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HAL BAILEY: Hello.
My name's Hal Bailey.
And I'm excited today.
Kal and I met several years ago in San Francisco.
And I'm thrilled today to have him here at Google.
We've been talking about this many years.
Two of the things that I think will resonate with most people
here about Kal and his work are one, he spends a lot of
time and effort thinking about the digital revolution.
How the digital revolution is changing both books, but also
art in general.
And then also, he's been very vocal about freedom of
expression, not just in the United States and the United
Kingdom, where it's easy to do that, but around
the world as well.
So he's got lots of interesting
stories to tell us.
And I'll hand it over to him.
KEVIN KALLAUGHER: Great.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Hal.
[APPLAUSE]
KEVIN KALLAUGHER: Thanks, everyone.
Good to see you.
Thank you.
Thank you all for coming today.
We're going to have some fun today, partly because we're
going to be talking a little bit about
the world of cartoons.
Political cartoons, which innately should be fun.
But also, I'm going to have a little bit of fun because the
world of cartoons has been shrinking of late.
And what I mean is the traditional cartoon that
everyone knows about appears in a newspaper.
And soon, we may be saying, what was the newspaper, as
everyone's attention moves to the internet and absorbing
content on new devices.
And so, the numbers of political cartoonists my
particular craft, has reduced, I think in 25 years, from
about 200 in the US to about 70.
And those numbers will probably get smaller.
And around the rest of the world, there may be only
another hundred of us that are doing this.
But today, we're going to change all that, because in
addition to me telling you a little bit about the world of
cartoons that I reside in, showing you some cartoons,
doing a Q&A, I'm also going to draw some of my favorite
presidents that I've drawn over the years.
But we're going to finish off with a drawing lesson, where
I'm going to teach everybody here how to draw Barack Obama.
OK?
So we're going to have like, another 50 cartoonists by the
end of the show.
We hope that you guys will practice.
And then we'll start a new revolution starting today.
So anyways, my world.
Editorial cartoonist.
I've been with "The Economist" magazine for 35 years.
And many of you have copies of the book that just came out
about a month ago celebrating that fact.
And during my career, both for "The Economist" and as
cartoonist is for "The Baltimore Sun," where I had
been, I've created over 8,000 cartoons.
And I've created over 140 covers for
the magazine as well.
And I wanted to give you guys a little bit of insight into
this very special type of creativity that's involved in
my craft, which requires both the understanding of politics
and art, and done on a deadline.
But the thing that fascinates me most about my craft is the
notion that you're dealing with a certain kind of
technology.
And the technology is pigment, black pigment, on a white
piece of paper.
And when you see it appear in front of you, it's completely
individual, as individual as each of our handwriting.
Yet when it appears, suddenly an image arrives.
And everyone, no matter what nationality, what language you
speak, it will be universally understood.
And there is no special effects with this.
It's exactly what you see.
There's something very human and very tangible about the
act of drawing.
But then, there's also something about the power that
this line can create.
And we only have to think about what happened to a group
of Danish cartoonists just a few years ago, when they drew
the Prophet Mohammad.
There were subsequent riots, where hundreds
of people were killed.
And it caused an international outcry that still is an open
wound today.
So besides the fact that there's a magic to this line,
there's also a power to this line.
And I'm going to share with you guys a little bit of the
inside of what it's like to be a cartoonist.
Some of the skill sets involved.
Some of the background stories that go into it, particularly
with my work with the "Economist." And then, we'll
have some fun doing some drawing as well.
So I thought I'd start--
I think it's a really important thing when you're
dealing with artists, it's really important to look at
their early work.
You get some sort of sense of where they come from.
And I'm going to show you this cartoon, which is a seminal
cartoons of mine.
Very important cartoon, which I drew when I
was six years old.
So now, this cartoon is important.
You might see it's got Abraham Lincoln, "Gettysburg Address."
The reason why this cartoon is so important is because this
cartoon inspired a feature length motion picture starring
Daniel Day Lewis.
[LAUGHTER]
KEVIN KALLAUGHER: It's a really important piece.
But here's what's cool about this.
At age six, everybody in this room is drawing.
Right?
We are all drawing.
But somewhere between six and 13, most people drop off.
But we all have that in us, that capacity to use lines to
dictate reality, to translate reality.
It's all something that we absorb,
life through the lines.
And for me as a cartoonist, I'm actually a professional
six-year-old.
I kind of stayed with this world of lines.
So after graduating from Harvard, I spent the next 11
years living in the UK.
But I started as-- you're not going to believe this--
a semi-professional basketball player.
I was always taller back then.
But I also, when the team is having financial trouble, I
went on the streets and started drawing caricatures.
And one of things when you're a street artist, you get to
see hundreds, if not thousands, of faces.
And you see people of all different nationalities, all
different shapes of heads, all different ages and
ethnicities.
And you learn to deconstruct and understand the
complexities of the face.
And the unfortunate thing, though, is I was doing this to
raise money.
And you can imagine the typical caricaturists knock
something out, what?
In about three or four minutes.
And they put a tennis racquet in the person's hand.
And they charge you whatever.
I was a terrible businessman, because it used to take me a
half an hour or 45 minutes.
Because I wanted to capture that person.
The spirit of that individual.
And I thought I was mad until I read a famous quote by the
Italian Renaissance painter, Annibale Carracci, who said,
"A good caricature is more true to life than reality
itself."
And it's this whole idea that you can get to the soul of
someone through a caricature that's always inspired me.
So when I started working for "The Economist" magazine back
in 1978, I now was no longer drawing holidaymakers.
I was now drawing policymakers.
And I was beginning to realize and understand that the
cartoon, the caricature, was not just a source of making
humorous assertions of people on the streets, but now you're
taking on powerful people, and you could
knock them down a notch.
And over this time, I've drawn, wow, I've drawn
practically every major politician over the years.
Certainly every American president.
And some of the American presidents obviously offered
more scope than others.
And I also found the caricatures I was drawing were
not simply representations of the individuals, but they also
were telling stories.
This cartoon, for example, appeared on the cover of the
magazine "The Economist" not long after Hurricane Katrina.
But it was a metaphor of how the Bush administration and
their policies were also falling apart in the same way
that the country was.
And this is the only cover in over 150 years "The Economist"
ran with no words on it.
And then, of course, caricatures of individual
presidents who I've drawn change over time.
Partly because we all change over time.
But we've also seen how Obama's has changed.
This is what he look like in 2008 when he
ran the first time.
You guys remember this guy, the upward looking, the
optimistic, the hopeful president?
And now, five years later, this is what he looks like.
So the weight of the job, and the gravity, and gravitas are
kind of pulling its weight and taking a toll on the face.
And so the drawing can tell the story.
And the other thing that I learned when I was watching
caricatures over time was it was that people's shape of
your head is the most distinguishing characteristic
that you have.
And so someone like John Kerry, who's got a very long
face, made it good for caricature.
And there's other guys, like Joe Biden here, where the
smile gives a shape of its own and creates the fundamental
part of the recognition of the face.
Now it's also a point that I discovered over time that the
caricatures are not just reflecting the important
people in the news, but they can also be educational
components, where they're telling the readers who are
the people, important people, that you should know about.
So someone like Nancy Pelosi, who everyone wouldn't
necessarily recognize if she walked into the room, or
Senator Reid of Nevada.
But these are important people.
If you put them in cartoons, then people say, oh, maybe I
should know who these people are.
And then there's election years, where we have new
candidates coming along and new challenges for the
cartoonist and the caricaturist.
So I was in the UK, like I said, for about 11 years.
And I hadn't been there for very long before I realized
that as an American living abroad, you are held
personally responsible for everything that goes on in
this country.
So as a result, I became more aware and more interested in
politics to try to figure out what was going on.
Partly because I learned that every taxi driver in London
seemed to know more about American politics than I did.
But I figured that I needed to get my game up.
So I got this new interest in politics, and I combined it
with my interest in cartoons to become a political
cartoonist.
Here, I was using caricature, the skill set that I felt was
really one the most powerful tools at the
disposal of a satirist.
But I was also using it as a way to get your
interest into a cartoon.
At that point, I deliver a message.
And that makes the good cartoon.
So because my job is not really to make you laugh.
My job is to make you think using humor, using caricature,
but using it as a vehicle for a message.
And after that, hopefully, making you challenge your
thoughts and your ideas on the important events of the day.
So I will use caricatures.
I thought caricatures are great.
To quote another famous person, another great British
philosopher named Mary Poppins, "A spoonful of sugar
helps the medicine go down." And because we are animals and
we are wired to look at faces, whereby our eyes are scanners,
our brains are hard drives, and all we do is every time we
look at the person, we're eyeballing and we're assessing
them to see if they're friendly, if we like them, are
they attractive, would I like to go out with them, or
whatever you're thinking.
Your brain is processing this information instantaneously.
The caricature is the thing that brings your eyeballs into
the cartoon.
And when you have them in there for five or six seconds,
then you can deliver your message at the same time.
So now, I'm going to show you some of the other tools in
addition to caricature that we cartoonists use to get our
messages across.
So one of them, of course, is symbols.
The donkey and the elephant, most famously in the United
States, representative of two different parties.
Use them, of course, in many cartoons.
This cartoon, for example, I did in 2010 during the
mid-term elections.
Normally when the opposition party gains an upper hand.
We might expect to see the same cartoon
again in 2014, perhaps.
Although I never recycle cartoons.
I want to make that clear.
All right.
So here's another famous symbol, our friend Uncle Sam.
So this cartoon I did after a visit to Cuba in 1999.
And there, you can see Uncle Sam.
He's got his microphone.
He's going, "People of Cuba!
Why stick with that dictator idiot Castro when you can
freely elect your idiots like we do?"
And that was during the time of the Monica Lewinsky
nonsense and all that stuff going on in
the background there.
And then this cartoon about Uncle Sam, one of my
favorites, has Uncle Sam, "What foreign enemies think
Americans are looking for, world control." "What
Americans are really looking for is,
remote control." Right?
Again, our good friend Uncle Sam.
Now, there's also, of course, cartoons that are
not funny at all.
When I live the job of an editorial cartoonist, I live
within two polarities.
Editorial that is serious and cartoonist that is funny.
And every day when I approach my cartoons, I put myself on a
different part of that spectrum according to the
appropriateness of the subject matter.
And you guys all have to think back to what it was like in
the United States after 2001 and the bombings in New York.
And any of you that've lived abroad in countries where
they've had major terrorist activity, is that there's not
a lot of humor to be found.
At those times, you have to resort to other of
your skill sets. .
This cartoon, for example, I did a few days afterwards.
And it's about terrorism.
And it's about the beast of terrorism that is both visible
and invisible.
A beast that you will not slay, but one that must be
engaged just the same.
But eventually over time, humor does find its way back
into the discussion.
And actually, I think humor is an important part of the
healing process.
And cartoonists often lead the way as being some of the first
people to approach this sort of thing.
And here's a cartoon I wanted to show you that tells you a
little bit of a story about what happened after 9/11.
And in fact, in four panels, it tells the entire story of
the decade long Iraq war.
So it starts off, we have Uncle Sam, who thinks he sees
weapons of mass destruction.
And he's going in.
And once he's in there, where do they go?
They weren't here.
And oh no, it's worse than I thought.
And then finally, oh, there they are.
We finally found the weapons of mass destruction.
Maybe not exactly where we thought they were.
AUDIENCE: And you're mooning [INAUDIBLE].
KEVIN KALLAUGHER: That's right.
So here, what's interesting too is that note, this employs
yet another tool for the cartoonist.
And that is narrative storytelling.
Most of the cartoons you've seen up to now
had a single panel.
This one went over several panels.
You're telling a story.
So being a cartoonist, you also have to be a good
storyteller.
You have to be not only good with pictures, but you have to
be good with timing.
This, by the way, I just wanted to show you, is what
Iraq looks like today.
This is much more of where we stand, where Iraq is trying to
set off after the US is pulling its hands away.
But it doesn't look like it's going to move so steadily.
I'll also add, for those of you who've spent any time in
England, you may know in England--
well here in the US we say, on your marks, get set, go.
In England, they say, ready, steady, go.
And hence, that's why this is ready, steady.
If this was done for "The Baltimore Sun," it would've
said, on your marks, get set.
And then everyone would have known what happened.
So we also do cartoons on a whole array of subjects that
are not necessarily specific to individuals, where you have
caricature, or symbols like Uncle Sam, but they could be a
much more grander process.
This brings me around to the point of saying that when
you're a cartoonist, the world is our bailiwick.
We have to cover everything.
All the other writers and columnists and newspapers,
they usually have certain specific niches.
As a cartoonist, I have to cover everything, which means
keeping up with the news, which is I think is the part
of the my job that's the hardest for
me to keep up with.
We have to do very sensitive subjects
as well, like religion.
OK.
Here's a cartoon I wanted to show you about religion.
It's set up in heaven.
And it says, "Hello, Lord Almighty's office.
Michael be Archangel speaking.
May I help you?"" And a voice from offstage says, "Who is
it?" "It's Pope John Paul II on the line." "Again?"
"He's worried about this movement to ordain women as
priests." "But I've already told him what I think.
Tell him I'm busy." "I'm sorry.
She's
busy right now." [LAUGHTER]
KEVIN KALLAUGHER: So here, one of the other elements of being
a cartoonist is you've got to be a good writer.
And here we have writing, and timing, and panels all wrapped
into one, because we had the lead to the words to the last
few seconds.
Not giving away our hand.
And so having all of that-- and this is what it looked
like in the paper--
having all of that work out in a nice continuum that made it
an effective joke.
Now we also cover tough subjects like guns.
All right.
Now guns is a subject which I've done many cartoons.
This is the cover of "The Economist" that I did the week
that Gabrielle Giffords got shot down in Arizona.
This is a very touchy subject.
Every country and every individual has
certain touchy subjects.
And here, of course, guns is one of them.
So recently, I was in Beirut.
And I was talking to a group of Lebanese cartoonists,
showing my cartoons.
And one of the cartoonists was aware of the amount of gun
cartoons I did.
And he says, you've got to tell me, Kal, do you ever get
worried that people will get very upset about these kinds
of toons and do something about it?
Because after all, all those guys that you're complaining
about guns, they've all got guns.
And I thought, well, I've been lucky so far.
I've had cartoonists colleagues both here and
abroad who have been threatened and
this sort of thing.
But it's not been such an issue for me.
But then another Lebanese cartoonist perked up.
And he said, you know, here in Lebanon, it's
the exact same thing.
Except everyone here has got rocket launchers.
So it made me feel an awful lot better, that conversation.
I didn't feel so under siege.
Now this cartoon is one about the financial world.
This is my most popular cartoon ever.
It's just a normal day at the nation's most important
financial institution.
So this little guy there on the left, he's saying, "I've
got a stock here that could really excel." "Really excel?"
"Excel?" "Sell?" "Sell?" "Sell!" "Sell!" Sell!" "Sell!"
"Sell!" "Sell!" "Sell!"
"This is madness.
I can't take anymore.
Good bye." "Good bye?" "Bye?" "Buy?" "Buy?" "Buy?" "Buy?"
"Buy?" "I've got a stock here that could really excel."
So anyway, so this cartoon appears 1989.
It appears "Baltimore Sun," "New York Times," "Herald
Tribune." Starts picked up by other newspapers.
And the next thing you know, I'm getting phone calls.
Scores of phone calls from stockbrokers.
And they're saying two things.
One, they want a copy of this cartoon.
And two, this is exactly what its like.
This is what they all say.
And ever since then, on almost a weekly basis, I get requests
to use this cartoon in books, encyclopedias, on mugs.
I had that request six months ago from a stockbroker in Hong
Kong, where we took this cartoon, they blew it up.
We divided it and made it one single line, 24 feet.
And they put it in the lobby of their place.
So it's amazing.
Some cartoons can really hit a raw nerve if you get it right.
And some cartoons, of course, we're always about trying
getting things down to their simplest.
But sometimes, keeping things complex are also great ways to
tell the story.
So this is about Obamacare, navigating US health.
Before Obamacare, this is what it looks like.
And after Obamacare, this is what it's going to look like.
.
So it's a great way of telling the story in pictures.
So this is kind of what I thought your relationship to
China is here, between Google and China.
There is nothing more annoying on the web
than an unwanted pop-up.
And that's a Chinese dragon kind of finding its way into
everything you do here.
So anyways, for the outside world, this is what we think
you guys at Google are like.
You don't have your shoes on.
You always got a hat on.
And you're always just tapping away.
So hopefully I'm going you learn something.
So the cartoon I do on Google will be a little bit more
representative.
So always as cartoonists, we're always ingesting as much
information as we can about the subjects we're covering.
Now I want to show you a quick notice about how cartoons have
progressed over recent years.
And this is a pre-internet cartoon I
want to tell you about.
So the story is this.
Mikhail Gorbachev is now the new leader
of the Soviet Union.
1986, I think.
And I was working in the UK at the time.
And there was this brand new show called "Miami Vice." You
guys know that?
Brand new in 1986.
And I say, wouldn't it be cool to get this new cool new style
leader and draw him as the guy from "Miami Vice." And the
editors at "The Economist" said, great, Kal, go for it.
I had 24 hours to complete the cover.
But the bad news was I got home and I realized I had no
photos of "Miami Vice."
And in those days, if you didn't have any photos, you
had no photos.
There was no way to get anything.
And so I turned to my wife and I said, well, what are we
going to do?
So we said, what do we do?
The typical thing, we went shopping.
We went out and bought some clothes.
And this is me modeling for the actual cartoon.
Of course, that's not my car.
That's not really my car.
But those are my clothes that Mikhail Gorbachev is wearing
in the cartoon.
So that was pre-internet.
So here's a cartoon post-internet.
So the story of this cartoon took place
about five years ago.
I was on vacation in the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming,
Northeast Wyoming.
And I made the mistake of checking my email.
There was a note from "The Economist" saying, , Kal, you
left a sketch for us that we really liked about the
over-consumption of oil between the
United States and China.
And would you please paint it.
We want to put it on the cover this week.
So I get back to them with a note and say, guys, there's
three problems.
First, I'm on vacation.
Second, I don't have any paints with me.
And third, I'm in the middle of nowhere.
Right?
So I figured that kind of will settle the score.
But then they get back to me and say, Kal, see what you can
do and call us in the morning.
So I'm going, oh man.
All right.
So I'm at a dude range.
And so, I go talk to the dudes.
I go, dudes, where can I get some paints?
And they say, well, this dirt road, 10 miles.
Go down there.
There's a pharmacy.
In the back row of the pharmacy, there's a lady.
She likes to paint.
Go talk with her.
Go find the lady.
She gives me a little kids' pack.
You know the little six?
Them round little things?
That's what I got.
Little six pack of kid paints.
One piece of watercolor paper.
And I go back to the kitchen table of the dude
ranch, and I do this.
And notice the primary colors here.
It's very basic colors in this.
And then I scan it on my portable scanner laptop.
Email it, like dial-up.
Five hours later, it arrives in London.
But the key thing was that two days later, being "The
Economist," this appeared in every country around the world
from the mountains of Wyoming.
And ever since then and actually before, wherever I am
in the world, I'm always doing my cartoons for "The
Economist." And it's a very easy thing.
Particularly compared to what it was when I first started
with "The Economist." It was 1978.
I worked in UK.
I came back to Baltimore to New York in the
United States in 1988.
And the internet was just in its early days.
And I pioneered the use of sending my cartoons to London
from Baltimore.
But in those days, a 400K file would take
three hours to send.
And now, of course, we could be anywhere in the world, and
I could send my cartoon.
So a lot of people ask me, all right, how
do you do your cartoons?
All right.
So one thing is that I'm constantly trying to ingest as
much information as I can from a whole variety of sources.
TV, the Web mostly.
Radios really great.
And of course, you're reading some magazines as well.
But keeping up is really tough.
So now, because I consider myself a columnist, my first
job is being a journalist, gathering the information.
But now, I have to try to get an angle on an information and
not find out what's funny today, but find out what is
important today.
And once I've got that, now I have to take that idea and
turn it into a cartoon.
And in the beginning, it's awfully difficult.
So what I do is I give myself lots of paper.
I put it on my desk.
And I think and draw at the same time.
And part of this about the creativity, you try to fire
between the two halves of you brain, the logical and the
creative, saying what is interesting and what logically
would work.
But then, also what will be cool and what will be funny.
And I'm doing lots of sketches.
And my first sketch is often virtually hieroglyphic.
In fact, let me show you one of my early sketches for a
cartoon I did recently.
Can you see that?
AUDIENCE: It's a Frank Gehry design.
KEVIN KALLAUGHER: That's it.
[LAUGHS]
It's a perfect--
you can see obviously what's going on here.
But this was, I was commissioned to do a cover for
"The Economist" recently.
And they wanted me to do something about raising taxes
on rich people.
So I started to conjure up what would be a good idea.
And I thought, how about fox hunting?
That's the kind of thing that rich people maybe do.
But I thought I'd give it a little bit of a twist.
And instead of having fox hunters chasing foxes, how
about if I have politicians chasing rich people?
And so this was what my first sketch looked like.
But the next sketch is much clearer.
There you go.
OK But already, I'm beginning to map out all the varieties
shapes and trying to conjure up a composition.
The next sketch that I do on top of that is getting a
little bit clearer.
You might be able to see some of the characters appearing
down in the southeast part of the drawing.
And the next drawing still is getting more and more clear.
And at the same time while I'm doing this in London, they are
playing around with the captions, the titles of the
publication.
And they're also working on compositions as well.
Someone might have something like this. "Follow the Money."
Or "Pursue the Rich." I think we have another one here.
Next, once we have settled on the pencil sketch, I now am
working on the color, including creating the
caricatures that are going to go in it.
And here, you can see the Barack Obama version.
And finally, when I've painted it all, it looks like this in
watercolor.
And it's quite large this one, I think.
And this whole process between this, actually, the original
sketch that I showed you and this finished color
cover, is 36 hours.
36 hours from that little sketch and all those
iterations.
So one of the things about being in my craft is that you
have to love deadlines.
Not everyone loves a deadline.
We live on a daily deadlines.
I mean, we're creating art and commentary on a deadline.
In fact, I tell people never go to the pub with a
cartoonist, because we will wait 'til one minute before
closing time before we offer to buy you a drink.
Because we just love deadlines.
It's just the way that we operate.
So now a little bit onto technology.
I wanted to tell you guys a little bit about it.
We're always concerned about what's happening to
newspapers, because it's the natural home of cartoonists.
But my senior thesis at University back in 1977 was a
13 minute long animated cartoon, back in the old day,
when you had to hand draw cells after cell after cell.
And the first thing I want to show you here is that I've
been an artist in residence at UNBC, which is a university
near Baltimore.
And I've been exploring some cool stuff in animation.
But I'm going to start off with this--
there's going to be a 30 second television commercial
I'm going to show you here.
It aired in 1986.
It won several international animation awards.
It was done with the help of Richard Williams, who's the
animation director for "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and won
several other awards.
And it stars Margaret Thatcher and Neil Kinnock, who was the
Labour-- at the time.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
-Did you consider that some newspapers treat politics with
a trace of bias?
One side always right.
The other side, always wrong.
Or the other way around.
Today, we'll show all politicians without bias-- not
as saints or devils, but ordinary people.
-Hi-ya!
-Order!
-Order!
-Oh!
-"Today" covers the newspaper, not the news.
"Today," the newspaper that's broken the mold.
[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]
KEVIN KALLAUGHER: All right.
Give it up for that cartoon.
Isn't that awesome?
That is so cool.
So that was really great.
I get a kick out of seeing that.
I've seen it so many-- it's just really beautifully done.
It's really funny.
It's smart.
And so you see something like this that excited me about the
prospect of saying, wouldn't be great to make political
cartoons come alive?
Wouldn't that be awesome?
But in those days, it was a problem, because this took
three months to make 700-some odd drawings.
And the prospect of being able to do something about news,
when news changes like this, but animation was so slow, it
didn't seem possible.
Today, of course, new technologies are allowing more
prospects and more possibilities for animation to
become King.
And I'm extremely excited about the possibilities.
I'm just going to share with you just that one little
project that--
actually, a couple little projects I did.
Back in the 2008 election cycle, I worked with Second
City, the improv comedy troupe, and did a nationwide
show with them.
But as part of it, I had built a few life-size versions of
some of my caricatures, including this one of George
Bush, and then turned them into digital characters, like
a digital Hillary Clinton.
And I did a John McCain.
And as part of the my show, I would do a live bit, where I
call live animation, where I would be backstage in motion
capture suit with voice recognition software on a mic.
And my character, let's say John McCain, would appear on
the screen in front of an audience.
We actually did a show at the Yerba Buena Art Center here.
Packed house.
And we would have a live press conference between the
audience and the cartoon characters.
But for the Yerba Buena show, which was really fun, we
actually did a dance off between Barack Obama and John
McCain, whereby we would select different dance styles
from the audience.
And then I would have to dance as these characters to music.
And then the audience would vote to see who would get a
certain amount of electoral votes.
It was really kind of cool.
The last shows we did were in New York City in Times Square.
We had a debate, actually, between these two guys.
And I would actually do a personal interview with them
during the debate.
In fact, I'm going to do one right now with John McCain
here, Senator McCain.
You had Sarah Palin as your candidate.
Do you really believe that she was qualified to be president?
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
-Listen, my friends.
Sarah Palin is qualified to be president.
She has ridden caribou to hunt polar bears with bazookas.
She has caught Chinook salmon blindfolded with her teeth.
No community organizer in Chicago has ever done that.
Right?
[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]
KEVIN KALLAUGHER: That's right.
Thank you.
Give it up for Senator McCain.
Thank you very much, Senator.
Thank you very much for coming.
That's really great.
So in addition to doing these 3D cartoons, I've also now
been doing some 2D stuff as well, including two cartoons
I'm going to show you here.
About a minute and a half each, commissioned by "The
Economist" on economic terms.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
[BIRDS CHIRPING]
-When the price of an asset rises faster than can be
explained by economic fundamentals,
it creates a bubble.
[POP]
[CRASH]
-And those bubbles include tulip mania in Holland during
the 17th century, when the prices of tulips reached
unbearable levels.
And South Sea bubble in Britain a century later.
Here, speculators, which included a vast array of
citizens, including parliamentarians and a king's
mistress drove up the share price of the South Sea Trading
Company with disastrous results.
[POP]
[CRASH]
-There have been many others since, including the dot-com
bubble in internet company shares that burst in 2000.
[POP]
-And the bubble in house prices, which when it burst in
2007, helped to trigger the recent
political economic downturn.
[POP]
[CRASH]
-Economists argued whether bubbles are caused by the
irrational behavior of crowds, aided in part by savvy
speculators, or are the result of misinformed consumers who
assume the inflated prices are sensible.
Whatever their cause, bubbles do not last forever, and often
end not with a pop, but with a crash.
[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]
KEVIN KALLAUGHER: There we go.
All right.
We've got another one coming here.
One more to show you.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
-When the prices of goods and services rise rapidly,
families and businesses suffer.
But on rare occasions, when rising prices
skyrocket out of control--
[CRASH]
- --the result can be catastrophic hyperinflation.
Hyperinflation is generally caused by reckless governments
who let their money supply grow too fast.
After the First World War, German prices at one point
were rising at a rate of 23,000% a year.
This caused the country's economic system to collapse,
creating a political opportunity for the Nazis.
More recently, in the former Yugoslavia, 1993 prices rose
around 20% a day.
Later in July, 2008, Zimbabwe's official inflation
rate reached an astonishing 231 million percent.
Typically, hyperinflation quickly leads to a loss of
confidence in the country's currency.
With the value of their cash diminishing, citizens pursue
stable items like gold and foreign currency as safe
stores of wealth.
-Yeah.
All right.
Uh-huh.
-Hyperinflation might not be so bad if it was stable.
People and businesses could plan for the future accounting
for high, but predictable pricing.
However, there are no examples of stable hyperinflation.
By its nature, hyperinflation is an uncontrollable--
[BOOM]
- --and dangerous phenomenon.
[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]
-There we go.
All right.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
KEVIN KALLAUGHER: Thank you very much.
Thank you.
So in this case, cartoons, I believe animated cartoons can
work as great educational tools and informative tools,
in addition to being sources of commentary.
So anyway, before I leave this portion of the conversation, I
wanted to say we do other things too.
I've done a bunch of beer labels for
some brewery in Baltimore.
That's kind of fun stuff.
Gives me a bit of a break away from the normal hardcore stuff
of politics and stuff.
And my new book, which you guys have seen, which has been
a great process.
This, by the way, was funded through a Kickstarter
campaign, where we raised $100,000, and so pre-sold
copies to 46 different countries.
So it was a great, great success.
And with that, we're now on to the questions.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, guys.
[APPLAUSE]
KEVIN KALLAUGHER: So you guys--
Hal, do you want to?
AUDIENCE: I have a question about one of the first things
you said, which was that the number of political
cartoonists in the US was slightly declining.
KEVIN KALLAUGHER: Yes.
AUDIENCE: So for other forms of art, typically people like
us wouldn't be too concerned.
We would think well, technologies going to
democratize everything.
There may not be as many full-time cartoonists, but
anyone could be a cartoonist now.
KEVIN KALLAUGHER: That's right.
Sure.
AUDIENCE: But it doesn't seem like it's turned out that way.
So why haven't we seen the internet flourishing with
clever political cartoons from amateurs?
KEVIN KALLAUGHER: That's a really great question.
So one of the things, first of all, the cartoon skill set
that we discussed a lot here is also one that's not easily
transferable.
It's really finely tuned, highly refined skill set.
Some of it is built for the print, cross-hatching, and
lines, and black ink.
But some of it about the concepts and the notion that
you have to really be a great study of politics is something
that is very specific.
In some ways, we're kind of like decathlon athletes, where
we're juggling an awful lot of things.
And those kind of skill sets aren't often found in any
individual.
So I even think that if you open it up for the general
public, there still would be just very few people who would
qualify for that, or maybe be able to assert that.
But then there's a second part is, is that true, the
cartoonists, they may have this new field, new wide
audience, and maybe even find niche audiences.
But as we're finding, trying to make money on the web in
many of these endeavors has been tricky.
But I still remain incredibly hopeful that there's going to
be new possibilities.
And I think that we're already beginning to see this a little
bit in our cartoon world.
But I'm also seeing that the young people, anybody under
the age of, say, 25, who didn't grow up reading
newspapers, that the cartoons like the ones I produce are
not magical to them in the same way it was for my
generation.
What's magic to them is animation, or the things that
they've seen both on the web, but also on television.
And they might gravitate in that area.
We're also seeing lots of individuals who are able to
express their views on lots of different outlets.
And so maybe there's a--
for a long time, when you had only a very few newspapers,
and only a handful of letters to the editor that could ever
get into a newspaper, that the cartoonist often spoke for the
volumes of other people who felt misrepresented.
And they really loved what a cartoon could do.
And so now maybe other people are speaking,
taking those voices.
But I feel confident that the history of mankind trying to
express itself in pictures is something that's gone back to
the days of cave painting And that with the new
opportunities and possibilities, people will
find ways to make that work.
And so I feel encouraged, even though the official
professionals as we define them are shrinking now.
It'll probably get worse before it
gets better, I believe.
But I do believe strongly that it will get better.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
I curious about memes and this idea that photo illustration
has become the cheap trick for that.
But here's inspiration.
But on a more serious note, the other trend you were
talking on these last two cartoons is that you're doing
things that are less opinion and more factual or
training-oriented.
What came to mind as we were watching the bread rocket
through the sky was Salman Khan and the Khan Academy and
the kinds of whiteboard chalk talks, or so on.
And that linked to another one, which is that, where is
the room perhaps--
clearly, the best art here has been where opinion, or taking
aspects of someone's character, or you're doing
something subjective.
But where might there be room for objectivity in terms of
trying to tell a stories as facts and possibly data
visualization.
Because we're saying an incredible amount of
innovation and budget moving, say from editorial cartooning
to editorial data.
You've probably seen that in "The Guardian" amongst other
institutions.
And where might there be opportunities in your own work
to try and work more with data without turning into "US
Today" cartoon sharks.
KEVIN KALLAUGHER: Yeah.
No, I think that there is going to be more
opportunity with that.
And of course, the thing is that when you have animation,
it gets a little bit more expensive.
But the animation software is getting faster.
And then there's also different--
I told you before that I'm a storyteller, basically.
And I'm using narrative, I'm using pictures, and so on.
And there's more kind of storytelling software that's
becoming available, that we're going to see different kinds
of cartoons, I think, that are going to be easier to
assemble, and then become more relevant on the web.
But I think then, at the end of the day, whether you're
working for Pixar, or you're working as a cartoonist, you
can have all the great technology behind you, it's
your storytelling.
The capability of storytelling the brings value to
that sort of thing.
And so as a result, one of things that cartoonists tend
to have, that's where they are wired best.
They're best at storytelling.
HAL BAILEY: Speaking of storytelling and technology,
can you tell us a little bit about your app, DaggersDrawn.
KEVIN KALLAUGHER: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's right.
That's right.
In fact, I have Apurva Shah, who helped
design the app for me.
And actually, I'm going to ask you maybe.
We'll get the mic over here.
I have a new app they just got launched, just
about a week ago.
DaggersDrawn.
It's called DaggersDrawn.
But there's a problem with it that's it's not available on a
really great platform.
Do you want to pass the mic over here?
You want to to a little bit about it?
I'm sorry about that.
AUDIENCE: What platform would that be?
KEVIN KALLAUGHER: That's right.
APURVA SHAH: Hi.
Great to see everyone here.
Right now, it's an iOS app.
Hopefully, we'll do an Android version soon.
But it's built with the company I founded.
It's called Whamix.
It's a story-telling platform, actually.
And we took Kal's book, which is beautiful, has these great
illustrations.
And rather than having just an eReader experience, create a
complement to the book.
So it has a lot of video footage from him.
He provides insight on the cartoons, and some of economic
terms that you saw as well.
And it tries to create an experience where you can be
more interactive with it.
So please check it out.
AUDIENCE: So my question was, has any politician ever
accosted you because of your caricature of them?
KEVIN KALLAUGHER: Right.
Well, really interesting about this, because obviously, in
many parts of the world, the defining characteristic of
freedom of expression is whether you can
draw the head of state.
But because you can draw the head of state, that doesn't
mean they necessarily like it.
But a smart politician like Ronald Reagan would have the
cartoonist come to the White House and would enjoy having
his face drawn by everybody around him.
But ever since then, because they're wanting to control the
message, every major politician tries to keep
cartoonists at a distance.
So most of the time where you have, in the US, real impact
with politicians is in the local area, whether you're
with governors or with mayors and that sort of thing.
And I had my own personal experience with the governor
of Maryland named William Donald Schaefer, who used to
carry my cartoons around in his pocket.
And at every press conference, make comments
about what I did.
And there was a point where, right before he left office,
he wrote me a letter.
And he wrote many letters, many of them which I could not
even say in front of a mature audience, even.
And he said, dear Kal, please send me the cartoon that
appeared in "The Baltimore Sun," dated so and so.
And this is after seven years of him going nuts about me.
That's public enemy number one.
It was great.
But I read on.
As you want money for these depressing monstrosities, I
herein attach the value that I've put upon your cartoons.
And he taped a penny to the letter and wrote "Overpaid" on
the top of it.
So now, this letter is like a diploma hanging in my office.
And so you do get these kind of interactions.
But the other thing is that "The Economist" is read by
Presidents.
I mean, we have pictures with them having the magazine
walking in.
So you know they're reading your work.
But you'll never hear from them direct.
You hear through their proxies.
And there's some politicians who hate everything you draw,
and other ones who love everything you draw.
Steve Forbes, who ran for president a few years ago,
when he dropped out, he contacted every cartoonist
around the country and got every single cartoon drawn of
him for his library.
So it's funny how people respond.
AUDIENCE: When I look at your cartoons, like we call them,
the longer I look at them, the more detail I see in them.
And every detail has meaning to it.
It's like, seven layers of meaning to a single picture.
It's amazing how you can do that.
How long does it take to draw a caricature?
KEVIN KALLAUGHER: Thank you very much for that question.
My cartoons, the black and white ones you see, it's a
full day process.
And I have to be very efficient here.
You have a very hard deadline at the end.
And when you're finished, you want to deliver something that
has all those layers to it, if you like.
Partly, I do it as an honor to my reader.
I feel that if you feel like I'm investing in you, then
you're going to reward me by spending two or three more
seconds with the cartoon.
And then it gives you the opportunity to create a
relationship over time.
In fact, I like to say every cartoon is a sentence.
And a week is a paragraph.
And then over time, we're having a long conversation
that we have to carry on for decades, hopefully.
And the idea, however, is that, for any conversation, is
you want to keep it interesting.
And the way to keep it interesting is you want to
have variety in it.
Some of my cartoons are serious,
some of them are funny.
Some of them have caricatures.
Some have symbols in them.
I've used all these different tools in order to keep it, so
every time you open the cartoon, the newspaper, the
magazine, you don't know what you're going to get.
So I start the day, usually say, up 'til 10 or 11 o'clock
cogitating the news.
Now, of course, I'm constantly cogitating the news.
Constantly ingesting information.
Listening and trying to come up with ideas.
And I never come up with ideas ahead of time.
You're always working on that day, because there's always
news that changing and breaking.
I don't have anything in reserve.
And so by about midday, I should have
settled down on my idea.
I spent three hours then doing the pencil sketch, refining
like I did with that cover you saw, getting everything right.
I then let the editors know, here's what the
I'm thinking of doing.
We get it signed off on.
And then it takes me three hours to apply
the ink to the drawing.
I'm using an old-fashioned quill pen and a bottle of ink.
Scratch, scratch, scratch.
Think.
Scratch, scratch, scratch.
Headphones on.
It's a wonderful experience.
And then maybe by 6 o'clock, 7 o'clock, I might have the
thing completed.
So, it takes that long.
And then, you add color to it, it can be longer.
But all this experience is is that every cartoon you do is a
practice for the next cartoon you're going to do.
Because when you work on a deadline, you
never finish the cartoon.
You have to stop it.
If you wanted to finish, you'd need another five, or six, or
seven hours to get it the way you want it to.
But you have to stop.
And at that point, you learn the lessons.
And then you apply them to the next one.
And it's part of the reason what I love about my craft, is
that I feel that a decade from now, two years from now, I'll
be better than I am today, because you're constantly
learning and building on your experiences.
AUDIENCE: I remember the cartoon you did for 9/11.
And I also remember the controversy over the headline
that "The Onion" printed in the same time period, which
was perhaps very insightful, but also quite irreverent.
And I was just wondering, there is an irreverence that
you draw with about political leaders.
And I'm just trying to figure out the line that you draw in
terms of what subject matter for education, versus subject
matter for satire, versus subject matter for
irreverence.
KEVIN KALLAUGHER: Yeah.
That's such a great question, because this is
thing about the line.
First of all, I've travelled the world representing the
United States and the State Department, speaking of
freedom of expression in a whole array of countries.
And that question is asked to me all the time.
And as I reflect, I realize that I ask myself that
question every day.
Whenever I'm doing a cartoon, you're assessing who your
audience is.
How are you going to try to be able sometimes push the line
on the cartoon, or get a point across without
going over the line?
And one of the things is that the line is constantly moving.
And where it was yesterday is not going to
be where it is today.
In every country, every culture, they've all got
different places.
And when our cartoonists get together, we're in that
situation too.
And we've had situations where almost all of us have gone
over the line, either deliberately or by
mistake over time.
And so, it is something that you have to be very, very
careful with.
Now part of the thing about my work is that my cartoons are
very detailed.
And so one of the things that I definitely try to do with
all the freedom that I have is to be very responsible.
So I want to make sure I'm not doing cartoons that could be
deemed to be racist or sexist.
I feel that I can cover any subject that I want, but it's
how you cover the subject inevitably that
gets you into trouble.
And so even if I wanted to do something about the Prophet
Muhammad, I could probably do a cartoon on that subject.
But maybe opt now to draw the Prophet, because I know that
the outrage that it would create and people would lose
track of the point that I wanted to make.
Because at the end of the day, I want to be an effective
commentator.
I want to get a point across.
And I want to engage the opposition.
I don't want to be speaking to the converted.
And so in order to do that, you have to realize that you
can't step so much on the toes of those people you disagree
with that they stop listening.
Otherwise, what's the point?
Because at the end of the day, I feel like we're kind of an
instrument of democracy.
We're trying to get a conversation going using these
little pricks, these little incitements, I guess, where
cartoon get do to the brain firing a little bit.
But having said that, there's always somebody ticked off
with your cartoons.
So when I worked in the UK, I worked in addition to "The
Economist" from other newspapers.
In the UK, you have a situation where you have about
a dozen daily newspapers, and each one is targeted to a
special socioeconomic demographic.
Down market, left wing, up market, right wing, and
everything in between.
Here in the US, we have one newspaper per market usually.
And which means it's read by everybody in all the different
demographics.
So every cartoon you do is ticking somebody off.
And believe me, they let you know.
About 85% of my contact with the public is negative,
because we deal with ridicule.
We're making fun of people.
We're making fun of the point of view.
And they get upset, and they let us know.
And so as a result, you can't help it.
But the question is, is are you still being fair within
that realm?
And it's a tricky area.
But believe me, we're thinking about this all the time.
Then add the fact that our audience is now global.
I can do a cartoon here.
And then, it could be willfully misread or
misrepresented in another culture.
And then, you could have all sorts of problems.
So it's a really interesting time.
Seriously, interesting time to be doing what we're doing.
AUDIENCE: Did that problem start after the internet, or
was it there before when "The Economist" was just in print?
KEVIN KALLAUGHER: Well, yes. "The Economist"--
because in some ways, if you imagine, "The Economist" was
like the internet before, because it was one of the only
global publications.
And so it was read everywhere.
And yeah, we would have situations where, for example,
I did a cartoon of Indira Gandhi.
It appeared on the cover.
It arrives in India.
They see it.
Don't like it.
They confiscate it and burn all the copies immediately.
In Singapore, even to today, they'll go in and they will
cut out articles.
There was a time, I think it was Singapore, where every
night, every single individual magazine that went in would be
individually censored.
This article would be blacked out.
This picture would be cut out.
And there's still some countries where
that happens today.
And also, even "The Economist" will do a cover.
Now some of "The Economist" covers can be
a little bit edgy.
And it will be well-understood in certain parts of the world,
and not understood at all in other parts of the world.
And you can also imagine too that now with "The Economist,"
we get comments online.
If we some sort of major article about China, Russia,
Iran, and I think there may be one other country, they have a
legion of government-paid trolls who just go out there
and bombard you with all of their opinions and so on.
So you're going to get reaction when you're global
with anything, I guess.
Well, good.
How about some drawing?
Now we get to do some fun stuff.
I'm going to do some drawing here for you guys.
And I'll be around too if anybody has questions
afterwards.
And I'll also be happy to sign your books there.
OK.
So let me find my fabulous tool.
My magic machine.
The ink machine that I've got here.
So I'm going to draw some of these guys.
And I've drawn these guys thousands of times.
So I can draw them fairly quickly.
And as I told you before, these things
take me a long time.
And I couldn't, for example, draw my
own father from memory.
And it's because I haven't drawn him many times.
When you draw somebody, it registers in a different part
of the brain, because you've had the opportunity to
evaluate their face, break it down,
work it into an equation.
So actually, these guys I can do quickly, but it's only
because I've done them a thousand times.
And I'm going to start with Al Gore.
He's one of my favorite guys.
Because he invented the internet, for example.
And he's a guy who collects cartoons.
And I've seen him up close a few times.
And so I can tell you the shape of his head or
something like that.
OK?
So that's kind of Al Gore right there.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
Island Al Gore.
KEVIN KALLAUGHER: That's right.
That's right.
And so, Al Gore.
He's got Ronald Reagan kind of hair that kind
of goes like this.
He's got ears from "Star Trek." They
kind of go like this.
He's got nose, a straight, bony nose.
Flared nostrils like this.
Kind of goes like this.
He's got a little Elvis mouth.
Kind of go like this--
likes this.
And already, you can start to see him appear from here.
So anyway, here's the thing about Al Gore.
Like I said, I've seen him up close.
And many people think that he lost the 2000 election in
Florida because of a few hundred votes.
And I'm telling people that is not the reason why he lost.
Al Gore lost the election in Florida because Al Gore has
got the eyes of death.
The eyes of death.
That's what he looks like, really.
If you see him up close, that's kind of where he is.
Seriously.
OK.
Poor Al.
Poor Al.
All right.
Who would like this?
Anybody want this?
Who wants the drawing?
Here you go.
All right.
OK.
All right.
So the next one we'll do is--
oh, I'll keep on the Democratic theme.
We'll do John Kerry.
So John Kerry's got the long face thing I was telling you
guys about.
So he's got kind of a long face.
He's got a long face.
He's got a long face.
He has got a really long face.
And you know, I'm thinking maybe that's not right.
Let's try this.
OK.
All right.
OK.
So this is better here.
All right.
So this goes like this.
And then he's got here, and his nose is like this.
And then his eye goes like this.
And he's got the hair, the Brillo pad hair that kind of
goes like this.
And his ears kind of go like this.
And then this connects down like this.
And there's a line here and a line here.
What do you think?
John Kerry.
What do you think?
Not bad.
Not bad.
Not bad.
All right.
Who wants a long cartoon for their office?
Who wants it?
Anyone?
Put your hands up.
Who wants it?
Right there.
OK.
Actually, you'll get the next one.
You'll get the next one.
All right.
All right.
John Kerry, Al Gore.
Bill Clinton.
Let's do Bill Clinton.
All right, so here's the thing--
[LAUGHS].
So here's the thing.
I am a method cartoonist.
You guys have heard of method actors, right?
Method actors, they get into the part and the character.
Well, I get it to my cartoons.
And my wife, she was at a studio with me.
She goes crazy because I start talking like George Bush or
Ross Perot.
And so all these people.
But anyway, so Bill Clinton is a great person.
You have get into his head.
Although inside his head, believe me, there's a lot of
crazy stuff going inside there.
So I'm getting into him, and I start talking like him.
And Bill Clinton, he's got this kind of pug nose like
this, and little teeth that look like a bunny rabbit,
sticking like this.
And he's got a cheek.
Little cheeks here.
And he's got eyes.
And he's got lots of bags.
Have you noticed recently?
Poor guys.
Lots of bags.
Which is a problem, because he travels so much, and they
charge for every extra bag.
It's terrible.
It's bad.
Really bad.
Poor guy.
OK.
And his hair's very white now.
I tried, and never did that thing I told everybody about.
And his chin, he's kind of a big Bill
Clinton chin like this.
And his thick neck, and something like that.
What do you guys think?
Is that Bill Clinton?
Not bad.
Not bad.
All right.
Somebody had his hand up way back there really early.
So, yeah.
So there you go, mate.
There you go.
Bill Clinton.
Bill Clinton.
All right.
All right.
Bill Clinton.
All right.
So let's try George H. W. Bush.
Now I'm going to do him twice.
I'm going to do him first what he looked like when he first
came into office.
And here's the thing.
When somebody first comes into office, the caricatures of
them look like the photographs.
They actually are close to that.
But in time, the cartoonist and you, the cartoon-consuming
audience, gets to know the face so well, and we can start
pulling apart.
And then at the end of four years, the caricatures and the
photographs don't look anything alike.
You put them next to each other, but everyone
knows who it is.
So let me what he looked when he started, and then I'll show
you what he looked like after four years. .
So when he started, this is the profile.
This at the top of his head here and his hair.
And this is the back of his head.
Hair going down here.
Nothing sensational here.
He had a pretty big forehead.
He had a nose that was kind of a little bit sharp like this.
Eyes went down like this.
Crow's feet coming out here.
Few lines going up.
He had an upper mouth that went like this.
He had these little grizzly teeth--
[LAUGHS]--
that went like this.
And then he had a chin that was kind of like his son, like
W's, like this.
Line went like this.
His ear out the back here.
Little echo there.
And the glasses, which he called the vision thing.
The vision thing was here like this.
And he had a little kind of scrawny neck like this.
So anyways, the thing was, he looked like
an insurance salesman.
Like any insurance salesmen.
That was George H.W. Bush at the beginning.
So let's see where he ended up.
All right.
Who wants this one?
Yes.
Here you go.
Let's see where he goes at this end of this.
So at the end of four years, the hair at the top.
A little bit thinner, but not much difference there.
But the head shape turns in kind of to a light bulb.
OK?
Kind of a light bulb like this.
His ears now sticking out the back of his head here.
The back of his hair is going like this.
His nose is like a sharp knife like this.
His eye is going all the way down like this.
The lines are going way up the forehead like this.
His upper mouth is like a beak.
Little grizzly teeth down here like this.
And then his chin's going way out like this.
Like this.
And then his glasses are perched way out at the end of
his nose like this.
And his neck has even gotten smaller, and skinnier, and
scrawnier down there.
And that's what he looked like at the end of four years.
Isn't that something?
It's crazy.
Crazy.
But it looked like him, doesn't it?
There we go.
Who wants this one now?
Who wants this one?
Who wants it?
Who wants it?
There you go.
There you go.
OK.
All right.
Here you go.
Excellent.
Excellent.
George H. W. Bush.
All right.
Now George W. Bush.
W. Bush.
All right.
All right.
So now, George W. Bush has got some ears.
So it means making these sort of things is a bit tricky,
because usually, I need like this much room for the ear
here, and this much for an ear here.
So I'm going to draw his ears first, just to make sure that
we have room on the paper.
And I'm going to draw it like this.
Now when I've drawn George Bush, here's the thing that I
learned is that I--
the State of the Union Address, it's always really
good to see these politicians live, not just look at photos.
So I record the State of the Union Address
and watch it twice.
I'm the only person who watches the
bloody thing twice.
Because I'm watching their faces and seeing all the
various different things.
And one thing about him is I recognize his nose was
something that was very distinctive to him.
Most people didn't pick that up.
He had nice little nose with big flared nostrils.
And a set of parentheses here.
The mouth kind of goes down like this and up on
one side like that.
And his teeth are here like this.
Then he's got a chin, which is a W, which kind of helps.
That's really good for us cartoonists,
just in case we forgot.
All right.
Then we got the line here that kind of
connects down like this.
And then his eyes.
He's got these little teeny eyes.
Little teeny eyes like this.
OK.
And then we got the eyes.
The heavy brow kind of going like this, and teeth here.
And then, this one way up here.
He doesn't know what he's doing up there, this guy.
Like this, OK.
And then we've got these lines.
They have a scientific name.
They're called perplexoids.
He's got a lots of perplexoids.
And his hair kind of goes like this.
Come down the side like this.
And George W. Bush.
What do you guys think?
George W. Bush.
What do you think.
Yeah, I think so.
Not bad.
Not bad.
Not bad.
Here you go.
Always sit in the front row, guys.
This is just a little hint.
Just take a little hint here.
So we're going to do now--
what we're going to do, we're going to do Barack Obama.
I am going to draw, but we're going to do a lesson.
We have some paper there.
You guys got pens with you?
All right.
Get a pen.
We're going to do a drawing lesson.
I'm going to teach everybody here how to draw Barack Obama.
This is a great thing to do.
Even if you think you can't draw, believe me, you will be
surprised what's going to happen here.
You can draw on your lap.
You can draw if you have the book.
You can draw it on the back of the book.
Don't use a permanent pen, because [INAUDIBLE].
We have some big paper there.
Take a pad.
All right.
So what we're going to do is this.
First, I'm going to do a cartoon about Obama.
I'm just going to show you a little thing.
My observation about Obama.
Then, I'm going to do the step by step.
Very quickly what to do.
You guys watch.
And then, we're all going to do it together.
OK?
It won't take a minute.
It's a lot of fun.
Pretty simple.
And I think this day, you'll be very
pleased with the results.
Now first, I just want to tell you a little bit
about Obama's face.
Now I have been watching his face carefully now
for five or six years.
And one thing about his face, he's got
a very strong profile.
So the profile's kind of like this.
He's got kind of big ears that some people make a lot of.
But his heavy brow is a big thing.
The sun hits is forehead.
The brow casts his eye off into a shadow.
You can see a little bit of it there.
He's got a nose that's not particularly distinctive,
except he has got a little mole there on his left
nostril, which you guys will now never take your eyes off
of when you see him next.
Seriously, it's this little mole that moves up and down
when he talks.
All right.
So then, he's got this upper lip.
Big shadow there.
Beneath the bottom lip is something like this.
And he's got this muscle here, which is very distinctive on
him, becoming very apparent.
And his chin.
And already, you could start to see the character appear.
So anyway, here's the thing about his face.
It's that Barack Obama has been hounded by these birthers
who suggest that he was not born in the United States.
They say he was not born in Hawaii.
On the island of Hawaii.
And looking at him and his strong profile, I'm beginning
to think there might be something to this.
Because I think Barack Obama was born on Easter Island.
You see?
That's what I think.
That's what I think.
I think that there's a lot of parallel there.
So anyway, that's my first evaluation of Barack Obama.
Who wants it?
Right here.
OK.
All right.
So now the lesson.
Barack Obama lesson.
Well, watch what I'm going to do.
OK.
We're going to break this down to very simple shapes that
everybody can do together.
Watch this, and then we'll do together.
So what we're going to do is we're going to start with a
sideways C. We're going to do two vertical lines and a
horizontal line going like this.
And we're going to fill them in.
Then we're going to do a shelf like this, shelf like this.
We're going to do a line like this.
A line like this.
We're going to do a letter C here with another one inside.
A second one here reversed on this side.
We're going to do an upside down letter C like this.
Then, we're going to do two heavy brows here.
Now I've got the thick pen.
I can make it easily thick, but you guys will
have to work at it.
Really make it nice and thick.
We do another line, and then that could be where his eyes,
which is a little dot on it.
Halfway down, we're going to do a little squiggle.
It's Is going to go one, two, three, and then it's going to
come around and get his little thing going on there.
Then we do between here the M. M. And we're going to fill in
the top like this.
We're going to fill in this one like this.
We're going to do a little bit underneath.
And then do a set of parentheses that are going to
almost connect at the bottom.
We're going to put this thing in.
You guys know what this is called?
The Obama.
This is the Obama.
We're going to give him an Obama.
And then we're put his little skinny neck.
And we can even have him giving a big thumbs up to our
friends at Google.
And this is what we're going to do.
So this is going to be Barack Obama.
OK.
Very simple.
The question is, do you guys think we can this?
And the answer is, yes we can.
All right?
Are you guys ready?
Can we do this?
AUDIENCE: Yes we can.
KEVIN KALLAUGHER: All right.
Good.
Let's see if we can make this happen.
I'm going to stick this one over here so everybody can use
it as a model.
Are you ready?
So we're going to do this.
We're going to start with a sideways C like this.
Let's get a horizontal line and two
vertical lines like this.
And we fill those in with additional
texture for added realism.
For added realism.
Let's get a shelf sticking out like this, and another shelf
sticking out like that.
And then let's get a little coming down like this, and
then a line coming down like that.
Then we get a letter C here.
Letter C. Another letter C, and reverse on this side here.
Follow up with a--
this is where you're going to have to do some work.
Get these heavy brows going here.
Get those heavy brows.
Give it some work.
And if you got those down, let's get a line underneath
here with an eye like that.
Halfway down.
Let's do that little squiggle thing.
One, two, three.
And then let's get a squiggle around like that.
And then at the bottom, let's give it a
letter C upside down.
And now halfway between these two, let's get the letter M.
One, two, three, and four.
Letter M across.
And fill in that top bit.
And then let's go underneath like this.
Give it a little shadow underneath.
All right.
Now we get that set of parentheses
going here like this.
And they're going to be nearly connect at the bottom.
And we'll give him that little skinny neck.
Do it if you like with his arm.
But there's just two more very important steps once you've
gotten this far.
OK.
So the first thing that you all have to do is hold up your
cartoon and show me.
Let's go.
Hold them up.
Come on.
Let's see the drawings.
Come on.
Hold them up.
Let's see.
That's very good excellent.
Excellent.
No, no.
Don't Keep on showing them.
Up here, let's see.
There you go.
Excellent.
Very good.
Very good.
Excellent.
Good going, guys.
Excellent.
Good.
Good.
Now the next and most important part is you must
sign these cartoons.
All right?
Now I have seen those cartoons.
Do not sign my name to those cartoons.
Let's sign the cartoon, because here's what's
interesting.
Last time some of you guys drew was probably when you
were six years old.
And it's a whole lot of fun.
And here's the thing about drawing, is that it is kind of
a latent muscle in your brain.
Particularly as we got so much technology at our disposal,
this very tangible, physical thing of letting your brain
connect to your hands and produce something out of
nothing is magic.
If you want to be a magician, the best and easiest way to do
it is to draw.
So one of the things I also have to add is that for a
time, I was the president of an international human rights
group dedicated to cartoonists, where this act of
drawing is a very dangerous thing, and where over half the
world, we couldn't even have this meeting.
Where the police would march in, and you
guys would be arrested.
And I'd disappear not to be seen again.
And it seems kind of funny that cartoonists could have
this happen.
But the crime that we would be all doing is laughing at our
own head of state.
And currently, there is cartoonists around the world
who are being jailed, tortured, and murdered because
of what they do.
And so the fact that first, I can do this incredible job--
been doing it for 35 years.
I can stand here, and I can share it with you guys.
We can have a laugh together.
We could do all this stuff and not worry.
And yet, we don't all have to agree with the stuff that
we've seen here together To me, it is an amazing thing.
That is magic.
And I want to thank you guys for the opportunity to do it.
[APPLAUSE]
KEVIN KALLAUGHER: Thank you.