Tom's Mad Blog
December 1st, 2007 | Posted in General
Cartoons at Large Dept. A study conducted at the University of Central Lancashire in the United Kingdom has determined that caricatures drawn of crooks were twice as easy to identify with their targets than traditional photofits. According to the article from The Guardian UK: In tests, volunteers were asked to identify people from the standard photofit of their face and from their caricature. On average, a photofit face was correctly identified 20% of the time, compared with 40% for the caricature, according to a report in this month’s Visual Cognition journal. I can see it now… “Attention all units, be on the lookout for suspect… READ MORE
November 30th, 2007 | Posted in It's All Geek to Me!
Wacom just announced the release of a new version of it’s Cintiq line of pressure sensitive tablets/LCD monitors… the 12WX. Unlike the heavy and bulky 21UX and it’s predecessors, this one designed to be far more portable and lightweight… more like a sketchbook for “on the go”…. sorry, I just drooled a little bit. The Cintiq’s are a combination of a pressure sentive tablet and an LCD monitor, enabling the user to draw right on the screen using all the benefits and features of a wacom tablet. I use the Cintiq 21UX in the studio, and love it. The new Cintiq 12WX is much smaller… READ MORE
November 29th, 2007 | Posted in Freelancing
Last week I posted the final artwork for an ad job I did for Hardee’s Restaurants that was supposed to be used in full page ads in Rolling Stone and other magazines, but ended up not being used at all due to ad budget cuts and instead was used for some internal promotion. That may seem outrageous but that is what sometimes happens in the advertising business. Companies often just burn up money producing images and designs for ad campaigns that never get off the ground. I’ll get paid full rates (and advertising generally pays a lot better than editorial) to do finished art that… READ MORE
November 28th, 2007 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
The silicon enhanced, calorically challenged former Posh Spice Victoria Beckham. This is a study where the body and posture are central to the caricature. READ MORE
November 27th, 2007 | Posted in It's All Geek to Me!
A Guide for the Visual Artist: Mac OS 10.5 Leopard Computer operating systems are tricky pieces of software. Imagine if the manufacturer of your car, something you use and need every day, had to build their vehicles so that you could buy and use seats from one company, a steering wheel from another, tires from a third, etc. That’s the challenge for companies like Microsoft… write a program that runs your computer put will also work with all the hardware and software out there on store shelves. The car analogy goes even further in that most consumers don’t need (or care) to know how a… READ MORE
November 26th, 2007 | Posted in On the Drawing Board
I have a moderate amount of stuff on the board right now. Today I had deadlines for two jobs, one a workplace poster and one an ad job… both “in the can” as they say in the bidness. The poster job is another of the workplace posters which I can share after I complete, so that is posted below. Other stuff right now includes: MAD– I’m trying to wrap up that two pager from September that got bumped because I have a new one coming possibly today, and it’s going to be a really fun job. There is something to like about every MAD job,… READ MORE
November 25th, 2007 | Posted in Mailbag
Q; I am an artist who also has a son who is interested in becoming an artist for a living. Do you have any advice on how to teach him the skills necessary to pursue this career? A: I don’t know how young your son is, but with kids the most important thing is just to encourage them to keep exploring their art and artistic interests. Pablo Picasso once said: “All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.“ I believe that wholeheartedly. Children see and interpret the world through eyes unclouded by preconceptions eventually forced on them… READ MORE
November 24th, 2007 | Posted in General
Rather than post the Dreaded Deadline Demon today since I am swamped with Monday deadlines, I’m posting a suitably lame list of links to MAD related articles, sites and other general wastes of time and drains on American productivity. Fa fa fa. Han Shot First Dept.- There is a nice feature about the MAD parodies of the Star Wars films over on starwars.com, including an article with Mort Drucker and a Q&A with writer Dick Debartolo. Mort was the artist on all the film parodies except the original Star Wars (Harry North did that one, but Mort later did the “musical version”) and the last… READ MORE
