Tom's Mad Blog
March 15th, 2007 | Posted in MAD Magazine
The latest issue of MAD is in comic shops this week, and on newsstands on Tuesday. It contains my parody of “Entourage”. I’ll post some sneak peeks of that parody, along with some of the pencils and such tomorrow. One noteworthy tidbit about this issue of MAD. According to Mike Slaubaugh and his MAD Lists website, this issue represents Sergio Aragones’ 400th appearance in the magazine. He has only missed one issue since his first appearance in MAD #76, over 40 years ago! Congratulations or sympathies to Sergio, depending on your point of view. According to Mike’s list, I’ve got only 342 more appearances to… READ MORE
March 14th, 2007 | Posted in News
Last year I received an e-mail from a design firm I did a 2004 cover job for, who told me a cover we had done won an award though neither she or I were notified. Today I found out a different cover illustration I did last year for Infoworld Magazine won a gold medal for best cover illustration of 2005 from TABPI (Trade Associations Business Publications International). This was the 2005 award winner (!!??) Don’t get me wrong, it’s very nice to be recognized but this isn’t a particularly great piece of art, so it’s being deserving of any award is a little questionable to… READ MORE
March 13th, 2007 | Posted in General
Comic Book Day this past weekend brought Number One Son Tommy and myself to our local comic book store and netted a few issues we enjoyed over lunch. I bought two Conan books that were not bad, but the only thing I could find I was very interested in was The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born #2. I am a big fan of the Stephen King Dark Tower books, and the comics were something I looked forward to with some trepidation. I wrote a brief review of the first issue last month, where I basically said the jury was still out. I was much more… READ MORE
March 12th, 2007 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
A very quick sketch of Summer Glau, who plays a character called River Tam on the TV show “Firefly” and in the movie “Serenity”. She’s got an odd, buggy eyed look, and I tried to push that along with the pursed mouth a bit more than the likeness could handle, I think. I caught “Serenity” on HD-DVD this past weekend. Not a bad movie, although I felt a bit left out having never seen the TV show. Obviously the film was aimed at followers of the TV series and very little time was wasted on character development or explanation that might have helped out those… READ MORE
March 11th, 2007 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I’ve been working on some artwork for a client and have been having a hard time sending pencil drawings of the work to the client so that they can adequately see them before I start on inking and coloring. Do you have any tips on how I can scan the pencil drawings better for my client? A: I’ve totally replaced the fax machine with scanning and sending jpeg images to clients for approvals. That is pretty much the standard now, and what most clients expect. Of course you need a scanner, but not a very expensive one. Unless you also use your scanner to… READ MORE
March 10th, 2007 | Posted in It's All Geek to Me!
I have to admit, when the first iPod shuffle came out a few years ago I could not understand why anyone would want to get one. It was a unit about the size of a half-pack of stick gum, and that tiny size was the only thing it had going for it. It only held a few hundred or so songs, had no way of browsing those songs, could not tell you which song was playing, and just blindly shuffled the tunes with no more control than volume, pause, back to the beginning of the song or on to the next song. It seemed like… READ MORE
March 9th, 2007 | Posted in General
Wednesday night I treated myself to an HD-DVD movie in the home theater. I saw “Troy” which looked gorgeous in HD but really dragged in places, and I would have given much to get to punch Orlando Bloom‘s foppish “Paris” character in the face. I’m glad that was a rental. Eric Bana’s performance as Hector was the best thing about that film. But I digress… after the movie was done around 11:00, I checked my TIVO listings just to see if there was anything fun recorded in the last week to watch and I was surprised to see a new episode of “Lost” on my… READ MORE
March 8th, 2007 | Posted in General
I was digging through the studio yesterday and came across some old sketchbooks I thought long thrown out. It’s always fun to find that kind of thing, because I can page through them and wince at the drawings I did years ago. It keeps things in perspective and makes me feel good to see I have improved in my art over the years. One thing I noticed was a number pages filled with life drawings. Being a cartoonist, I don’t get much of a chance to work realistically. About 8 years ago I got involved with a life drawing co-op in Minneapolis which met on… READ MORE
