Cartoonist 2.0 and "Dancin Dubya"!

When returning a book at the library this week, I noticed an interesting talk titled "The Art of Political Satire". The speaker was none other than Kevin Kallaugher (KAL) who is the cartoonist with "The Economist "magazine, London. But more significantly, he is also the artist-in-residence and cartoonist at the Imaging Research Center at UMBC. Kal talks about his life experiences as a cartoonist both in the United States and U.K. His sense of humor is world-class and through a montage of his work over the years, Kal touches upon some delicate issues (911, war, world politics and the struggle to end of apartheid in SA) all while engaging his audience and making them smile.

I think Kal is what I would describe as a Cartoonist 2.0. He really gets the new media and realizes its potential. He talks about the decline in newspaper readership and the print advertising. How the new generation is more about flickr and YouTube and less about buying a newspaper or a magazine. So along with UMBC's IRC, Kal has set out on a journey to explore what it means like to be a cartoonist/journalist/political satirist in a Web 2.0 world. He is planning to take the essential elements of a cartoon strip and blend it with 3D animation and video. Starting from a clay caricature model of our very own Dubya and using motion capture technology, Kal can actually hold real-time conferences with the audience members asking Pres. Dubya Bush some serious questions! Well rest assured, you will atleast be get answers that make some sense! You can read more about it here and also check out the really cool video of "dubya press briefing"!  Oh! and here is Kal's fantastic version of "dancin dubya" ... quite close to the real version!
 

Well he is a real puppet arite!

Kal also plans to take dubya to live audiences and host a show soon. Soon we should expect to have syndicated, interactive 3D cartoon strips on many online newspapers! Good luck Kal, the maverick cartoonist 2.0!