Matt Buck's Hack Cartoons

The G8 summit in Hoikkaido, Japan, during July 2008. This is a cross-posting with Tribune.

Matt Buck’s animated drawings

Sometimes news stories are just a gift to a cartoonist in search of a useful image for election coverage.

Here's a to-scale-shot-of-the-cartoonist and his Big Board with the fear I wrote about previously replaced by hope that my chosen image about trade was going to hold up over such a big space.
I started off by blocking in the shapes of the image I wanted to draw with a tin of Homebase's finest grey exterior paint. This was surprisingly effective and the rough surface of the hardboard meant that dry-brushing was very effective. This was very handy for the image I chose to paint.
After I had established the shapes and the layout I could then add black and white and further tone to help bring the image up and into a better and more powerful focus. The whole process took about eight hours and was hard work but great fun.

Gordon Brown's official Prime Ministerial inheritance campaign has rumbled into life this week. A book, Profiles in Courage has been published and friendly media outlets are indulging in a frenzied bout of the-man-we-don't-know-itis. After the best part of two decades, I think most of us have a fair idea of what Gordon Brown is about. The more interesting question is how he will cope with what being Prime Minister involves.

My fellow blogger, Chicken Yogurt has a nice line on the Chancellor's new seriousness - click this mini blog title to read it.

UPDATE:
Another forward-thinking blogger, Devil's Kitchen, has offered some thoughts on my faltering attempts to animate editorial cartoons. He asks why do it? And it's a good question.

I'm doing it because increasingly the industry I knew, print journalism is in some sort of crisis of confidence. Readerships have been falling for years - and younger potential readers are taking their eyes to digital reading.

This means that a lot of traditional markets for people like me are contracting very fast - and that means change for us too.

This is why, I shall continue to try and animate the original image that I'm attaching below - with mixed results! And a thanks to Devils Kitchen for making me think about what I am doing and why.

It's going to be a like a debutante coming out in society - Gordon 2.0 announces himself to the world ... the suspense, the suspense...

... but tending to merge into an indeterminate sludge.

A marvellous piece of news (or lack of it) photography from Nick Danziger. The article published by The Guardian.

Photograph

You may see some interpretations of the consequences of our actions at

Birds of War