Tom's Mad Blog
May 25th, 2007 | Posted in News
Once again it’s time for the National Cartoonist Society‘s annual Reuben Awards, this year in sunny Orlando, FL. We arrived last night and today begins the festivities. There are some great speakers lined up in Sam Gross, Bud Grace, Jerry Van Amerongen and Mort Walker, as well as lot’s of other fun stuff. They’ll be a few MAD men around as well including art director Sam Viviano, former editor Nick Meglin and who knows who else. As I wrote in this post, I am nominated for a few divisional Reuben awards in “Magazine/Magazine Feature Illustration” and “Advertising Illustration”. I’ll find out on Saturday night if… READ MORE
May 24th, 2007 | Posted in It's All Geek to Me!
We have a wireless home network in the house, with our DSL line connected to a wireless router in my studio. We run a 802.11g Linksys unit and have an extender up on the top floor. My Mac is the only computer hardwired into the router… all the kid’s and The Lovely Anna’s computers have Wireless-G adapters and connect to the internet in that way. We are pretty secure with no broadcasting of a network SSID (the neighbors cannot see our network, and you must know the exact name of the SSID to access it) and password protected login. 802.11n is the latest flavor of… READ MORE
May 23rd, 2007 | Posted in General
Tonight is the big season finale of “LOST”, which I will miss because of… I also haven’t seen the season finale of “Heroes”. Thank goodness for TIVO. Now I just have to avoid listening to anybody discussing either show until late next week… In the meantime, as if anyone has the time to waste on a game as opposed to watching TV, there is a new game for the iPod out based on the LOST TV show. Just what I need, another possible distraction. LOST Game Screen Capture It looks extremely cool. You play as Jack and have to find food and water (and dynamite),… READ MORE
May 22nd, 2007 | Posted in General
The Calvin and Hobbes video I linked to a few days ago has generated a lot of discussion concerning copyrights and “fair use” on other boards that featured it. On the same subject, this video has been making the rounds on a lot of illustration blogs and message boards lately: It was produced by Stanford University‘s “Fair Use Project” and advised by Lawrence Lessig, a prominent figure in copyright and fair use law. It begins with the following disclaimer (done as a parody of the familiar “FBI” warning before all DVD/VHS films): WARNING: Federal Law allows citizens to reproduce, distribute, or exhibit portions of copyrighted… READ MORE
May 21st, 2007 | Posted in General
Regular readers may remember a month or two ago I wrote about the announced release of Adobe‘s Photoshop CS3, and how I was planning on not caving into the pressure to upgrade right away. I was planning on waiting for any bugs to be worked out and for prices to possibly drop a bit for the upgrade. Well, I caved. I got the Adobe Creative Suite 3 Deign Standard upgrade, with CS3 versions of Illustrator, Indesign Photoshop and the latest Acrobat a few weeks ago. I used it to do some illustration work for an ad job last week, which included a fully painted illustration.… READ MORE
May 20th, 2007 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: How about an article or two about how to caricature? I’m a cartoonist, but I’ve never been able to caricature well… I’d love to hear some of your tricks and tips. Thanks for the great blog! A: Your welcome and thanks for the compliment. I’ve been in the process of doing a book on drawing caricatures for a long time now, but I keep changing my mind whether I want it to be a ‘how to’ on drawing live caricatures, an overall thesis on caricaturing in general, or a combination of both. I’m afraid the combo would be confusing, as learning the art of… READ MORE
May 19th, 2007 | Posted in General
Only once a generation or so does a comic strip come along that is embraced that it becomes a classic. Peanuts, of course, is the ultimate example but more recently Calvin and Hobbes fits that bill. It was a real shame Bill Watterson quit after only a decade or so of doing it… the art, characters and writing all blended to create something special. Even his “off” days, the ones where the gag was one of those weak ones, were enjoyable. This is via The Daily Cartoonist: This apparently was created as a final project by an Italian film school animator. I’m not sure how… READ MORE
May 18th, 2007 | Posted in It's All Geek to Me!
Back when it was announced, I wrote this article on the upcoming iPhone and how candy-like the appeal would be for it… at least for me. It may be a long time before I look into getting one now. I talked at length with a friend who is as AT&T Wireless store manager about the upcoming iPhone. Under condition of anonymity he told me most AT&T employees are unhappy with Apple and the way they are leaving AT&T on the hook for what is sure to be angry customer backlash over Apple’s handling of the ‘release’ of the gadget. They are not allowed to tell… READ MORE
