A cartoon is a type of visual art that is typically drawn, frequently animated, in an unrealistic or semi-realistic style. The specific meaning has evolved over time, but the modern usage usually refers to either: an image or series of images intended for satire, caricature, or humor; or a motion picture that relies on a sequence of illustrations for its animation. Someone who creates cartoons in the first sense is called a cartoonist, and in the second sense they are usually called an animator.
The National Cartoonists Society (NCS) is an organization of professional cartoonists in the United States. It presents the National Cartoonists Society Awards. The Society was born in 1946 when groups of cartoonists got together to entertain the troops. They enjoyed each other's company and decided to meet on a regular basis.
A political cartoon, a form of editorial cartoon, is a cartoon graphic with caricatures of public figures, expressing the artist's opinion. An artist who writes and draws such images is known as an editorial cartoonist. They typically combine artistic skill, hyperbole and satire in order to either question authority or draw attention to corruption, political violence and other social ills.
A caricature is a rendered image showing the features of its subject in a simplified or exaggerated way through sketching, pencil strokes, or other artistic drawings. Caricatures can be either insulting or complimentary, and can serve a political purpose, be drawn solely for entertainment, or for a combination of both. Caricatures of politicians are commonly used in editorial cartoons, while caricatures of movie stars are often found in entertainment magazines.
John Burton Davis Jr. was an American cartoonist and illustrator, known for his advertising art, magazine covers, film posters, record album art and numerous comic book stories. He was one of the founding cartoonists for Mad in 1952. His cartoon characters are characterized by extremely distorted anatomy, including big heads, skinny legs and large feet.
Edward Sorel is an American illustrator, caricaturist, cartoonist, graphic designer and author. His work is known for its storytelling, its left-liberal social commentary, its criticism of reactionary right-wing politics and organized religion. Formerly a regular contributor to The Nation, New York Magazine and The Atlantic, his work is today seen more frequently in Vanity Fair. He has been hailed by The New York Times as "one of America's foremost political satirists". As a lifelong New Yorker, a large portion of his work interprets the life, culture and political events of New York City. There is also a large body of work which is nostalgic for the stars of 1930s and 1940s Hollywood when Sorel was a youth. Sorel is noted for his wavy pen-and-ink style, which he describes as "spontaneous direct drawing".
Vernon Van Atta Greene was a prolific cartoonist and illustrator who worked on several comic strips and was best known for his artwork on Bringing Up Father.
Tom Richmond is an American freelance humorous illustrator, cartoonist and caricaturist whose work has appeared in many national and international publications since 1990. He was chosen as the 2011 "Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year", also known as "The Reuben Award", winner by the National Cartoonists Society.
John Reiner is a cartoonist who collaborates with writer Bunny Hoest on three cartoon series: The Lockhorns, syndicated by King Features, and Laugh Parade and Howard Huge.
Pierre Camille Lucien Hilaire Jean Bellocq is a French-American artist and horse racing cartoonist known as "Peb". As a small boy, his family moved to Maisons-Laffitte where his father worked at the local race track. There, at a young age Pierre Bellocq used his natural talent to begin creating caricatures of horses and horse people. At age 19, the French racing journal France Courses gave him national exposure when they published one of his cartoons of a jockey. Bellocq signed the drawing as "Peb", a signature which would become his lifelong moniker. Within a few years Peb was widely known and an emerging artist who also gained recognition for his caricatures on sports advertising posters.
John Joseph Gallagher (1926–2005) was an American cartoonist and illustrator. He contributed to most major magazines in the 1950s and 1960s, signing his work “Gallagher.” He won the National Cartoonist Society Gag Cartoon Award in 1957 and 1971.
Sam Viviano is an American caricature artist and art director. Viviano’s caricatures are known for their wide jaws, which Viviano has explained is a result of his incorporation of side views as well as front views into his distortions of the human face. He has also developed a reputation for his ability to do crowd scenes. Explaining his twice-yearly covers for Institutional Investor magazine, Viviano has said that his upper limit is sixty caricatures in nine days.
The Mad, Mad, Mad Comedians is a 1970 American animated television special produced by Rankin/Bass Productions. After the Christmas special Frosty the Snowman (1969), it was Rankin/Bass' second hand-drawn animated work to be outsourced to Osamu Tezuka's Mushi Production in Tokyo, Japan. The show aired on ABC on April 7, 1970 before the airing of that year's Oscars. It was a tribute to early vaudeville, and featured animated reworkings of various famous comedians' acts.
Kevin Kallaugher is a political cartoonist for The Economist and the Baltimore Sun. He cartoons using the pen name, KAL.
Roy Nelson was a cartoonist and caricaturist. His talent for drawing was recognized at an early age, and after high school in Virginia, Minnesota, he was accepted into the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts (1922-1925). After graduation, Roy joined the staff of The Chicago Daily News as an artist-reporter, contributing caricatures, cartoons and comics. He created caricatures of many celebrities who visited Chicago.
Leo Hershfield (1904–1979) was a prominent American illustrator, cartoonist and courtroom artist for NBC News. NBC referred to him as the "Dean of Courtroom Artists" since he was the first modern artist to sketch trials for TV news in the 1950s and covered 147 trials for NBC until when he died in the late 1970s.
Mark Knight is an Australian cartoonist. He is currently the editorial cartoonist for the Herald Sun, a daily tabloid newspaper in Melbourne. Knight was also the last editorial cartoonist for one of the Herald Sun's joint predecessor newspapers, the afternoon broadsheet The Herald.
Jim Bamber was a British artist and editorial cartoonist specialising in motorsport, who is best known for his motor racing related caricatures which incorporate his distinctive driver designs, that adorned every issue of Autosport magazine as well as his annual compilation of cartoons from the magazine called The Pits.
Shaun Yeo is a New Zealand freelance cartoonist and illustrator living in Invercargill. He produces daily political cartoons for the Otago Daily Times.
