Tom's Mad Blog
April 10th, 2007 | Posted in General
A quick sketch of James Gandlofini as “Tony Soprano”. I used a small reference showing him grinning as you seldom see illustrations of him like that. He has this creepy, snaggletooth grin… I caught “The Sopranos” Sunday night after the holiday weekend. I had to refresh my memory about what happened last season as it seems about 5 years since it was last on (actually about 2 years). That is way too long to expect viewers to stay interested, but the excellence of this show makes it frustrating but forgivable. I’ll watch the rest of the episodes but I’m glad to see this series come… READ MORE
April 9th, 2007 | Posted in News
The Wonderful Wizard of ID- Johnny Hart, the cartoonist behind the long time and popular comic strips B.C. and The Wizard of ID, passed away on Saturday apparently from complications after a stroke. I never met Mr. Hart but he was a member of the National Cartoonist Society and the target of many gags at events about the later religious themes in his work. I always enjoyed the dry and irreverent humor of his strips, which seemed a lot more sarcastic than the straight gags of many of his contemporaries. Drawings from Beyond the Grave– This bizarre item, which I got from Drawn!, claims that… READ MORE
April 8th, 2007 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I have some larger size artwork (like 18″x24″) to scan and I have not been able to find a home scanner that can scan this size. I have taken some stuff to Staples to scan on their large machine but it gets kind of expensive. Can you tell me if you have an easy way to scan large artwork? (I assume you scan your large pages for MAD??) A: A full MAD spread is 21″ x 32.25″ at 200% print size, so I have this problem a lot. I have a Microtek 9600XL 12 x 17 scanner, which is as big as they get… READ MORE
April 7th, 2007 | Posted in General
I was raking through the flat files the other day and came across a tearsheet from my very first magazine illustration job. I’ve still got the original around here somewhere as well. It occurred to me the manner in which I got this job was exactly in line with David Levine‘s advice about relationships being a key to freelance success. Yikes. Everything’s lumpy… This was circa 1991. I had been doing comic book pencils for NOW Comics for a year or two, and had freshly moved back to Minnesota from Atlanta when I received a phone call from Kyle Peterson, a friend of mine from… READ MORE
April 6th, 2007 | Posted in General
A golden oldie from the flat files… Since I had that brutal deadline this week, Wednesday night was the first time I was able to go to a Minnesota Twins game during the season opening series at the Metrodome. The Lovely Anna took daughter Gabrielle (13) on Monday and son Thomas (10) on Tuesday, while I took daughter Victoria (14) to witness a sweep of the Baltimore Orioles to open the year. Daughter Elizabeth (17) doesn’t give a hoot about the Twins, but I forgive her because of the whole autism thing. I love baseball. Even though in the last few years it’s been tarnished… READ MORE
April 5th, 2007 | Posted in Freelancing
Several people commented on yesterday’s article on deadlines, both via the comments here and via e-mail. So I thought I’d follow up on a few other thoughts about deadlines. Shawn chimed in to say that, despite the financial uncertainty, he’s glad he made the jump to freelancing. With regard to freelancing versus employment, he says: “There’s so many arguments for either side. I personally find that I’m more satisfied and work harder for myself at home than in an office environment for a company. The trick is time and money management.” I am also glad to be freelancing successfully. That said, it isn’t as much… READ MORE
April 4th, 2007 | Posted in Freelancing
Good news! I’m not dead and I’m done with that MAD job. I’ll share the art on the blog upon publication next month. That may have been the shortest deadline I’ve gotten so far from them. Ahhhh deadlines… the bane of the freelancer’s existence. Every freelancer wrestles with deadlines, and we all complain about them. We complain about how short they are or how they are not flexible or not realistic. They are imposed on us and stress us out. How they eat into our time and brains and creativity, or make us compromise on aspects of our work to meet them. Deadlines are the… READ MORE
April 3rd, 2007 | Posted in General
Either I am done with this MAD job by tomorrow morning, or I die trying. One or the other. So, no time to blog. Just for fun, though, here’s something interesting. Regular readers might remember this little job I did for the Minnesota Twins last fall… a T-Shirt design based on the “Little Piranha” nickname they embraced last season. The Lovely Anna and my youngest daughter Gabrielle went to the opening day Twins ballgame last night versus the Baltimore Orioles (I was working, of course…) and came home with a program. In it was some announcements of upcoming promotions they would be having this season.… READ MORE
