Alex Hughes Cartoons and Caricatures » caricature

Playing with ideas…

Alex — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 15:40:52 +0000

A few years back (in 2007 to be precise) I embarked on a little side project called Card-i-catures. The premise was simple – there are 52 weeks in a year, and 52 cards in a standard deck. As such, I drew a caricature per week of a celebrity, politician or similar figure that had appeared in that week’s news, and posted them here on my blog. The four suits were loosely grouped to represent figures from British politics (Hearts), World affairs (Spades), Entertainment (Diamonds) and, er, Miscellaneous (Clubs).

It was partly an exercise in drawing and blogging, and partly an attempt at making a sellable product. Whilst I certainly succeeded on the first point, having produced the full deck (plus a Joker), I failed on the second point, despite a number of attempts. The plan was to sell a printed deck of the finished set of caricatures (and possibly other printed material, such as posters or mugs), but I was unable to find a cost-effective way of producing and distributing the product. A number of people contacted me with the aim of purchasing a deck, so I believe there is a market; indeed, a printer did contact me about producing the deck commercially (about which I’ll say more later). There are a number of companies that produce print-on-demand playing cards (or similar products) but they are mostly limited by having a minimum order (often around 500 decks), being rather expensive and being based overseas – usually the USA, making importing even more expensive.

However, I learned a lot from the project and over the intervening years, I’ve considered re-starting it a few times, but haven’t quite got round to it. This year, however, a couple of things have come to my attention that might make this project a ‘goer’. Firstly, the realisation that the graphics software I use to draw my cartoons – Manga Studio EX – has a two-point symmetry ‘ruler’, which would make the two-headed nature of the cards significantly easier to draw (and a feature I wish I had spotted sooner). Secondly, moo.com (who I already use for my business cards) have added playing-card-like ’rounded corners’ to the range of services they offer. Now, the new round-cornered cards come in packs of 50, wherein lies the another problem, that this is two (four with jokers) cards short.

The other issue was raised by my potential commercial printers I mentioned earlier – that these would sell better if they were out in time for Christmas… which, of course, if I was working on making a topical 2012 deck (starting in January) wouldn’t be practical.

Then I got to thinking… perhaps these two limitations (a 50 card deck and the need to be available before Christmas) could be used to each other’s advantage. Theoretically, by the end of November I could have drawn 50 cards (48 weeks + 2 Jokers) and get these printed and to the customer before Christmas (and therefore something to put under the Christmas tree), with the proviso that the outstanding four cards will be supplied early in the New Year.

Would you buy a deck of 2012 celebrity playing cards? Would you mind if the remaining cards arrived after Christmas, or would you prefer them all to arrive together? How much would you pay for a deck? Using this model I can’t see them coming at much under £25 per pack, including VAT, delivery and a modest profit for myself. Of course, with enough advance orders, this may bring the price down, but I’d need a ball-park idea of numbers. I’d be going for a bit of a redesign on the previous deck – and possibly a different set of suits. Any suggestions – it’s the Olympics in 2012, so there should be a fair few sporting figures in the news (for a couple of weeks at least), so I could assign a suit to ‘Sport’. Or an all current affairs deck – ‘Government’ and ‘Opposition’ etc. Or ‘Music’ and ‘Films’ (say). Other ideas include abandoning the standard playing card idea and going for a different set entirely – would you prefer Happy Families or Top Trumps? Could I fund the project differently through a crowdsourcing site like Kickstarter or IndieGoGo?

So… what do you think? Is this a goer? Please add your comments and thoughts below…

Email Difficulties

Alex — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 01:56:41 +0000

I’ve just discovered that emails have not been coming through to me from the contact forms here on my website, due to a technical hitch. So, if you’ve recently tried to get in touch with me to commission a caricature or book me for an event, please drop me a line or use the (now fixed) contact forms below:

General Enquiries

Commission a caricature

On-the-Spot Caricaturing

Prints and Original Artwork

If you have tried to contact me and were wondering why I’d not responded, please accept my most sincere apologies for not getting back to you sooner.

Straw Poll

Alex — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 21:43:48 +0000

It’s been brought to my attention today that my caricature of Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice Jack Straw was, well, turning into my caricature of former US President George W Bush. I’m not entirely sure how this happened, but I suspect it’s because I’ve been drawing Straw for so long now that I felt confident that the caricature still worked (or so I thought), so I don’t refer back to my photo references. But I had a look, and, yes, there it was – completely wrong. But why Bush? Well, they both have something of the chimpanzee about them perhaps… Either way, I’ve gone and had another crack at Jack and have come up with the caricature below.

Anyway, this gives me an excuse to set up this Straw Poll. Below are my new and old caricatures of Jack Straw – please select your favourite, or at least the one you think looks right. The new one will make it’s debut here on Friday when it appears in my regular Tribune cartoon. If you can’t wait until then, you could have a sneak peak over at tribunecartoons.com.

Take Our Poll

Comments, as ever, are extremely welcome!

Out and About (part 2)

Alex — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:39:24 +0000

Phew! It’s been a busy time for me recently. Over the course of the last month or so I’ve been out and about doing ‘live drawing’ at various events in the Birmingham area, so this post is an attempt to do a brief, illustrated summary of what I’ve been up to.

JEECamp – 8 May 2009

JEECamp (or, to give it it’s full title, the Journalism Enterprise and Experimentation unconference) was an interesting experience. An attempt for journalists and other media types (including one or two cartoonists) to gather and discuss how the digital revolution has changed (and continues to change) the news media, and how we as journalists (and cartoonists) are adapting to the changes.

Hosted and organised by digital media uber-guru and BCU lecturer Paul Bradshaw, the event took the BarCamp/Unconference model, which was a refreshing change from the more formal events I’ve attended as a live caricaturist in the past, although I was here as an attendee on this occasion. Activities included a talk by scoopt.com founder Kyle McRea, speed-networking, group discussions and a couple of panels, chosen at random from the audience. Myself and fellow cartoonist Matt Buck (of whom more later) were also interviewed for the BBC podcast Pods and Blogs. There’s a few sketches I doodled whilst I was there in the gallery at the bottom of this post.

Some other coverage about JEECamp: Created in Birmingham, Martin Belam, The Guardian, Daily Telegraph (part 2), Journalism.co.uk, Jo Geary, and pictures from Flickr.

Tormented Premiere – 21 May 2009

Later in May I was asked by Ruth Ward of Rewired PR to come along to the Birmingham premiere of the locally produced movie Tormented, a British take on the American High School slasher flick, so in keeping with the academic theme of the film, I was working on a chalk black-board drawing some of the text smileys that appeared in the film. And yes, that is me posing at the entrance to the party in a hastily-arranged school uniform (including a Prefect badge).

More coverage on Tormented: Internet Movie Database, Wikipedia and a review from the Guardian.

WxWM 2 – 28 May 2009

About a year and a half ago, a bunch of Brummie bloggers went to SxSWi (that’s South by South West Interactive), an annual tech and social media conference held in Austin, Texas that started as an offshoot of the SxSW music festival. These bloggers set up a website to record what they did – titled SxSWM (South by South West Midlands). This year, a larger bunch of Brummie bloggers went out again – so a group of other Brummie bloggers (lead by Shona McQuillan) decided to set up a parallel event here in Birmingham to connect with the USA bound bunch – this was WxWM (West by West Midlands… still with me?). That was earlier in the year, and unfortunately I couldn’t make it, but I could make the follow-on event, WxWM 2 – Sue Ellen’s Almighty Hangover on the 28 May at the Spotted Dog pub in Digbeth. This one was a little more experimental (for me at least), as I was drawing the speakers (and others) on my tablet PC hooked up to a projector for the room to see. The discussions were drawn from the general area of the social media, with a less business-oriented tone, and as it was held in a pub, well, things were a bit more relaxed all round…

There’s a few of my sketches from the evening in the gallery below, but all of the pics I drew on the night feature in this Flickr set.

Some further coverage from WxWM: Speakers Jon Bounds (audio), Gavin Wray, Dave Harte, and Rhubarb Radio (who also did live audio),

My Dad’s on Twitter (#mdot) – 11 June 2009

A bit of a change of direction for this one. Conceived by Karl Binder and held as part of the Fazeley Digital festival, there was no clever techy tablet PCs here as the plan was to create a mind-map as a way of explaining the social media phenomenon, based around the theme ‘My Dad’s on Twitter… and he doesn’t know why’. The mind map was where we (myself and the aforementioned Matt Buck) came in, as it was drawn on one of the large, white walls of the Fazeley Studios complex in marker pen, pastel and whatever else we could get to work and was based on the conversations that the invited speakers sparked off. The drawings and notes were also added to by members of the audience, broadcast live over the internet and twittered and live-blogged, and so was a truely interactive event. There are a few more snaps I took below in the gallery, but all my pics are in this Flickr set.

#mdot (as it was known in Twitter hash-tag speak) also acted as the (un)official launch for myself and Matt Buck’s latest project – drawnalism. Drawnalism is our name for a form of visual reportage, where we cover an event through the medium of drawing (as opposed to photography or text), to provide a unique form of live visual commentary. Contact us at alex@drawnalism.com or matt@drawnalism.com for more details as to how we could cover your event.

Further coverage of My Dad’s On Twitter: the thinking behind MDoT, video of the event, Jon Hickman (and the response from Karl Binder), usual suspect Dave Harte (again), reflections (part 2), another Flickr set, and, finally, the wall in more detail.

Moseley BarCamp – 28 June 2009

…aaand finally we come to what I was up to at the weekend, namely Shona McQuillan’s latest project – the Moseley BarCamp. Held in the upstairs room of the Cross bar in the leafy Birmingham suburb of Moseley on a sultry summers afternoon, the BarCamp ran on similar lines to the aforementioned WxWM2, and again I was drawing sketches on my tablet hooked up to a projector (courtesy of Jon Bounds of Birmingham It’s Not Shit, amongst others). This was a bigger event though, with more speakers, a larger crowd and even food laid on by the bar (thanks!).

Phew! I reckon that’s about everything covered. I’m off to another event this afternoon, so there’ll be more to add soon!

Gallery

Here’s a selection of images from all the events above… for more pics, see my Flickr photostream.

10 Years of Learning to Draw

Alex — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 20:50:39 +0000

It occured to me the other day that this year marks the 10th anniversary of the publication of my book Learn to Draw Caricatures (which is still available and was recently reissued with a new cover). Around the time it came out, I did a couple of interviews in the local media. In January of 1999, shortly after the book was published I appeared on the Central TV arts programme called Premieré, which was a nerve-racking experience. Looking back now, it’s clear I’ve the perfect face for radio (but sadly, not the voice), although that sunset was lovely.

…and secondly, in July of the same year I was profiled in the Birmingham Post, for a double page spread in the Post Style section. Less scary than the TV interview, but that full-page photo shocked me when I saw it!

Christmas is here again…

Alex — Thu, 04 Dec 2003 16:01:00 +0000

I’m getting bogged down in Christmas work now – up to my eyeballs in Christmas caricatures and what-not.

Please don’t let this put you off – there’s still plenty of time to get a caricature of your loved ones drawn in time for Christmas.

Another book on caricature…

Alex — Mon, 17 Nov 2003 13:13:00 +0000

I’ve been thinking recently about writing another book on caricature (for the first, see here: Learn to Draw Caricatures). If you’ve got any ideas about what you’d like to see included in the book, please let me know via my guestbook or directly by e-mail.

I’d love to hear your thoughts…