Design Tip : Make yourself part of Tom Goes to The Mayor

Filed under: Design, Fun, Photo, Windows, Macintosh, Adobe, Time-Wasters, Design Tips

Design Tip : Make yourself part of Tom Goes to The Mayor

by Grant Robertson Apr 25th 2007

If you're a fan of the Adult Swim network, you've certainly seen Tom Goes to The Mayor and probably wondered, "How do they do that?" The show's oddball humor is punctuated by innovative and simple sparse-frame animation, dominated by characters who look stimpled and photocopied onto the set.

If you've longed to be on Tom Goes to the Mayor but aren't as cool as David Cross, Sarah Silverman, Brian Posehn or any number of other hot alt-comics who've graced the show's two seasons, fear not.. we'll show you how to make your own Tom Goes without flying to Hollywood, or breaking the bank.

The bad news is you'll need Adobe Photoshop, the good news is you won't need any after-market filters. Once you've found a source image of yourself (or anyone else) that you'd like to "Mayorize", you'll need to remove any background elements. The production crew of TGTTM shoot still shots with bright lights on a white "butcher paper" background, but you can just as easily use a wall in your home or apartment. The less variation in your background, the easier it will be to remove using standard techniques. Try using the "Magic Wand" tool and adjusting the tollerance to a very low level (between 10 and 25), selecting and deleting small chunks of your background until you're left with only you and the transparent checkerboard.

Now the fun part, making yourself into a TGTTM character. Set your foreground color to a nice shade of blue, and your background to white, then select Filter->Sketch->Photocopy

Set the Detail value to 2 (possibly even 1, depending on your lighting) and the Darkness value to 35-45. Play with the settings until you're happy with the effect and then click "OK".

The final step is to add yourself to a background. TGTTM uses heavily composited backgrounds made from clipart and illustrations, but you can put your TGTTM-self just about anywhere. Copy and paste yourself into a photo, move your TGTTM character into a viable position and, let the fun begin!

Rats off to ya! Enjoy your time in Jefferton.

Tags: Adult Swim, AdultSwim, Brian Posehn, BrianPosehn, David Cross, DavidCross, Eric Warheim, EricWarheim, Sarah Silverman, SarahSilverman, Tim Heidecker, TimHeidecker, Tom Goes To The Mayor, TomGoesToTheMayor

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Tim Dorr said 5:05PM on 4-26-2007

How incredibly simple.

Christian said 5:46PM on 4-26-2007

actually did a horrible, horrible short animation for class using this technique. got an "A", but wish i had more than two hours (procrastination) to finish it. may redo it, sans wretched sound synch and quality.
don't trash it, i just did...it's just for reference.
kudos, on posting the easy, yet nifty trick.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=m37lZifLUPw

Arthur Gustafson said 5:53PM on 4-26-2007

I did one of this some months ago, http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v423/hinkmania/squrl.jpg

Spankr said 6:46PM on 4-26-2007

Dude, is that the Angus L. Macdonald Bridge??

james said 8:26PM on 4-26-2007

i dont know how to take the image and put it into a background

Jeremy said 9:00PM on 4-26-2007

Man! I totally thought the same thing! Is that Halifax?

Grant Robertson said 11:48PM on 4-26-2007

Yep, that's the Macdonald bridge in Halifax.. shot from Barrington Street near the Navy base. I live in the South End.

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