Matt Buck's Hack Cartoons

No, no, I am Banksy!

You get the point, the identity of the artist formerly known as Banksy, described by one of my professional colleagues, as the great visual satirist of our generation has been outed by the Mail on Sunday (oh, the glamour.)

It turns out the elusive artist is called Robin and went to to a nice school. It’s a shame the paper couldn’t bring itself to talk about what Robin of Banksy draws because the message is really more important than the medium - or the artist.

I'd like to encourage everyone reading this to claim to be Banksy too and then, perhaps, we can confuse the Mail on Sunday and help the artist retain his desired wealthy anonymity. The clever so-and-so.


Matt Buck’s animated drawings

Robert Mugabe was lambasted (no, really) by Foreign Secretary David Miliband yesterday. Miliband was on an official visit to South Africa. The reporting of the visit was interesting, focusing as it did, on a headline 2,000 Zimbabweans sheltering in a church in central Johannesburg. It was as if this was the entire migration problem in South Africa, the 2 million, or more, Zimbabweans scattered across northern South Africa in the past five years appear to have been overlooked. However, the recent riots confirm they are still there. (In this report, foreigners mainly means Zimbabweans.)
Click the image, or here, for the animated political cartoon

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

Short animated Hack cartoons clip for Tribune newspaper, which to its credit has been predicting this Labour wipeout for some time.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

A hat-tip to Whitehouse Animation and Paul Sorene.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

Two stills from the full animation which you can see here. Or just click the picture.

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

December 2007

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

Nick Garland in the Telegraph is very good today - simple and on the money. Peter Brookes in the Times goes for a more complex analogy - new film out - and it is, as ever, nicely done. Dave Brown in the Indy goes for a body shot and The Guardian in the absense of Bell and Rowson doesn't do too well at all. My own work for Channel 4 News should be live soon. The iniquities of finding a home in a media outlet means that my colleague, Morland doesn't have a slot this morning (well, that I know about), This should stop immediately, because his work deserves to be measured in the same league as all these fine journalists above.
Matt Buck’s animated drawing

12th November 2007

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

"Despite this international uncertainty, which started from the problems in the US housing market, there are grounds for believing that we will get through this."
Alastair Darling, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Does anyone else find this a curiously unreassuring choice of words to use at present?

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

To anyone who has run tried to run a marathon, this woman is just plain amazing. Paula Radcliffe, winner of the New York marathon 2007. She is, also, clearly, a bit bonkers.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

The times they-are-a-changing. Google's ad revenues in the UK exceed ITV's. I should also say one of my employers, Channel 4, are 25 this week and there is a nice link to a lot of interesting logo idents from the past quarter century, among other things, here. I can't believe it's 25 years!

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

An interesting man to caricature. The colour here has worked much more in favour of the final art than it did with poor old Al Gore below... I wonder why.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

Hello Gorehub kind of you to visit.
This was an interesting one to do as I 'lost' the caricatre halfway through, that means I think the simple black and white is better than the colour version.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

In the spirit of the marvellous hypertext video, which you can find below, comes this. Hat-tip to Mindy McAdams but the creative kudos belongs to Michael Wesch.

26th October 2007

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

This is excellent news. Hello again Ian.
23rd October 2007
Matt Buck’s animated drawings

The Economist takes a long view of the story and why it still matters. It is well worth a read. This weekend's PR spin was about Rock Chairman, Matt Ridley, (a former Economist employee) not receiving any payoff as he leaves his job. But there was also another little story, about the small matter of another £3bn loan from the Bank of England to prop up the ailing institution. Total Rock borrowing from the Bank of England (the taxpapyer, if you like) is now believed to be in the region of £16bn. If you believe what Hemscott are reporting, Northern Rock's funding problems remain acute.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

This is old news, but still good news. A hat-tip to Mr Quittner, wherever you are today...
25th October 2007

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

The problems with making jokes post below, touches on another interesting post from Virtual Economics in which Seamus McCauley talks about the increasing fusion between factual and opinion-based news coverage. This is very interesting to someone like me because essentially it's what visual satirists do; try to reveal truths, or opinions, through analogy, visual symbolism and jokes.

Seamus uses a lovely phrase in his piece - the genuine value of satirical news reporting - and goes on to talk about how one of the major problems that today's conventional journalists are finding, is that the predominant industry business models no longer support what it is, journalists do. In this context he argues, the value of satire, goes up.

'The gap between news and news satire gets ever smaller, and it seems our understanding of current affairs is all the richer for it.'

Sincere hat-tip to Mr McCauley

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

A sweet spot from D-Notice

Matt Buck’s animated drawings