Tom's Mad Blog
May 9th, 2007 | Posted in General
I found a little tidbit in my latest copy of the National Cartoonist Society’s excellent newsletter “The Cartoon!st” about the opening of a very different kind of museum. It seems downtown Indianapolis is now home to “The American Super Heroes Museum“, which houses the collection of Dane Nash. Nash has been a lifelong fan of superheroes and has amassed a gigantic collection of Superman and Batman collectibles including vintage toys, games, posters, puzzles, figurines and other items. Nash apparently has an affinity for Tv and movie costumes and props, as the collection also features screen worn costumes by Superman actors Kirk Alyn, George Reeves, Christopher… READ MORE
May 8th, 2007 | Posted in General
Michael Emerson as Ben Linus, or as Sawyer calls him: “That Bug-eyed Bastard!” This article from yesterday details the final schedule for ABC’s “Lost”. The “100 episode” and “5 season” run has been mentioned several times, but now they seem to have set an exact timeline for the life of the show: 48 more episodes that will span three seasons of 16 uninterrupted shows. I would have preferred two more seasons with 22 episodes each, the first and last episodes each season being two hour specials for a total of 48 hours, but this is tolerable. When LOST came back on the air after that… READ MORE
May 7th, 2007 | Posted in General
For the last few years cartoonists attempted to make May 5th “National Cartoonist’s Day“, mainly by asking syndicated strip cartoonists to mention it in their May 5th strips. There wasn’t much else to it, really. It was supposed to be meant as a way to make people aware of cartooning as a profession, but I still haven’t quite figured out how a self proclaimed holiday would do that. This year I heard nothing about “National Cartoonists Day” in the funnies, so I don’t know if that idea is ag oner or just on hiatus. May 5th was a bigger deal this year in that it… READ MORE
May 6th, 2007 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: The splash pages for your MAD parodies are full of Caricature illustrations/bodies, all set around a relevant scene and I wonder how you go about working out these scenes and where you start with the first pencil lines that will go to make up these scenes? Which by the way are awesome! A: First off, thanks for the kind words! Splash pages are particularly complex. They are like puzzles that need to be figured out and solved. The layouts I receive from MAD include the headers and all the text boxes in place. I also get a script with some descriptions or explanations of… READ MORE
May 5th, 2007 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
Rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg, quick sketch and value study for a possible park sample. My old Snoop drawing needs replacing. Since I’m planning on doing a fair amount of live drawing this year, I’d like to come up with 12 new samples. Ordinarily I’d pick new subjects but Snoop is still relative and a better example of him is in order. READ MORE
May 4th, 2007 | Posted in General
Birthdays seem to pile up faster and faster the older you get. I’m forty one today, but in the immortal words of Indiana Jones… “It’s not the years, Honey… it’s the mileage.” Back in 1989 I became a manager for a caricature concession company at the tender age of 23. I was roughly the same age as the artists I trained and younger than some. At 25 I owned my own caricature businesses and got a lot of funny looks from people when they were told I was the owner of the business. A few years ago I officially contracted an artist to draw caricatures… READ MORE
May 3rd, 2007 | Posted in General
Did you know the long anticipated “Spider-Man III” opens tomorrow in a theater near you? You did? Maybe you’ve seen one or two of the “tie ins” being pimped by everyone from cell phone companies to fast food chains to TV cable services. It’s sure to be a blockbuster. Maybe it’s time to buy some stock in Marvel Entertainment? Not according to this interesting article on “The Spider-Man Trade”, a phenomenon that shows how fast money stock traders drive the price of Marvel stock up when a Spider-Man film is about to be released, and then it nose dives by as much as 50% just… READ MORE
May 2nd, 2007 | Posted in General
I’m finally back from Massachusetts, where I spent several days working at my operations at Six Flags New England. It always takes a few weekends to get the bugs worked out of the young season. I spent some time drawing but most of it teaching some of our new artists our techniques with caricature and airbrush. I’ll be back there again May 18th-20th. The operation in Six Flags New England is by far my largest, with two big caricature, three airbrush tattoo and one (pending) airbrush T-shirt location. The caricature booths we designed and built there are some of the best in any park in… READ MORE
