#CensusFail - the ABS explains

As the Census fiasco rolls on...

UPDATE:

And with somewhere less than half the expected Census forms submitted a week after Census "Night", the saga seems set to continue for quite a while yet...

Hopefully I won't have to make too many more of these things (though there are more in my head).

...and another one...

Election 2016: Front page caricatures

I forgot to mention this.

As Production Manager at the Great Southern Weekender, I was asked to illustrate the front page of the newspaper for the 2016 federal election.

Unlike my previous election illustrations, which were produced after election day, this one was to be printed two days before Australia voted.

The challenge was how to illustrate some sort of narrative in what was widely considered a safe Liberal seat.

One issue which had surfaced during the election campaign was a preference deal struck between supposed political opponents, Labor and Liberal, arguably to the detriment of the Liberals' coalition partner, the Nationals.

My initial thought was to have the Liberal candidate Rick Wilson with his arm around his coalition colleague, Nationals' John Hassell. I would have Rick holding "Labor Preference Deal" paperwork.

The problem with this approach is that it ignored the other "major" players, specifically Labor and Greens.

So, after a bit of a rethink, I decided to illustrate the Labor and Liberal candidates as election mates with Nationals and Greens lower in the picture, just making up the numbers (and that's pretty much how the primary vote went two days later).

2016 Federal Election, O'Connor

Digital caricature ~3800x5000px

© 2016, Andy Dolphin

The candidates shown are: John Ford (Labor), Rick Wilson (Liberal), John Hassell (Nationals) with Giz Watson (Greens) almost photobombing the group.

As with my 2010 election and 2013 election front pages, all work was produced in Photoshop using a Wacom tablet.

Bob Katter - Digital Caricature

Bob Katter
Original 1200x1400px
Digital Caricature
© Andy Dolphin

As Australia waits to find out the identity of it's next Prime Minister - the 15th in about six years, I think - one man stands out from the crowd.

Bob "Mad Hatter" Katter.

Famed for owning an Akubra for almost any occasion, Bob ventured out today and threw one of those many hats into the ring to help bring an end to the federal election count, some time before Christmas.

While some in the mainstream media have entertained the idea that Bob could become something of a kingmaker in a hung parliament, I think that after today's chat with the press he's looking more like he wants to be King.

With that in mind, I had to try a caricature of a man who is already a life-size caricature of himself.

I recently polished the drawing surface of my Wacom Intuos Pro (because I found it to be unusable with the nib-eating sandpaper surface Wacom gave it) and it is now a beautiful thing to behold... so I used that to draw the caricature on a 27" iMac and captured the action with Quicktime while I was at it.

You can watch the time-lapse caricature drawing on my Youtube channel.

iPad finger-paintings

I received an iPad from the family for Christmas and just had to have a go at finger painting.

I downloaded an app called Procreate as I had seen this before in the (in)famous, viral, Morgan Freeman finger-painting video, then messed around to see what I could do with it.

At less than $10 Australian, it's an astonishingly capable program that would give Photoshop a run for its (considerable and never-ending) money if it was ever available on the desktop.

I've uploaded a video of my first fumblings in Procreate. Don't judge the program by my efforts, though.
 

Malcolm Turnbull - another caricature

Don't forget to visit my new blog.

Malcolm Turnbull
Original 1000x1000px
Digital Caricature
© Andy Dolphin

Malcolm Turnbull - digital caricature

Following a tumultuous afternoon and evening in Australian politics, I've posted this over on my new Andy Dolphin blog.

Malcolm Turnbull
Original 1000x1000px
Digital Caricature
© Andy Dolphin

Treasurer's poor apology

If you're not into politics, feel free to skip down to the picture.

Federal Treasurer Joe Hockey has a had a bad week.

Tasked with the job of a selling a budget no one likes, Mr Hockey decided to dismiss the concerns of "the poor" by saying they won't much be affected by a rise in the fuel excise, because they don't drive cars anyway.

He went on to describe the fuel excise as a progressive tax, and became possibly the first treasurer in history to not know what "progressive tax" means. In fact, he might be the first high-school graduate in history to not know what progressive taxation is - assuming he graduated.

Challenged over his insensitivity, he dug in his heels and said the statistics backed him up. Unfortunately, he couldn't find any actual people who would back him up, not even among his closest workmates, and eventually began to realise he might need to give up and say "sorry".

And say sorry he did. Although, reading the full transcript of his on-air apology, it mostly seems like he's sorry people noticed that he's completely out of touch with the needs and concerns of low-income Australians.

If he wants to remain as Treasurer, he really should have apologised for not understanding basic tax philosophy.

Anyway, that was just a long explanation of why I felt compelled to do another Joe Hockey caricature.

Clive Palmer digital caricature

Considered by some to be the current leader of the Australian Parliament, larger-than-life MP Clive Palmer is the subject of my latest caricature sketch.

Clive Palmer MP

Digital caricature sketch.
Original 1000x1000px

© 2014, Andy Dolphin

 

Despite some obvious features, Mr Palmer was surprisingly difficult to caricature.

This isn't exactly a finished piece, but it will do for now.


Before copying, please read the copyright details at the bottom of the sidebar.

Dr Oz digital caricature

 

Dr Oz in the headlights

Digital caricature sketch.
Original 830x975px

© 2014, Andy Dolphin

After reading a few recent news reports from the US, I quickly knocked up this preliminary caricature sketch of TV personality and cardiothoracic surgeon, Dr Oz.

Nicknamed "America's Doctor", Dr Oz found himself in front of US Senator Claire McCaskill, and facing some heavy questioning about his enthusiastic promotion of "miracle" weight loss products on his show.

Video of the doctor's testimony resulted in some "roo in the headlights" moments ("deer in the headlights" moments, if you're in the US. Others can insert their own local variant.) as the much-adored surgeon tried to answer the Senator's questions.

Those moments were the inspiration for me to finally caricature Dr Oz, something I've been planning for a while.

NOTE: Permission is NOT granted to use this image for any purpose. Sorry.

Australian Federal Budget 2014

I think this pretty much sums up community sentiment from last night's federal budget.

Joe Hockey

Digital caricature.
Original 1700x2060px

© 2014, Andy Dolphin

This was a relative "quickie", taking a little under three hours from start to finish. I might spend some time refining it, one day.

As always, if you wish to use this image online, for non-commercial purposes, please remember to include a link back here. For any other purpose please ask in the comments or contact me at adolphin@westnet.com.au

Colin Barnett - AAA-rated caricature?

With the news today the Western Australian state budget has been so badly managed that our AAA credit rating has been downgraded, I thought I should repost a caricature I drew a few weeks ago.

Colin's a popular boy today.

Colin Barnett

Digital caricature. 580x680px

© 2013, Andy Dolphin

Front page contest

With counting from last weekend's election continuing in our electorate of O'Connor, I scored the front page of the Great Southern Weekender today.

With the retirement of single-term politician Tony Crook, who wrestled the seat from long-time MP Wilson Tuckey in 2010, the contest this year was between two political newcomers.

Chub Witham stood for the Nationals and Rick Wilson for the Liberals. Eleven Candidates ran in the seat this year but Witham and Wilson were the only candidates who stood any realistic chance of winning. And now it's down to the wire, although it seems likely the Liberals will take back the seat they held for decades.

Anyway, I sat up late for two nights this week and came up with this...

Witham vs Wilson

Digital caricature.3400x2600px

© 2010, Andy Dolphin

On the first evening, I focussed on doing a caricature of Rick Wilson, as he appeared to be the more-difficult of the pair to capture. At that point, I had no idea what the theme of the finished illustration would be, or who would even need to be in it as it was possible the situation could change before deadline. So this first caricature was mostly an exercise in getting a likeness, just in case (note, if you search for him, he doesn't look much like his red-haired campaign photo in real life).

Rick Wilson

Digital caricature.1900x1700px

© 2010, Andy Dolphin

As it turned out, I had to simplify this drawing the following evening, when I drew Witham and completed the piece, as I wouldn't have had time to do the whole illustration to this level of finish. So I did the Chub Witham face, simplified this one and then plonked them together on a page and drew the bodies around them, using a front-page template as a guide.

Once I had the contest theme worked out, I had to change Wilson's happy expression to suit.


I am Production Manager at the Weekender, by the way.

Scathing attack on my artwork!

It happened three years ago, in August 2010, and it's happened again. My artwork has been the victim of a savage attack. Last time it was "Dirty Harry" and this time it was "Big Wendell".

As I wrote in 2010, when Harry attacked my art, everyone's an art critic.

Last week, Wendell knocked my drawing of Kevin Rudd and tore strips off my caricature of Tony Abbott. But I'm not unhappy about it.

Harry and his successor Wendell live at Crocosaurus Cove in Darwin but they're not art critics. They are, however, touted as psychic crocodiles and they have often made public predictions about a variety of things, including federal elections.

In 2010, Harry chose my Julia Gillard caricature over that of Tony Abbott, to correctly pre-empt that year's election.

Last week, Wendell the croc took his time making a decision but ultimately correctly chose Tony Abbott over Kevin Rudd as our new Prime Minister.

Here's more...



MORE:
Psychic Croc picks election winner
NTNews - psychic croc picks Abbott

Stephen Fry - digital caricature

I was sitting at the computer lazily flipping through blog posts from a range of people on a range of topics and got bored.

Somewhere in that bunch of blogs was a picture of Stephen Fry, described on Wikipedia as an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television and radio presenter, film director, activist, and board member of Norwich City Football Club.

Stephen has a face that might best be described as "a gift for cartoonists", so I decided to accept the gift and do a caricature. I searched for a few more images, to get a better feel for his features, and then spent about two hours doodling around in Photoshop until I got this...

Stephen Fry

Digital caricature. 800x1200px

© 2013, Andy Dolphin

I wanted to go for more distortion that I usually do and I think I've managed it. I also wanted to keep it sketchy instead of going for the "airbrushed realism" I normally aim for.

Ultimately, I'd like to be able to do one of those caricatures that barely looks human and yet, somehow, looks exactly like the subject. Something like Russ Cook's astonishingly lifelike drawing of Hugh Laurie. It's a skill that's going to take some developing though.

UPDATE:

I kept fidgeting, to see if I could push this a little further by cutting and shifting and distorting and reshaping and ended up with a "sack of potatoes"...

Stephen Fry 2

Digital caricature. 800x1200px

© 2013, Andy Dolphin

Peter Watson Digital Caricature

In a battle that saw many of his Labor colleagues around the state tossed out of their seats, Albany MLA Peter Watson was returned to the job.

While many of the lost seats were previously considered safe, Watson's seat was extremely marginal. Despite this, the one-time Olympic runner managed to extend his lead this time around.

Here's a digital caricature of Watson that I drew for the Great Southern Weekender newspaper.

(Watson Wins! caricature - digital. 2900x4100px. © 2013, Andy Dolphin)

Memories light the corners of my mind

Ten years ago I was deeply engaged in teaching myself 3-D animation. I had downloaded a free program called Blender and within hours I was hooked. It is a truly amazing and incredibly powerful piece of software developed by a team of programmers around the world and released absolutely free.

In 2007 I produced an animation featuring a hapless super hero known in Blender circles as Super Wu (or Super Wu-Man). A fellow Blender user Sacha "Sago" Goedegebure had created the original cartoon version of the character and I took his drawing, modelled it into 3-D and made the one-minute animation to the Five for Fighting song "I can't stand to fly". It was one of my earliest attempts at full-blown animation with lip-syncing.

Angry Wu. Blender render by Andy Dolphin.

This reminiscing may seem out of place on my art blog except that I recently saw a link on James Gurney's blog to an art website called Massive Fantastic, hosted by Eric Millen. That name instantly rung bells. Eric, also a fellow "Blenderhead" was, in fact, the inspiration for the Super Wu character. Indeed, Eric was Super Wu.

This is just my long winded way of saying that if you like to look at great art, especially in the Fantasy Art genre, you should check out Massive Fantastic.

Tim Minchin's eyes

Digital painting in Photoshop:

I was just looking through some old digital doodles and sketches and came across this  sketch of Tim Minchin's eyes. I'd been working on doing a caricature but never quite "got it". Sometimes I'll do a more-realistic sketch of major features, as I did with Emily Deschanel, to see if I can find the secret to capturing the character.

With Ms Deschanel I found the character. With Tim, however, the secret remained a secret. I'm not sure if it's because he is a real-life caricature to begin with.

I'll try again one day.

 (Minchin's Eyes - digital sketch. 900x647px . © 2010, Andy Dolphin)

Wayne Swan: Digital caricature

Digital sketch in Photoshop:

Someone recently commented here that they enjoyed my caricatures and that they were looking for one of Wayne Swan. I didn't have one but with the Federal Budget going live earlier this week, I thought it was time to remedy that situation.

Last night I did this "quick" digital sketch. I hope to develop it further in the coming weeks.

Tom Richmond Book!

The Tom Richmond caricature book I pre-ordered a couple of months ago arrived today, earlier than expected. Despite travelling half-way around the world, it arrived in perfect condition.

Tom's delivered 170 pages of in-depth instruction on the art of caricature. I've got a bit of reading to do now.

Self Caricature Sketch

I decided it was time to do a caricature of myself. This is somewhat worse than doing self portraits (and it's been many years since I did one of those) because a caricature requires the exaggeration of features, even the less-flattering ones.

Most of us are used to seeing ourselves in the mirror but mirrors don't give an accurate image. Not only are we in reverse, we are also, in my experience, slimmer, taller and less wrinkly.

This was an impromptu decision and there was no combing of hair, no shaving and no makeup - just a few reference photos snapped in the spring sun. So here I am in my natural, wrinkled, uncombed state - and exaggerated.

This is just a quick digital sketch. I might work on it some more in the future.