Tom's Mad Blog
January 21st, 2007 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: You’ve got the caricature/cartoon aesthetic nailed, but do you ever feel the need (personally or financially) to break out of that style and do something severely different? Are there many artists out there that specialize in several aesthetic styles? Benefits/risks? A: An interesting question, needing two answers. First, thanks for the compliment but I disagree that I have the caricature/cartoon aesthetic “nailed”. I see plenty of room for growth within what I currently do. My figure drawing skills have lots of room for improvement, as does my composition, caricatures and overall drawing. It’s still challenging for me to do this kind of work. The… READ MORE
January 20th, 2007 | Posted in MAD Magazine
These will only be once a month from now on, now that I’m caught up. Issue #473 had been out almost a month. This issue just hit news stands this week: MAD # 474 (Feb 07) Cover (Mark Fredrickson) The Fundalini Pages (Dick DeBartolo, Desmond Devlin, Todd Eisner, Jeff Kruse, Jacob Lambert, Glen Le Lievre, Adam Rust, Benjamin Shultz, Sam Sisco, Rick Tulka, PC Vey) Gap Celebrity Ads You May Have Missed – Kevin Federline, Donald Rumsfeld, Osama Bin Laden, OJ Simpson (Mark Fredrickson) War Cliches: Completing The Sentences (Jeff Kruse, Mort Drucker) A MAD Look At The Amazing Race (Sergio Aragones) MAD’s Inspirational Animal… READ MORE
January 19th, 2007 | Posted in On the Drawing Board
I am deep in the middle of a TV parody for MAD, so I can’t post much of what has been ursurping my time lately. I did just finish this pencil rough for another workplace poster job: These are always fun. As I’ve said before it’s refreshing to do jobs with no caricature involved… just straight cartoon illustration. This one is obviously for a spring print release. Next week the Dreaded Deadline Demon will likely be making some appearances as I need to get the MAD job done by next Friday. READ MORE
January 18th, 2007 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Every month, I’ll be shamelessly plugging the new MAD issue as it comes out complete with a scan of the cover, a list of the contents and their contributors (courtesy of Mike Slaubaugh, thanks Mike!) and a few peeks at anything I may have in said issue. Since I missed the first issue of 2007 (cover date, anyway), here’s what’s on the stands right now: MAD #473 (Jan. 07) Contents: Dick Cheney Cover (Mark Fredrickson) The Fundalini Pages (Charles Akins, John Caldwell, Paul Coker, Dick DeBartolo, Desmond Devlin, Nicholas Michael Ferry IV, Garth Gerhart, Teresa Burns Parkhurst, Kevin Pope, Adam Rust, PC Vey) The MAD… READ MORE
January 17th, 2007 | Posted in General
I’ve written a few posts about the ABC drama “Lost”, which was one of the few shows I regularly watched on TV since getting hooked on it when I did the MAD parody. A couple of images from the “Lost” parody in MAD #453 Well, I used to watch it regularly. Now I don’t watch it at all because it’s not on the air. For some inexplicable reason ABC only aired six episodes in the fall, then put the show on hiatus for four months. New episodes resume February 7th. Couple that with a general feeling that the show is not advancing but just keeps… READ MORE
January 17th, 2007 | Posted in News
The blog has been updated, TWICE, and no fire and brimstone or horsemen to be seen. Nice of WordPress to release another update only ten days after the last one, and only a few hours after my blod had been updated… oh well. Pardon the interruption and we now return to our regularly scheduled art blog…. READ MORE
January 16th, 2007 | Posted in Freelancing
Way back in August I wrote about my very first freelance job and how it went horribly awry. I promised more nightmare stories in the future, but honestly there aren’t that many of them. Most jobs have a few challenges mixed in, and as a professional I have to roll with the punches at times to get the job done. Few have the hallmarks of a nightmare job. Most of the real problems that might arise result from the very beginning… meaning the art director of a project made the wrong choice in choosing a certain artist for their job. That doesn’t mean they got… READ MORE
January 15th, 2007 | Posted in General
The blog might be down a few times over the next week as it gets upgraded to the latest WordPress version. The downtime should be brief, but if you experience any trouble accessing the blog I apologize. It seems the older version had some security issues that may have contributed to a minor but annoying hack of the blog that happened last week. No data lost or anything, and the problem may not have anything to do with WordPress’s security… but better safe than sorry. I suspect the problem may have been with a computer we sold via Craigslist a week or so ago. It… READ MORE
