Tom's Mad Blog
September 12th, 2021 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: Do you ever create non-cartoon/caricature drawings such as portraits or landscapes? If so, how do you manage to shift gears so drastically? A: Very seldom these days. The art college I went to had no cartooning classes. Occasionally in one of my illustration classes I would be able to get away with doing a cartoon image for a certain project, but that was mostly frowned upon. I was trained in classic drawing and painting instead. This actually helped my cartooning (in my opinion) as it forced me to develop my drawing skills, and when I then turned back to cartooning I think my skills… READ MORE
September 10th, 2021 | Posted in General
I took this picture (and maaaaaaybe did a little photoshop work on it) years ago as part of a gag for a presentation I was doing on cartooning. Then I posted it on my blog. It’s become a frequently used meme image and not a week goes by without someone sending me an email saying they saw it on Reddit or Facebook or wherever and did I know someone was using it? Yes, I do. Can I do anything about it? No, I can’t. It’s out there and there is no reeling it back in. I think if I had a dime for everytime someone… READ MORE
September 9th, 2021 | Posted in Illustration Throwback Thursday
Cartoon Network had an animated show called “MAD” that aired from 2010-2013. It was a kind of animated sketch comedy show that was only 11 minutes long, and consisted of all sorts of different styles of animation from flash based to traditional to claymation, etc. I contributed to a number of episodes, usually working on some kind of TV or movie “mash-up”… like this one! This segment mashed up “The Big Bang Theory” with “Twilight” in a bit called “The Big Fang Theory”. The work I did consisted of simplified caricatures of the different actors in character and sometimes some extras. Here are the character… READ MORE
September 8th, 2021 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
Here’s another classic sitcom star that was conspicuously missing from that “History of the Sitcom” illustration I did for CNN… the “Great One”, Jackie Gleason! As always, the original is available in my Studio Store. READ MORE
September 7th, 2021 | Posted in General
My CLAPTRAP cohort Desmond Devlin and I have been keeping our work on the book purposefully under wraps after revealing the splash pages for four different parodies, but this week we thought we’d give you another sneak peek at some of the book… this time part of the cover art! Last week I decided to take a break from working on the interiors of the book to tackle the cover. I had to wait to do the cover until we had all our target movies selected, and once we did I decided to wait a bit longer so I could have a bunch of the… READ MORE
September 6th, 2021 | Posted in General
This is traditionally the last day of summer in the U.S. Enjoy. As they say in Westeros… “winter is coming.” READ MORE
September 5th, 2021 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: As you’ve been revisiting your old work, have you had any OH SH*T moments when you saw something you’d overlooked. I don’t mean things that you look back on and see how you might have done them better, but genuine oversights like “I forgot to give that guy feet”? A: I have been trying to think of any really “OMG I can’t believe that got by me” sort of things but nothing really egregious comes to mind. I notice a LOT of times where I missed coloring something, so someone’s hand is the green of what’s behind it or whatever, but I’ve can’t recall ever giving… READ MORE
September 3rd, 2021 | Posted in General
If you haven’t read any of Sergio Aragonés and Mark Evanier‘s “Groo the Wanderer” comics, then you are missing out on on one of the greatest humorous comics ever created, and that is most definitely NOT hyperbole. Groo’s been around for over 40 years, and his adventures have been published by five differents labels over the decades, currently Dark Horse Comics. There are a LOT of Groo comics out there, including a 120 issue run published by Marvel/Epic from 1985-1995, and many, many multiple issue mini-series. Fortunately they are all enjoyable stories in themselves so you need not start at his first appearance. In fact,… READ MORE
