Tom's Mad Blog
November 3rd, 2006 | Posted in MAD Magazine
As I mentioned last week, this Sunday, Nov. 5th I will be appearing at the Los Angeles Comic Book and Science Fiction Convention from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm along with the great Sergio Aragones and writer extraordinaire Mark Evanier…. and David Carradine. If Grasshopper starts to bully me I’ll sick Sergio on him. Nobody messes with Sergio. I’ll have a stack of free MAD magazines to sign while supplies last, and will be doing caricatures and sketches for dirt cheap. Actually I’ll be overcharging, but in L.A. nobody will notice. I’m also going to have a few MAD originals on hand for sale. I… READ MORE
November 2nd, 2006 | Posted in General
I’m pretty busy trying to get caught up in the studio before my trip to LA this weekend, so I came “this close” to posting the Dreaded Deadline Demon today. However I have a new blog to plug, so I thought I’d do a quick post and do so. My lovely and talented wife Anna and I are irrepressible foodies. When we travel we always plan our little trips around the restaurants we plan on visiting. Over the years we’ve been to places like New York, Paris, New Orleans, San Fransisco, Las Vegas, Orlando, Maui and Oahu and a lot of other locales with some… READ MORE
November 1st, 2006 | Posted in General
I’ve mentioned here several times that I don’t watch much TV. Most of the time when MAD assigns me a TV parody I have never watched the show. I always need to get caught up by finding people with taped episodes, renting a previous season on DVD (if it’s not a new show) or setting the TIVO to find repeats. It’s important to get a grasp of the show, it’s characters, plots and idiosyncrasies in order to add that extra something to the art. Just doing caricatures of everybody would be a cop out. That’s why I love the iTunes store. New TV shows get… READ MORE
October 31st, 2006 | Posted in General
Here’s a section of the final art of the “Kim Jong” piece, which I sent off to MAD yesterday to be included in their “20 Dumbest Things of the Year” feature in MAD #473: As I mentioned before, this job entailed a different approach as MAD’s editors wanted a fully painted look to the art, as opposed to “line and color”. In the last 6 months or so, I have been tapped by MAD a few times to do painted pieces for special features, giving me a chance to get away from my usual style. The first of these was a piece about “Rejected Characters… READ MORE
October 30th, 2006 | Posted in General
As promised, here are some pictures and details of the finished Superman costume. These were taken in a dark nightclub on Saturday night, where Anna and I went to meet some friends and fellow caricaturists. I had a lot more pictures but many were just so blurry I couldn’t post them. Some of the artists we met there had some great costumes, and I don’t have pictures of everybody. Too bad. Me in the Supersuit… a little bulgy in places. Heather and Wade as Peg and Al Bundy Zack Wallenfang as Steve Irwin My ravishing wife Anna as Kryptonite!! Kelly and Jim Hungaski as a… READ MORE
October 29th, 2006 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I’ve been looking everywhere for the materials you mentioned in your inking tutorial. Where can I get Gillott nibs and that stuff? A: Few if any art stores carry anything but a few token inking supplies, mostly in the form of “Cartooning Kits”. Ecccch. Thank goodness for the internet. Here are some sources for inking supplies: Gillot Pen nibs: Tough to find these in the US. You have to order them from overseas, and that’s expensive. But, if you have to have them, try: Scribblers (UK) John Neal Booksellers There are others but these are under $1.00 US each. If you look elsewhere, usually… READ MORE
October 28th, 2006 | Posted in On the Drawing Board
I’m finally getting some projects out the door here at the end of the week. Here’s a couple finals of some little jobs: Workplace poster: I don’t think this one will be winning any awards or anything, but it gets the message across. I changed the figure that was bothering me and adjusted the sizes of some of the heads. I left the main guy with the wheelbarrow bigger than the others as a kind of exaggeration for humorous effect… sometimes cheating the perspective or the relative sizes of objects and people creates better focus on the important aspects of an image. This is my… READ MORE
October 27th, 2006 | Posted in General
I mentioned in a few posts a while back that, at certain points in the process of a job, I listen to audiobooks in my studio via my iPod. As I also mentioned, I can only listen to audiobooks I have either already read or have listened to before. This is because I cannot devote the kind of attention necessary to follow every word and action in the book… I have to be able to zone in and out just a little or it would be a distraction rather than a way to stay focused and on task. A while back someone in a comment… READ MORE
