Tom's Mad Blog
September 23rd, 2006 | Posted in General
Eighteen years ago today I married my best friend, the love of my life and luckily a woman with very low standards in men, Anna Voss. We are celebrating tonight with a fancy dinner out. 18 years has gone by in the blink of an eye. I’m a very lucky man. As much as I’d like to write about my lovely wife and the wonderful years we’ve shared, there is something else I need to write about today. Last year on this day Anna and I also celebrated our anniversary with a fancy dinner out. Unfortunately we spent most of it staring into our plates… READ MORE
September 22nd, 2006 | Posted in MAD Magazine
As promised, some of the pencils from my upcoming parody of “Grey’s Anatomy” in MAD: I’ll post a sneak peek of some of the finished panels next week when it’s “in the can”. In the meantime, back to work!!! READ MORE
September 21st, 2006 | Posted in On the Drawing Board
Things are getting crazy in the studio. After finishing the pencil roughs (and I mean ROUGHS) for the “Gray’s Anatomy” parody for MAD, I just had time to ink and color the Scholastic illustration and ink the poster job before approvals came in from MAD. Haven’t touched the Nader finals yet. Hoo boy. Here’s the final art for the Scholastic job. If the colors look garish and without a lot of contrast, it’s because I did it on purpose. The Scholastic publication this will appear in is printed on uncoated stock, and that causes the ink to soak into the paper. As a result, colors… READ MORE
September 20th, 2006 | Posted in General
When I was a kid, the only thing I wanted to do when I grew up was draw Batman comics. I might have settled for Superman or the Flash, but Batman would have been the coolest. Like many kids I would spend hours in my basement drawing my own comics… I can honestly say a love for Batman and comic books is what started me drawing and developed my love of cartooning. Later the focus of my art would take a turn to the humorous, and drawing comic books wasn’t really in the plan anymore, but I still retained a love for them. Imagine my… READ MORE
September 19th, 2006 | Posted in News
Back in July I wrote this post about the “Orphan Works Act” that most illustrators, photographers and creators of intellectual property are rightfully up in arms about. Briefly it is legislation that will allow the free use of intellectual property like illustrations, pictures, writing and other examples to anyone who can demonstrate they made a “reasonably diligent effort” to find the owner of said works. “Reasonably diligent effort” is not specifically defined, and this law would not only open wide the free use of intellectual property but language in it would severely restrict the ability of the copyright holders of any work wrongly used to… READ MORE
September 18th, 2006 | Posted in General
The National Caricaturist Network’s annual convention is fast approaching, Oct. 1st-5th at the Holiday Inn Hotel, International Drive, Orlando, FL. Usually taking place in January or February of each year, this year the NCN board decided to move the convention back about 8 months to have it in the fall of the year. As such, it’s been about 20 months since the last convention, and members are very excited about it finally coming around. I wrote this blog post about the NCN and my history with it back in July. I’ve been a member of the NCN since 1998, and it’s a fantastic organization of… READ MORE
September 17th, 2006 | Posted in General
After a number of e-mails looking for a way to purchase a Minnesota Twins Piranhas T-shirt from out of state, I finally called a local Twin’s Pro Shop to ask them if there was a way. Turns out there is. You can call the Pro Shop directly, buy one via a credit card and they will ship it to you. All the shirts are ash gray in color with the big design on the back and small one in the front. They have the following sizes: Adult sizes Med to XXL- $20.00 each Youth sizes Sm to XL- $16.00 each Shipping charges are extra, and… READ MORE
September 17th, 2006 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: Where do you get your references for doing caricatures? A: Several sources. I have an old fashioned “morgue file” at home. A morgue file is a file cabinet full of reference pictures filed and cross-referenced. I keep alphabetical files by last name with clipped photos of celebrities from entertainment magazines, cross-referenced (sort of) by movie or TV show. I’m not too good at clipping and filing, though, so that is not a very good source for me. Another reason my morgue file doesn’t get added too very often is that my oldest daughter, Elizabeth, is autistic. One of the obsessive/compulsive things she does is… READ MORE
