Richmond Illustration Inc.

Tom's Mad Blog

Back from L.A….

November 6th, 2006 | Posted in General

But… I’ll have to put of the convention report until tomorrow… READ MORE

Q: When you transfer drawings from your sketches to the “official board” MAD sends you… do you just redraw the whole thing or what do you do? A: I physically redraw it, but considering I don’t draw the roughs very detailed it’s more of a tightening and completing than it is total redrawing. Here’s the process: I do the sketches at print size, directly on the MAD layouts like so: Then I scan them into PhotoShop. I enlarge them to 200% of the original size, which makes them the exact size of the boards MAD sends me. I print them on my Epson Color Stylus… READ MORE

I’m leavin’ on a Jet Plane…

November 4th, 2006 | Posted in General

Off to smoggy Los Angeles. I’ll have a report from the trip on Monday… In the meantime, though the miracle of post-dated blog technology, there will be a new installment of the ever popular Sunday Mailbag tomorrow. This month I intend to do a full color tutorial on digitally coloring an illustration in PhotoShop. I’ve had good intentions to do a more thorough one for some time now, but I’ve come to some stark realizations over the months since I did the “mini coloring tutorial“. The first was that I cannot do a tutorial using an actual freelance job. This is because by the time… READ MORE

L.A. Comic Convention Appearance

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

A Delicious Link

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

Hooked on “Heroes”?

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

Painting Vs. Line and Color

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

Super Halloween

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