Tom's Mad Blog
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
March 7th, 2007 | Posted in General
After a few hours of some revisions on that MAD Kids job yesterday and the usual catch up stuff, I was finally able to reward myself by watching Monday’s episode of “Heroes” in glorious HD. That show is ridiculously good, and it just keeps getting better. I keep thinking that if someone told me there would be a comic book hero style ensemble prime time TV show on a major network that would be this good and this popular, I’d have said they were crazy. Yet here it is, a testament to great writing and casting making the unbelievable believable. SPOILERS AHEAD! The story keeps… READ MORE
March 6th, 2007 | Posted in General
Whew. It’s almost midnight on Monday and I’ve been about 5 days straight with very little sleep trying to wrap up multiple projects that all came due at once. The biggest was the MAD Kids job, which was actually two jobs and since both were quite different from my usual MAD work they ended up taking far more time than I had anticipated. Working “without a safety net” can be stressful, and sometimes results in hours being wasted when some experiment to achieve a certain effect ends up not working and you have to backtrack, trying something else. On the other hand, those kinds of… READ MORE
March 5th, 2007 | Posted in General
Twice in three days….. READ MORE
March 4th, 2007 | Posted in Freelancing
Q: My question is about keeping all business matters straight. Do you recommend any software in particular such as Quicken or the myriad Microsoft Office apps? A: The business aspect of being a freelance illustrator is sometimes intimidating for artists because… well…. they’re ARTISTS. Whether you buy into the left brain/right brain theory or not, it’s often the case that the creative mind has difficulty with analytical things like organization, record keeping, invoicing, etc. It’s really not difficult at all, and there are lots of things that can help out. Some are computer programs and some are not. In addition to the freelance business, I… READ MORE
March 3rd, 2007 | Posted in General
Several deadlines due Monday… Busy, busy, busy! READ MORE
