Tom's Mad Blog
September 3rd, 2006 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: Do you go about drawing the kind of caricatures like the ones in MAD the same way you would in a theme park where you start with the eyes, nose, etc and work your way from the inside out? A: No, I do it totally different in the studio for one main reason: I can. Working in a theme park or any live caricature setting is very different from doing it in a studio. When you work live you are under a time constraint, and you need to draw it quickly and efficiently. Live caricature is a reactive form of drawing, meaning you don’t… READ MORE
September 2nd, 2006 | Posted in General
Yesterday morning I was at the Mall of America pushing a two wheel cart loaded with boxes of heavy glass frames to deliver to my caricature booth in the “Park at MOA” (formerly Camp Snoopy), when I am suddenly confronted by a sure sign that civilization as we know it is coming to an end. Coming towards me through the amusement park part of the mall is a security guard. That’s not unusual, the place is crawling with them anytime you don’t need one, and I didn’t need one at the time. It would have been odd had I been looking for one at that… READ MORE
September 1st, 2006 | Posted in On the Drawing Board
Looks like the “Little Piranha” Minnesota Twins shirts are a go. There??ᬨ‚Ćwere some interesting issues stemming from the use of the other team logos in the art, but that’s what the Twins wanted and they have to assume liability for the use of an image they both specifically commissioned and purchased the copyrights to.??ᬨ‚ĆSounds like Major League Baseball signed off on it and there may be shirts out by the end of this weekend. Hard to believe they can put something together that fast, but anything is possible. Here are the final art images for the shirt: The back design The front (small pocket image)… READ MORE
August 31st, 2006 | Posted in Freelancing
Working as a freelance illustrator is never boring. While the majority of the jobs I do work out fine in the end, with a few kinks thrown in here and there, sometimes jobs go bad and end up being total nightmares. These usually stem from expectations being unrealistic or just plain wrong on either my part or the part of the client. Over the years I’ve gotten better at sniffing out these potential disasters but some still slip through the cracks. Occasionally I’ll tell some of the stories of these freelance nightmares here, as they often have some entertainment value. When appropriate, I will change… READ MORE
August 30th, 2006 | Posted in On the Drawing Board
Deadlines conquered. Here are some images of the jobs I just finished and am working on now. The first two are from my latest MAD job entitled “When Video Games Become Religious”. Like the “Rejected Cars Characters” of a few issues ago, this was a little different than my usual work for MAD. “Damn, it’s that same stupid shape again!” “What would Jesus do?” The challenge here was that I needed to draw images both from the “video game” world and the “real” world, and make it obvious there is a difference between the two. In order to accomplish this, I needed to make the… READ MORE
August 29th, 2006 | Posted in General
Yep. Here we go again! I should have some images to post later today or tomorrow from the current frenzy! READ MORE
August 28th, 2006 | Posted in General
Judging from the flood of e-mails and phone calls I recieved yesterday, the rumors of the death of the comics pages are greatly exaggerated. Yes, that was “me” making a cameo appearance in the 8/27 Sunday strip “Pearls Before Swine” and, yes, I really did draw that caricature of Barbara Streisand in it. No, it was not my idea to be labeled “probably the best caricaturist in the country”… Stephan exaggerates much more than I do in my drawings. Here’s the strip: Click for a closer look I met “Pearls before Swine” creator Stephan Pastis at an NCS Reuben Awards weekend in San Francisco in… READ MORE
August 27th, 2006 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: How do you scan your inked originals for coloring in PhotoShop? A: I have an oversized flatbed scanner, the Microtek 9800XL, which has a live scan area of 12 inches by 17 inches. Even with the large bed,??ᬨ‚Ćmy pages are often??ᬨ‚Ćbigger than this, so I scan??ᬨ‚Ćthem in sections and piece??ᬨ‚Ćthem together in PhotoShop. Most of the time I ink my drawings at 150% of the size they print at, and in the case of MAD work it’s at 200% (MAD tradition). The poster image I inked for the inking tutorial, for example, had a print size of 17 x 17 inches. Those posters are… READ MORE
