Matt Buck's Hack Cartoons

Click the picture, or here, for the animated political cartoon for Channel 4 News on the start of the official recession.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

Coming soon...

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

Retail price inflation arrives at the Bank of England, for the immediate attention of the governor, Mervyn King. Click the picture or go to Channel 4 news.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

The rising price of crude oil is connected to a lack of global refinery capacity, changing demand and good old traditional geopolitics. Why would a group of countries want to make their major economic asset cheaper, just to us please our domestic users?
Click the picture, or go straight to Channel 4 from here, for the animated cartoon.
Matt Buck’s animated drawings

Regrettably, my Hack cartoons Northern Rocky animated political cartoon for Channel 4 has run into some legal issues. Click the picture to see more.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

Animated political cartoon published at Channel 4 News, or click the picture. The news site has a handy short guide about why the fact that banks no longer trust one another enough to lend money to each other matters. And what this may mean for the rest of us.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

Why blog when you can draw?

At first I did the writing thing - in words - because it was somewhere I got to control how what I said was displayed. As a creative person who tends to think in pictures rather than in words - this was important because I don't feel completely confident with letters and words. Letters in code and combination are pesky and elusive things which explains I think why politicians and lawyers love them so.

The blog also has the fringe benefit of being a nice way to advertise my wares without having to use a middleman.


Hack Cartoons Vitruvian Pig - or, the proportions of the artist
This seems to have become more important because of some real world changes to the business world in which I work. This is, or was, print journalism. This industry is going through a period of massive change, or steep decline and death (depending upon who you speak to:-/ Anyone living through one of these periods will tell you how challenging these times can be. Just ask journalists at one of my old papers - The Daily Express.

The economy of Britain supports under a 1,000 professional cartoonists at my best guesstimate. These are resourceful creatures who manage to feed and clothe themselves and their families entirely through their skill at drawing and writing. This number will, in all probability, decline in line with the print industry, if decline it is to be.

The difficulties of the task facing contemporary British-based print cartoonists can be contrasted by the story of Ronald Searle, arguably one of the greatest artists this country has ever produced. A man so pestered in our culture for his advertising work and the successful characters he invented at St Trinians school, that he eventually felt the need to move to France permanently, where he still lives and works aged 88. Nowadays he has a non-pigeonholed freedom to draw about what he pleases, mainly for Le Monde newspaper.

No one can stop economic changes I am noting when they are driven by financial forces far beyond the resistance of any one individual. All we can do as professional image makers is to adapt and make sure we are as visible as we can be.

Some of my colleagues and I have been busy setting up something called The Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation - which is, in advert-speak, exactly what it says on the tin. I like to daydream that Searle might approve.

At present, I edit its diary called the Bloghorn along with Royston Robertson who is busy making a name for himself as a gag cartoonist of note. Our members include many of Britain's finest cartoon talents, (here follows name-droppping) we can boast Ken Pyne, Pete Dredge and Martin Honeysett (all regulars from Private Eye), sages like John Jensen (who's forgotten more about how to communicate in words and pictures than most of us will ever know) and top editorial names like Martin Rowson, Morten Morland, Andy Davey and Dave Gaskill. There are many more cartoonists and artists (too many to list here) and I advise a visit if you have the leisure time, or are in need of a good professional piece of visual communication and the distinct and unusual skills which allows them to be made.

The Bloghorn

Many of us will be performing our tricks at the forthcoming Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival (April 18-20th) - much has been written about it on Bloghorn, if you can get there, come down and see what all this fuss is about.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

The Lords issued a report on the economic effect of immigration into the UK this week. Click the picture for the animated cartoon or go here to Channel 4 News.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

From Nick Davies via Lloyd Shepherd and the UKPG. I am indulging in pure churnalism here, but this bit is worth it because the original source, is original.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

One of the most difficult things about making things is knowing what your rights are when you try to sell them. I know lots of very experienced professionals who are in ignorance of this basic business issue. This ignorance can lead to a lot of difficult financial and legal problems. The most basic confusion I come across is that between possession of copyright and the licensing of rights.

Briefly, at any time an artist makes a piece of art he has copyright automatically, without doing anything. It is an 'implicit' right earned by the skill and time and labour which the artwork has taken. There's a link explaining more about it here. You can download a pdf factsheet here. Importantly, before any self-employed artist has no legal claim to copyright, they have to have signed it away, in writing. Once this basic legal idea is understood, things can seem a lot clearer.

Essentially, what creative people like me sell are the rights to use our artwork, usually, exclusively. I will write some more about this.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

From the Toronto Star photographer Lucas Oleniuk. Well worth a watch.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

"The rise of blogging and opinion outside of the mainstream has caused newspapers a problem, because quite often these blogs are more interesting than the editorials in the newspapers."
Former editor of the Sunday Times, Andrew Neill to the House of Lords Communications Committee. Quote via Journalism.co.uk

More cheerfully, The Independent newspaper has relaunched, at long last, its website, In doing so, it has finally recognised the genius of its regular editorial cartoonist, Dave Brown. He has a proper cartoon gallery full of marvellous stuff, right at the top of opinion. The joke for December the 24th is a particular treat.
23rd January 2008

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

The Northern Rock bank rescue plan is announced to the public by Chancellor of the Exchequer Alastair Darling. Published here and here.
21st January 2008

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

Coming soon...

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

Back.
16th December 2007

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

I get a lot of letters from younger cartoonists and people who make pictures for a living, asking for advice. Once upon a time I used to write these letters myself. I try to answer them, but to be honest, there isn't a great deal of useful stuff you can say. If the author has desire to draw real-life it will come out anyway, with outside advice or not. We all have a talent for expressing ourselves in varying degrees. However, the one consistent thing I always say, is to learn the economic, legal and financial value of what is made with their skill. This is because, sadly, life and some people being what they are, you will undoubtedly find your work and ideas are, at some point, 'borrowed.' The trick at this point is in being to take the backhanded compliment. This last bit of this process is a bit like a finishing school for makers of creativity. It's happened to me several times in the past decade and will no doubt happen again. There's a good quotation by an Indian gentleman caled Ananda K.Coomaraswamy about it.

It's not a question of an artist being a special kind of person, but of every person, who is not an parasite or an idler, being a special kind of artist.

Absolutely lovely. A wonderful combination of pictures, music, production and design. This was made by somebody called Miralaum. A hat-tip to Wiley Miller for spotting it. the full list of featured commercial artists for 500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art. is;
Leonardo Da Vinci, Raphael, Titian, Botticelli , Boltraffio, Albrecht Durer, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Messina, Perugino, Hans Memling, El Greco, Hans Holbein, Rokotov, Peter Paul Rubens, Gobert, Caspar Netscher, Pierre Mignard, Jean-Marc Nattier, Vigee-Le Brun, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Winterhalter, Tyranov, Borovikovsky, Venetsianov, Gros, Kiprensky, Amalie, Corot, Edouard Manet, Flatour, Ingres, Wontner, Bouguereau, Comerre, Leighton, Blaas, Renoir, Millias, Duveneck, Cassatt, Weir, Zorn, Mucha, Paul Gaugan, Henri Matisse, Picabia, Gustav Klimt, Hawkins, Magritte, Salvador Dali, Malevich, Merrild, Modigliani, and Pablo Picasso.
Not bad really.
2nd December 2007

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

Famous opportunist moves in on the Rock. Why might he do this? Well, you could read this, or, you might prefer to get the fuller tale of hubris that allowed him the opportunity, here. Today's spin is that the crisis is nearly over, I'd bet it isn't and don't bet that Branson and his associates are going to get the former bank either...

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

Published here and above.
20th November 2007

Matt Buck’s animated drawings