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

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.

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