Matt Buck's Hack Cartoons

In between this year's festivities, I have been covering the editorial slot for Dave Brown at The Independent. Here's a drawing for the 27th, a generic, where are we at the turn-of-year-image.



I was drawing this at about 2pm on Boxing Day when the news broke about the refusal of Saddam Hussein's final appeal and his impending execution.

The breaking news meant drawing a quick response, which is shown below. It'll be interesting to see which, if either, makes the paper.

A marvellous blog entry by my enviably talented colleague, Morten Morland, who draws for The Times among others.

He writes about the future for cartooning in the fast changing media world, where the money and the customers are moving away from print.

And it goes on.

The government and the Saudi arms deal

THursday 14th December, talk about a good day to bury bad news.

Also vying for the headlines, the Ipswich murders, the Diana report and the closure of thousands and thousands of post offices.

PM and the cops

When miserable news events coincide.

PM lectures Iran (again)

Ipswich

I learned a new piece of jargon at one of my workplaces this week - multi-sourcing. It means outsourcing or offshoring jobs to more than just one supplier. This is because business has started to hear the customer noise about poor service from the huge long-term deals it has been signing in the past few years. It made for a nice reinterpretation joke.

There is a public row about whether Britain is becoming more or less religious because of the 'lack' of suitable imagery on greetings cards.

Telegraph story

The Daily Mail have also been running a campaign for a traditional festive season - sorry, Christmas.

Mail

The original survey of about 5,500 cards sold in well-known High Street stores, including WH Smith, Clinton Cards and Hallmark, found that fewer than 70 – just over 1 per cent - had images linked to the Nativity scene.

The survey also found that while about 2,920 cards had the word 'Christmas' on their cover; the majority did not have a message inside, and simply wished the receiver 'Seasons Greetings'.

Shocking stuff, I'm sure you'll agree, but perhaps not-so-surprising when you consider that the regular worship-attending percentage of the UK's population is regularly cited at around 10% .

This despite the 72 per cent of the population said they were Christian in the latest Census, and more than 77 per cent who claim some form of religious affiliation.

Anyhow, in cartoon-land, it all got me thinking about the traditional exchange of greetings cards, what was old, and what was modern and that took me to a long-standing exchange of views, which happily was also getting lots of coverage in the news.

PM and Chancellor's christmas cards for 2006



(If you see a picture which makes absolutely no sense at all in relation to this post, then you need to download flash player, which you can find here).

Player

One of the cartoon year's big events took place last night - the Political Cartoon of the Year competition.

Organised by the Political Cartoon Society and held at The Economist, it usually draws a decent crowd of cartoonists and lovers of bad taste jokes. Hence it's usually good fun. There's a nice audio report on the event below, done by Matt Tempest from the Guardian.

Listen

For the record, Peter Brookes of The Times won overall cartoonist of the Year, for his entire annual output (well-deserved) and Dave Brown (of the Indy) narrowly snatched the one-off drawing comp from his colleague Peter Schrank.

Then we all had a drink.

My non-winning entry (sigh) is below.

Prescott on the beach

Here is the Blog Digest 2007 - thousands of words finely crafted and then distributed by some talented writers, masquerading as bloggers. At the request of the fine people at Friday Books, Mr Justin McKeating collated the collection. You may find relevant links over on the sidebar here - both well worth a visit, but here they are again anyway.

Friday
McKeating

The book is published by Friday Books - and I can highly recommend it, not least beacause I drew the cover and all the inside panels. There you go, a straightforward declaration of an interest in something I'm promoting.

You can (and should) buy it from Amazon link below.

Buy it

Yours-chuffed-at-the-print-stage.

Dear everybody resident in the UK,

I'd like to wish you a seasonal greeting on behalf of the campaign against compulsory national identity cards for all. And here is this year's christmas card.

I can talk at length about this, and why it's a disaster in the making, aside from privacy issues, but I shan't, and instead I will refer you to the excellent campaign site, which you may find here

Link

Incase there are some of you who might like an alternative view, here are links to the Home Office and some excellent impartial coverage from Computing newspaper (for whom I work).

Home Office Link
Computing Link
Recent ID news

My long-suffering partner sent this to me today - what do you think she's trying to say?

Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965)

Well, you take a week off and look what goes and happens.

We (ok, the chancellor) decides to commit at least £25bn to buy the 'next generation' of Trident nuclear missiles. And all with without anything much in the way of public debate. Yes, parliament will get a vote and it will steamroller its way through for fear of not appearing 'tough' in the face of our next bogeyman.

There is some interesting analysis on the implications of this particular instance of democracy below - particularly if you are Scottish. (Alright I confess, I am a little bit).

Read it

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the lot below haven't been so busy for ages.

CND

The arguments against not renewing Trident are well known and rehearsed - we can't show weakness in the face of 'enemies' and all that - but really, in a week where a tiny amount of Polonium 210 appears to have brought a a large part of the country to a panic-stricken halt - can it really be wise to invest ALL this money in these old-time methods of mutually assured destruction? We be quicker hiring the rebranded KGB.

MAD

A client commissioned this small pocket cartoon about the differences between a career and a job. It turned into a nice image, thanks to the dictionary.

I shall be away for a bit, so no posts, but I promise to come back with some news for christmas.

Light relief for those long, long November days.

Fun

The sheep poetry is particularly good - although I really like the honesty in the tag line of the site - less funny the more you reload.

That sounds a bit like the Prime Minister - who made another daft speech last night.

Mad

So, it's; No softening! Harder! Harder! More pain, More war! Unnnggghhhhh! And it made me draw this ...

Fascinating BBC Business programme on Sunday night about where all the money belonging to the Farepak customers went (or got spent).

The latest

There's an interesting interview with the former chairman of the company, Nick Gilodi-Johnson (who blames the bank - HBOS) and also with an HBOS representative (who blames the management).

Anyone surprised? The liquidator says already, that there is little or no prospect that any claimant, or former saver, will see any more than about 5p for every £1 saved. And even that isn't likely until February 2007 at the earliest.

The much-vaunted fund is up to about £4m - only £36m to go.

If anyone would like to donate, they can do so here, via the family fund.

Donate

Well, it's about time, the end of Rumsfeld.

You get to carry the can for a disappointing set of mid term election results - and an inconvenient occupation of a large part of the middle east.

All political careers end in failure. Discuss.

Light relief
Legacy

One of those stories that is so rarely reported in the UK has started to make some news - and as ever, it's only because it's approaching christmas.

It's about less wealthy people, we used to call them poor, although the government invented a new euphemism at the last election, 'hard-working families.'

About 150,000 hard working families saved throughout the year to ensure they would be able to afford the feast of consumerism that is christmas - unfortunately, this year the long-standing vehicle for their savings, Farepak, went bust. This appears to have come about through a combination of bad management decisions and the sudden withdrawal of overdraft facilities by Halifax Bank of Scotland.

The average saver appears to have lost about £400 and some, a great deal more.

There is much hand-wringing in the political world and some signs of 'generosity' from retailers offering PR cheerful donations - and good for them.

But consider this, Farepak's liabilities to HBOS were about £40m when they foreclosed, HBOS has already recovered this from asset stripping the business since its closure. Today, it has just offered a low 'seven-figure' sum to a collection for the ex-savers - BBC now reporting it is £2m.

Do we really feel this is enough to go around?

Even my maths make a loss of £60m (150,000 x £400) for savers across the country - £2m seems more and more like an insult.

The total loss to savers appears to actually be about £40m. Where's the outrage?

BBC reports
HBOS responds
Unfairpak

Oh - and in cartoon land, it means a lot of folk will be turing to our traditional friends, the loan sharks, this christmas.

The traditional hand-wringing, po-faced analysis of the US mid-term elections is clogging the airwaves - 'seminal moment', 'deeply important', 'epoch-changing' etc etc.

Will George Bush be a lame duck if the Republicans can't hold onto control of the House and the Senate?

To be honest it barely matters, every President of whatever colour, is a lame duck after his last set of mid-terms and this is because everybody else is so busy planning the next presidential election in two years time.

Bush has perhaps made it slightly worse for himself this time, by being hamstrung in the middle east too, but the idea that his future is going to be massively affected by these elections is just nonsense.

Looking at it optimistically, it's also rather an encouraging time for people who don't believe in the kind of policies that this administration has promoted. The wonderful statute law that the US has for limited terms of service as President (eight years maximum) means you can always see the end coming!

Anyone fancy a bit of that here?

There's no trend like a new political trend.

Well, after some months of agonising, we've finally finished my new portfolio site. It's been long overdue for a clean-up and I think we've found a good, timeless solution. Be interested to hear what any of you visitors think of it.

Site

If you believed what you read in the papers, you'd think every teen was a clear and present danger.

A story about government issuing handheld PDAs to farmers so that they can more easily track their cows is just wonderful. Who said the truth was stranger than fiction?

It's been a truly amazing few days for anyone who recalls anything about the many and varied reasons George Bush and Tony Blair have given us for invading Iraq.

The mess they have helped to generate is awesome in its scope and our children are going to be living with the consequences of the new instabilities in the middle east for a very long time.

Thinking about it, as I heard the latest talking head explaining why now is the time for our military withdrawal*, I remembered the playing cards which the pentagon issued after reaching Baghdad - each one picturing one of Saddam's significant allies.

From there, it wasn't very far to a good cartoon idea. I'm posting it here in traditional form - but there's an animated version up at my site too - use the link at top right or just click on the headline to this article.



Enjoy.

* Oh, and why are we talking about withdrawing now? The answer is the US mid-term elections and the likelihood of Bush and the Republicans losing big. And the UK? We're just talking about it because the Americans are.

Following on from the revelation that North Korea has the bomb, everyone is now trying to stay calm - but with about as much success as Corporal Jones from Dads Army.

At a quick count in the past week, I have read stories, presumeably eminating from sources in our own and the US government, that the bomb test;

a) may not have taken place at all
b) must have been very small indeed
c) must have been so small as to have been barely worth recording

Take your pick.

Anyway, what we do know is that US Secretary of State Condi Rice has been despatched to the region to calm down the terrified locals and promise that if Kim Jong-Il twitches, the US will nuke the country faster than the roadrunner can outfox Wile E. Coyote.

Reassuring for all concerned.

It made me think about taking one's eyes off the ball - North Korea has a been an issue a long time and the Bush administration chose to ignore it in favour of regime change in Iraq. I won't talk about that now, but Simon Jenkins has written a thoughtful piece about it in The Guardian today.

Link here

Ignoring the excitements over the head of the British Army having opinions in public - and miscreant Labour MPs posting rude videos on YouTube about David Cameron's wife - this week's real story was North Korea and its 'nuclear' test.

The ironies and lies that were told about Iraq's possession of WMD only look worse now - and the really black laugh, is that there really isn't anything the great powers can do about what Kim Jong-il appears to have done.

Korea was partitioned after the Korean War (1950-53) with the north going communist (under Chinese patronage) and the south staying pluralist (guaranteed by the US).

The cold war ensured massive distrust across the border and a long and costly arms race - of which, this appears to be the culmination.

There has been a large outbreak of what-can-we-do'ism as a result. And the unhappy answer, is probably nothing at all.

The weak state of North Korea's economy means that sanctions are probably useless, there is precious little international trade that can be stopped.

Militarily, the options are poor and also extremely inflamatory - China is a next door neighbour. And it is understandably keen to avoid violence and any subsequent mass movement of refugees across the river Yalu and into its southern provinces.

And this lack of useful options isn't terribly reassuring to other local states including South Korea, Taiwan and Japan.

So, what price the start of a new regional arms race - after all, in their position, what would you do?

Well, the rebranding exercise in BoMo, sorry, Bournemouth, is over and now all the world knows about the scary sight of a Tory who appears to be human.

Some commentators claim that the job of leader of the opposition is the 'worst in politics.' I'm not so sure myself. At times, I think it must have a rather appealing freedom to it. You can do- and say - just about anything, with the single aim of getting right up the government's nose.

I think it's becoming clear that David Cameron has a bit of a flair for it.

Anyone up for the prospect of watching lumbering old Gordon chasing him around the media debates?

I chose to draw DC?, Dave?, our future leader? as a balloon launching into a sky full of old-style Tory Zeppelin balloons (very definitely obsolete technologies.) Enjoy

A post of an image from 2005 - without too many words.

I had the pleasure of working at the Big Draw again this year. This event is the showpiece of the National Campaign for Drawing's activities, which are held throughout the year. This time, the event was hosted at Somerset House, home of the Courtauld Gallery, just off the Strand in central London.



I took part in the battle of the cartoonists, where teams of national newspaper hacks drew each other to a standstill in an attempt to make a huge 6 metre long banner on the theme of amazing space in just 90 minutes.

The first photo here is our team planning how to start the drawing! Sometimes a small white piece of paper can feel quite intimidating, so when you are confronted with a banner as large as this one was ...



Here I am, hard at work on drawing Gordon Brown as one half of Tower Bridge. Unfortunately, being short of stature myself, it became necessary to draw while kneeling on the team table.

As you can see there were four artists to a team - and it was hard work. Below is the finished banner, we made on behalf of The Independent. We went for a slightly obtuse look at the theme and drew some of London's amazing spaces.



And finally, here's a photo of our final banner being hung up to dry. You'll be able to see it at The National Cartoon Museum on Little Russell Street in the heart for London for a little while yet. There are three other banners to see too - and they're all worth a look on your visit.

http://www.cartooncentre.com/

I was unsurprised to learn about this during the week.

Of course, the old line about lies, damned lies and statistics did spring to mind, but what with the cost of living nowadays (this whinge, copyright everyone I know) who'd really be surprised?

Anyhow, it made for a decent joke.

And following on from our last whinge.

Somebody found me a wonderful cartoon card recently, it featured a pair of dogs talking, as they do, and one says to the other ...

Yes, i did have a blog, but then I decided to go back to continual, pointless, incessant barking. ARF! ARF!

Working in the print industry, as so many cartoonists do, has been a very interesting experience this year. The second coming of the internet appears finally to have arrived and many of our traditional markets are disappearing as business finally cottons onto the fact that people like getting their news via screens.

This implies a massive change, not only for the self-employed seeking new places to work, but also more brutally for a lot of staffers who are discovering that there is no real job security in a moving marketplace.

To illustrate my point, I point to large scale compulsory redundancies at the Telegraph titles and the Times Ed this year - and these are only the high-profile ones.

It's going to mean a lot more of the sort of freelance jousting I drew in this picture. Enjoy or endure.

This week's other story was of course the death of Steve Irwin - the crocodile man. The collision of the two stories, Irwin and the latest Labour row, made for a strong image.

A leaving party image for the Prime Minister.

This mornings leaked email from Downing Street which turned up in The Mirror newspaper really puts an interesting light on what is going on inside the government and the Labour government.

Here's a quote from the document refereing to the chancellor, who remains TB's likeliest successor ...

"There are specific issues which can provide opportunities and threats. They are: GB's reaction ... the more successful we are the more it will agitate and possibly destabilise him, we need to consider how to deal."

Giving Tony a big and prolonged send-off would certainly irritate Gordon no end. It is also why this row will not go away until the PM either names a date (Gordon's preferred solution) or actually goes.

In cartoon commentary land this leads to extreme exhaustion of Gordon and Tony jokes - although I thought Martin Rowson found a good one yesterday on the Guardian.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoons/martinrowson/archive/0,,1284262,00.html

I've been thinking about entering this excellent web-based communal activity for ages - the thing that tipped me over the edge this week was the theme - run.

On days I'm not feeling too old, too tired or too cranky - this is one of my favourite things.

The caricature is of Paula Radcliffe.

Caricaturing is extremely difficult to do well and I find it really helps to be interested in the person you are doing. I worked hard on drawing Paula over a long period, and came back to the image several times having tried various ways to do her.

The trick in this case seemed to be finding the right moment at which to draw her. The solution was suffering, after all it's what she does best.

Well, revenge has been meted out for my appalling behaviour towards my father's IT-related troubles.

My printer died.

To be fair, it had given good service (thankyou HP) and was a lot more reliable than the succession (I never learned) of Epson models I'd had before.

On the good news front, the laptop doesn't need a battery recall (phew) and touch wood, nothing else appears to be broken at present. Apart of course from my will to draw anything about the news.

Below, something commissioned on the middle east (again)

Modern life has caught up with me, my father has become a blogger.

Lyn and I are delighted he's managed to join the digital world having spent part of last weekend trying to sort out various of his computer and IT related problems.

I'll list a few - How to fix the fax, how to insert footnotes in his thesis, how to switch on his email without going through two, or perhaps three corporate portals and so on.

All of these are issues which the three of us have battled through before!

Amazingly however, when motivated to learn something new that he is interested in, he's off like a hare - and thus, I give you, my father, the blogger.

http://bucksnotes.blogspot.com/

Things have been a little serious on here lately, so here's something light and frothy.

Britain is experiencing a shortage of sperm donations.

This is due to a change in the law that means donors now have to reveal their identity so that any children resulting from their generosity, can one day trace their biological father.

Coincidentally, Channel 4 are about to launch their annual 'controversial week' in the summer schedules - happily, for this cartoonist, this year it's about wanking.

When captions write themselves ...

Behind the renewed fighting in Lebanon lies an old problem about the balance of power across the region.

Israel is the major military power, funded, backed and supported by the US and with access to its own nuclear weapons.

The other major power is Iran, which has become massively more powerful in relative terms, since the collapse of Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Iran is also busy constructing a large scale cilvilian nuclear program, which it is hard to believe won't also be useful in military terms. The US, the EU and the UN are very concerned about this and there has been a long-running argument about how much of a project Iran should have.

It's not hard to think that a lot of what is going on in Lebanon is a handy diversion for Iran, and a useful way of strengthening their hand in the ongoing nuclear discussions. Every time they poke Israel - and that it responds - it strengthens anti-Israeli feeling across the region and makes life difficult for Iran's major enemy, the US.

And the US, let us not forget, is sitting on the borders of Iran with a large army, having invaded the Iranian's neighbour, Iraq. Confused yet?

Well some signs of progress this morning - and an age-old cartoon experience, the news overtaking you.

Yesterday's drawing is now out of date. Clearly the TV pictures of Qana have moved the Americans to do something and there is now somesort of temporary cessation of Israeli air activity over southern Lebanon, even if both sides are still firing artillery and missiles at one another.

The challenge now is going to be getting agreement about how to secure a permamanent ceasefire, because this isn't it. Two from a large range of difficult issues that this is going to bring to light are; how to disarm or control Hezbollah and how to bring an international force in the area without making it look as if it's another western invasion of Arab land.

A visual response to the major humanitarian disaster at Qana in southern Lebanon where 50 people, largely women and children have died after a building collapsed on them following an Israeli bombing raid.

I chose to draw this in a sort of triptych - or three panel display - to try and show the inconsistency in the position of the American administration, which still likes to pretend it is a neutral power broker in the region.

Sadly, in other news this week, it has become clear that the bunker busting weapons, perhaps responsible for these deaths, are currently being shipped to the Israeli airforce from the US, via the UK.

Needless to say, the idiots in Hezbollah are still firing missiles at the Israelis.

Say no more about it.

The Prime Minister is going to Washington for one of his 'reward' visits for not rocking the boat. Demands at home are that he rocks the boat this time about standing off the horrors in the middle east, but will he dare do it in public?

Nah, thought not.

You can see an interview with me at the excellent Cartoon Fiend web site.

http://the-cartoon-fiend.blogspot.com/

You'll find lots of other great cartoonists there too. Enjoy.

And a sincere hat tip to Mr McKie for the lovely advertising.

Here's a belated report on the goings on at the Second Liverpool cartoon festival, which is running at the Royal Court Theatre. (Handily close to Lime Street station.)

More than 30 of Britain's top gagsmiths sent work on the theme of performance thanks to the organisers Bill Stott, John Roberts and Paul Hardman. These three heroes have been trying to establish the festival as a regular event and to tie it in with the celebrations around 2008, which is going to be Liverpool's year as European capital of culture.

Despite an excellent launch and a fine exhibition in a vast subterranean bar, it remains to be seen whether they can batter down the walls of prejudice which surround cartooning as an art form in Britain.

In the UK it is too often and too easily dismissed as childish and simple, when time spent examining it would reveal in very many cases, the exact opposite.

Of course, those who like to condemn the virtues of childishness and simplicity are usually among the many jaded old adults have lost their own sense of fun and wonder at the world's absurdities.

Utter misery on the news as the middle east has exploded again.

I liked one piece of reporting I saw in which a Lebanese civilian asked, not for democracy, but merely for the human right to live.

Of course, it applies both sides of that unhappy border

... for the opening night of the annual Comedy Festival on Thursday. I've got three cartoons in a show based on the theme of 'Performance' at the The Royal Court Theatre.

http://www.liverpoolcomedyfestival.co.uk/
http://www.royalcourtliverpool.co.uk/

Should be fun ... I'll pass on anything fun that I learn while I'm there.

It's one year since the 7th of July suicide bombings in London.

Commissioned cartoon on the sex lives of politicians - obviously it had to be Prescott. And he made a natural association with the famous poster of Skegness is SO bracing. It makes for a happy image I think.

Charles Clarke's 'savage' attack on the Prime Minister and his successor at the Home Office, John Reid. (Sigh)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5119934.stm

Two British soldiers dead in Afghanistan in area just down the road from maiwand which appears in an earlier post on this blog. We're in for a long and bloody involvement in Afghanistan all over again.

If anyone's interested in why this huge and poverty stricken country is so important, I'd like to recommend a book by a historian called Peter Hopkirk. It's genuinely illuminating and excellent about how and why we came to be involved in this part of the world.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1568360223/102-3580208-4928122?v=glance&n=283155

Someone very kindly asked me to draw them a picture about the official Catholic church position on the use of condoms.

I have to confess, I love this sort of story, a very human ability to ignore the facts on the ground in favour of some strange set of principles. Anyhow, this is what I came up with.

Aside from (I hope) the fun of drawing the Pope fly-swatting condoms, there is of course, also the anger about the strictures that this policy imposes on devout catholics around the world. One of the more serious examples is in southern Africa, where HIV infection is endemic and little pieces of rubber are an effective way of preventing further infections.

That advert with all the old footie lags eating bacon sarnies and looking fat, made me think about the way posterity might view the people running the country. I'm quite fond of this one.

Well, it's another glorious victory in the war on terror - our apparently main adversary in Iraq has been oblitterated by two 500 pound bombs dropped from an F16 - or two.

Was I the only one who found it depressing, and not a little instructive that at no stage was it possible for anyone on foot to get to the man and therefore air power was the only way to do him in? Three years after the liberation and we are bombing still.

What does that tell us about the state of the countryside and how the US, British and Iraqi forces are having to move around it? Makes you think doesn't it?

Oh and the first Brit has just been killed in the massive deployment of troops in Southern Afghanistan. I think there will be a lot more of them. if you are interested in the persistence of history, here are a few links aboiut previous British expeditions to this part of the world.

Tellingly, a good few of them have ended in something close to disaster - and I can't see much reason why this one wil go very differently.

http://www.britishbattles.com/second-afghan-war/maiwand.htm

There's a memorial to the many men of the 66th regiment who were killed at Maiwand in Forbury gardens, Reading.

http://gallery.future-i.com/England/parks/pic:maiwand-lion/

Current holders of the title are Osama Bin Laden, President George Bush and our own PM Anthony Charles Lynton Blair. Sadly, their reign has been a lot longer than the short month the world cup will last - the effects are likely to be a lot longer lasting too.

The old cultural worries are back to go alongside our more mundane concerns about the lack of a decent centre forward and one-paced right wingers. Oh well, here's to a happy couple of weeks whingeing ...

The Palme d'Or goes to Warwickshire's finest director and the race drawing several posts below was right on the money. My source, who reliably informed me that Ken was up and in the running, is a midlands man himself, so he obviously knew just what he was talking about!

You can see another drawing of Ken on my site in the caricature section. It harks back to one of his first film triumphs - Kes - you know, that one with the boy and the bird ... and Brian Glover pretending to be Bobby Charlton.

The posters all show the lad in a vigorous pose and somehow it suits the director too.

... on the joy of home wireless networking - not that I've got around to it yet. Still, it's the bank holiday at last. Hurray!

Another third of the busy day - an editorial cartoon.

I have to finish this supplement cover today all about the joys of working for a union ... nothing like a challenge! Then I can get on with another drawing and the never-ending pile of paperwork that grows every damn time I look at it.

Been trying to sort out my web site, which is a bit of a mess. I really need to go it focused as a proper portfolio site - and then I can do my existential musing here instead. Today, I've been working on sorting out my caricature section. I'd be interested to hear people's thoughts ...

www.mattbuck.com

This is another drawing of three directors in the race for the Palme D'or (the prize for the best feature film at Cannes). Here you can see (from right to left) Pedro Almodovar, Ken Loach and Sofia Coppola battling it out. The temptation to do Sofia and her horse as interchangeable was hard to resist ...

This is the final image that will appear in the one of the daily papers that Screen will publish during this years festival. As you can see, it features all nine jurors, who are all famous actors or directors.

From right to left they are: Elia Suleiman (Director), Tim Roth (actor), Zhang Ziyi (actress), Samuel L. Jackson (actor), Monica Belluci (actress), Patrice Leconte (Director), Helena Bonham-Carter (actress) and Lucretia Martel (Director.)

The chap at the front is the president of the jury Wong Kar-Wai.

It's been a real challenge caricaturing nine people at once and then shoehorning them into another film reference scene, while keeping it consistent and plausible. Fun though - hope you agree.