Tom's Mad Blog
May 4th, 2016 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
No doubt I’ll get a few arguments that Max Schreck did not “officially”‘ play Dracula in the 1922 film “Nosferatu”, since the character was called Count Orlock, and all the other names were also changed from the Bram Stoker story. However, it’s widely accepted that this was an unauthorized adaptation of Dracula, so much so that Schreck is in many lists of the greatest screen Draculas ever. The courts seemed to think it was Dracula as well, as they ruled against the filmmakers in a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by the Stoker estate and ordered all copies of the film destroyed. Like a good vampire,… READ MORE
May 3rd, 2016 | Posted in News
I doubt this news will ruin anyone’s weekend (except mine) but due to an impossible deadline job that just got dropped on me I will not be able to man my booth at Wizard World Minneapolis this weekend as planned. In fact, you won’t see much in the way of any blog posts from me for a while either. Sleeping will also be a forgotten luxury. READ MORE
May 2nd, 2016 | Posted in Monday MADness
Here’s a look at a couple of the final penciled pages from the latest issue of MAD’s parody of “The Force Awakens, and the final art for each page. These are not roughs but the final pencils on the boards prior to inking and coloring. READ MORE
May 1st, 2016 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: In the early nineties, for the first time MAD magazine started making MAD movie and television satires of animations (e.g “Batman: The Animated Series”, “The Lion King”). This continued through the decade with a couple of TV shows and a stack of Disney movies, but as soon as the nineties were over, so were the animation satires. So, not counting the occasional crossover article like “Star Shrek”, why is it that the magazine started, and then stopped, doing satires of animated films and TV shows? And, except for the South Park movie, why did MAD never do proper satires of any of the ‘adult’… READ MORE
April 29th, 2016 | Posted in Freelancing
I did this artwork for a job earlier this year for a major national magazine (which shall remain nameless), who then decided not to run the illustrations. The story was about “brothers”, both fictional and in real life. They say they loved the work I did and I did all that was asked of me, but their chief editor could not make up his/her mind about the visuals. I was told they actually contracted four different illustrators to do the art for this article. I am not sure they used any of the art from the four of us. I was paid my full fee,… READ MORE
April 28th, 2016 | Posted in General
When the news broke about Prince’s death I immediately tried to think back to when I might have drawn him for a job so I could post that image along with my Prince story. I drew a blank (pun intended). I could not come up with a single time I had drawn Prince in any job, parody or image for MAD or otherwise. I remembered I used to have a sample of him up in my theme park locations, but that one is lost to the ages. No scans or record of it, and it sucked anyway. Leave it up to the experts in the… READ MORE
April 27th, 2016 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
Here’s a caricature sketch of another classic Dracula- the late Christopher Lee. Lee played Dracula in nine different films from the legendary “Hammer” studios, starting with “Horror of Dracula” in 1958 and finishing with “The Satanic Rites of Dracula” in 1973. As always, the original of this sketch is available in the Studio Store. READ MORE
April 26th, 2016 | Posted in News
I get the occasional email from folks wondering if I ever teach caricature classes anywhere. I do not, at least not on an official basis. Every year I work with new artists that come aboard at my various theme park operations, where I demonstrate the live techniques I have been using for 30 plus years… but that is very informal and not really classes or a structured workshop. I am seriously considering conducting a weekend-long caricature art workshop here in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. I would set up a negotiated rate at a small hotel in my area, and we would use one of their… READ MORE
