Tom's Mad Blog
November 3rd, 2007 | Posted in It's All Geek to Me!
I’ve written here before about the format war that is slowly heating up between Blu-Ray and HD DVD. Briefly these are two competing formats of next generation DVD, which both use blue laser technology to enable far higher storage capacity on a single disc, allowing them to contain high definition content. Each can hold a full movie in high def, which is 6 times the resolution of a regular DVD and takes advantage of that shiny new HDTV so many people now have. While each player also plays regular DVDs, neither works with the other flavor of HD format. Blu-ray is backed principally by Sony,… READ MORE
November 2nd, 2007 | Posted in News
While I am on the subject of the NCS, it’s a good time again to remind everybody about the scholarships in cartooning that the National Cartoonist Society’s NCS Foundation have available. I am on the Foundation board and involved in both the scholarship and financial committees. These scholarships are exciting as they are some of only a few dedicated to cartooning… a very rare resource for young cartoonists. Again, the scholarships are not tied to a single school or even to an art major. They are about encouraging young artists to pursue careers in cartooning, be they animators, comic book artists, editorial cartoonists, strip cartoonists…… READ MORE
November 1st, 2007 | Posted in News
Every year my “local” chapter of the National Cartoonists Society, the North Central Chapter, has a meeting/conference chock full of guest speakers and general cartoonist’s shenanigans. This year our chapter chairman is Oliver Christiansen, better known as wacky Hallmark card super artist Revilo, and the chapter meeting is taking place in his hometown of Kansas City this Saturday, November 3rd. As such, I will be traveling to KC tomorrow to take part in the festivities. I say “local” chapter with quotes because out chapter is anything but local. There are so many cartoonists in the upper east coast area that there are no less than… READ MORE
October 30th, 2007 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
This week’s sketch is Grey’s Anatomy star Patrick Dempsey. I started it too close to the binder of the sketchbook and so it hangs into the spiral. I was working on it at Valleyfair the other day and some lady yelled at me for making his nose look like that. I thought I was being nice. READ MORE
October 30th, 2007 | Posted in It's All Geek to Me!
I got my Mac Pro back on Saturday and all was once again right with the world. I’m not sure they did anything at all to it, but as long as it’s working right it’s all good. I also picked up a copy of the brand spanking new release of Mac OS 10.5 aka “Leopard”, the much ballyhooed new operating system upgrade from Apple. Leopard has some nifty and powerful new feature as well as a whole lot of eye candy, and not upgrading is a little like Stimpy being unable to resist the red “candy-like” button with the “Do Not Push” sign over it.… READ MORE
October 29th, 2007 | Posted in On the Drawing Board
I’m busy right now on the final coloring for two MAD jobs, plus an ad job and another poster after that, then we’ll see if I get a breather. These “On the Drawing Board” posts are getting harder to do, because I can never show what I am working on as most clients don’t want that made public until after it’s seen print. Instead of “On the Drawing Board” I should started calling them “On the drawing board about 6 weeks ago and I’ve forgotten all about it by now…” October may have been the busiest month I’ve ever had freelance-wise… at one time I… READ MORE
October 28th, 2007 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: Do any of your children share an interest in cartooning or art? Would you encourage or discourage them from that interest? Would or do you employ them at any of your concessions? A: All of my kids are creatively talented and interested in the arts. They all draw and do it very well, but none of them have much of an interest in being a professional artist. My oldest Elizabeth, 17, is autistic and very musical. She can hear a song and sing or hum it without missing a note right after. Victoria, 15, draws very well and is thinking about doing caricatures when… READ MORE
October 27th, 2007 | Posted in It's All Geek to Me!
I took my Mac into the Apple Store on Wednesday for it’s annual tune up… part of a service package you can get where they run tests, check software, clean it up and make sure it’s working in top shape. I wanted to get it done prior to upgrading to the new Mac OS 10.5 “Leopard” operating system, which I may or may not do depending on some hardware compatibility issues with my Microteck scanner. Looks like I picked a bad time. The “World Premiere” of Leopard (are we really that far gone that a piece of software has a “World Premiere”??) was today, and… READ MORE
