Freelancing
January 22nd, 2013 | Posted in Freelancing
De-BLAH Vu Dept. It’s finally happened… after almost seven years of writing Tom’s MAD Blog, I keep running up against the following problem: I get an idea about something I’d like to write about I do a quick search of my blog to see if I have written about it already I have The solution? Reblogging! Let’s face it, you readers don’t comb through the 6 plus years and 2,500 posts I’ve done looking for interesting topics. My mom doesn’t even do that. So, if I think up with a topic that I was planning on writing about, and thus still relevant in the world… READ MORE
January 15th, 2013 | Posted in Freelancing
That was quick. The secret project I mentioned on Saturday is already out of the bag! Bleedingcool.com posted the news today that DC Comics will be celebrating MAD‘s 60th anniversary with variant covers of some of their main titles including Justice League Of America, Justice League, Batman, Green Arrow, Aquaman, Flash, Wonder Woman, Superman, Supergirl, Detective Comics, Batwoman, Green Lantern and Teen Titans drawn by the Usual Gang of Idiots. Since they specifically name me as well as Sergio Aragon?¬©s, Al Jaffee and Peter Kuper, I guess there is no sense in being coy. If you could go back in time and ask my 8… READ MORE
December 21st, 2012 | Posted in Freelancing
While I do freelance illustration for a variety of clients including some animation, advertising, product illustration, etc., the majority of the work I do is illustration for magazines. For the under thirty crowd, those are these things that are printed on dead trees requiring ambient light to read, feature no clickable links to anything and do not instantly add your completely irrelevant and often anonymous “opinion” on their articles in a comment section… with magazines those are called “letters to the editor” and take months to get published, if they ever do. Putting the snarkiness aside, I do seem to get a lot of sympathy… READ MORE
December 7th, 2012 | Posted in Freelancing
This year I did a series of spot illustrations of rocker Dave Navarro as the header graphic for his ongoing column in Penthouse magazine. Thought I’d share a couple of them that have already been published: There are a couple more but they haven’t been published yet. It’s funny, but whenever I get my comp copies of Penthouse, the neighborhood guys always seem to show up at the door “just to say hi”. That never happens when I get my comp copies of National Geographic World or Scholastic. Hmmmm. READ MORE
December 4th, 2012 | Posted in Freelancing
Clicky to embiggen… Frequent readers may remember that this summer I posted a couple of sneak peaks of some comic book character sketches that were part of a larger piece I could not disclose info about at the time. Well, the book in question is shipping next month, and it’s being advertised as such from multiple sources, so I guess it’s safe to post the artwork. See above. The art is for the cover of Ryan Sohmer‘s Absolute Ultimate Gutters Omnibus Volume 3, which is described thusly by the fore mentioned sales teasers: The Absolute Ultimate Gutters Omnibus Volume 3 is the newest collection of… READ MORE
November 26th, 2012 | Posted in Freelancing
I did a rare local job recently for Minnesota Monthly magazine, illustrating a part of their annual “best of” issue. The caricatures are of Minnesotans of note for 2012 . . . not many most people would recognize outside of Bob Dylan and maybe the Timberwolve’s Kevin Love. The issue was a “Greatest Hits of 2012” motif, so music was the theme. Opening page for the article above. The circles are for inset text. What followed was this two page spread, with text boxes for descriptions of the people pictured: Clicky to embiggen… Actually I didn’t get a copy of the issue so I only… READ MORE
November 20th, 2012 | Posted in Freelancing
Now that season 3 of the MAD show on Cartoon Network is over, I can probably share some of the work I did this season. I didn’t do much this year… only two episodes. One was entitled “Jurassic Park and Recreation”, and the other “The Poop-sodeon Adventure”: Most of the ones for “Jurassic Parks and Rec” were based on the ones I did in the parody for the magazine. Stephen Lang was the only extra character. I tried something different for the “Poopsideon” segment… I drew those directly on the Cintiq. No paper involved. It was a quick turnaround job so I gave it… READ MORE
November 13th, 2012 | Posted in Freelancing
. . . is that caricature illustrators like me no longer enjoy the increase in work we get drawing the various candidates amid the endless media coverage. I did the above quick spot for an internal promotion for a publicity company. In election years I do more high profile things like magazine covers and get jobs from publications and clients that ordinarily don’t use caricature illustration than in a non-election year. I believe I did one magazine cover, multiple interior illustration including one for MAD, and several smaller projects like the one above thanks to it being an election year…and this election year was a… READ MORE
