. You would think that if you do something you really love to do for a living then working would be like going to a candy store every day. The reality is that no matter how much you like doing what you do, it’s still work and some days you just don’t want to work. I think this is especially true when you do creative work, because while it’s not ‘digging ditches’ it’s mentally and creatively exhausting. Sometimes you… READ MORE
