Tom's Mad Blog

The Dreaded Deadline Demon

October 4th, 2007 | Posted in General

Seriously, I may be the busiest I have ever been suddenly with six major projects to do in a little over a week. We may be seeing the Dreaded Deadline Demon a lot in the coming days. READ MORE

Sketch O’The Week

October 3rd, 2007 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week

The new “Bionic Woman”, Michelle Ryan. I was finally able to watch the premiere the other night, and will try and watch episode two tonight before I impart my first impressions of the show. READ MORE

Adventures in Wineland

October 2nd, 2007 | Posted in General

Some grapes still on the vine even in late September in Sonoma The Lovely Anna and I have been lucky enough to travel to some wonderful destinations together over the years. Places like New York City, Hawaii, New Orleans, Paris, Cancun, Chicago, Scottsdale, Orlando, Atlanta and a number of other cities and areas of the US and the world. We’ve enjoyed all of them and often play a little game about what it would be like to live there (especially Hawaii), but in the end we always agree that home is Minnesota. We just can’t see ourselves living anywhere else, even given the attractions of… READ MORE

Minnesota Comic Book Con

October 1st, 2007 | Posted in News

This weekend is the annual Minnesota “FallCon” comic book convention at the State Fairgrounds. The last few years I’ve managed to get there once or twice. This year I’ll be at a table with a stack of MAD’s to sign, a bunch of original art for sale and I’ll be doing caricatures as well. Last year we combined the con with our chapter meeting for the North Central Chapter of the National Cartoonists Society, and had a North Central table plus did a panel discussion on cartooning with myself, Micheal Jantze (THE NORM comic strip), Cedric Honstadt (OPPOSITE FORCES, and 3-2-1 PENGUINS ) and Jerry… READ MORE

Sunday Mailbag

September 30th, 2007 | Posted in Mailbag

Q: My question is about how you go about getting your ideas for an assignment or a piece. I assume your clients offer different amount of direction, where do you get your concepts when you have a bit more freedom? Also, do you see the end image in your imagination before putting it down on paper? Have you ever been stymied? A: I always tell people that illustration is communication, and my job as an illustrator is to communicate an idea, message or subject to the viewer through an image inthe same way the writer of whatever article I am illustration is doing with words.… READ MORE

Huzzah!

September 29th, 2007 | Posted in General

Virtually every year The Lovely Anna and I go to the Minnesota Renaissance Festival, a weekends-only fair in August and September set up like a renaissance village complete with buildings, actors in character, shows, costuming and a ton of food and drink. Our first “Ren Fest” together was 20 years ago, right after we’d become engaged. We’ve only missed a handful of years since. It’s a lot more fun to go in costume than just in jeans and a t-shirt. A lot of people really get dressed up and some play their part as well as any of the ‘professional’ actors on the grounds in… READ MORE

Likeness in Voice

September 28th, 2007 | Posted in General

I am a terrible impressionist. I can only do impressions of other people doing impressions… like your standard Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sean Connery, etc. They aren’t very good. However I have found that many caricaturists are actually pretty good mimics. It might have to do with some kind of empathy with their subjects. ..who knows? One such caricaturist is a young man from Hawaii who occasionally comments on this blog, Piotr Walczuk. He’s a fellow member of the National Caricaturists Network, and his talent for voices is amazing. I’ve been meaning to posts some links to his website for a while now, and now he’s got… READ MORE

On the Drawing Board

September 27th, 2007 | Posted in On the Drawing Board

Here are a few of the projects I’ve wrapped up in the last week or so… at least the ones that are okay to share at this time: Workplace Poster: This one ended up being a lot tougher to do than expected, as the client wanted the main car on it’s own layer so he could do an animation of the image as well as a static poster. that meant I had to draw the cars parked behind the main car, as well as complete the front and back end of the main car. I also had the foreground cars on their own layer so… READ MORE

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