That Smoking Cartoon Again... t-shirts available!

Get the t-shirt!

I've had so many enquiries about the use of the smoking cartoon, from students in New Zealand to public health nurses in England, as well as sundry other enquiries, I've decided to post a few terms of use.

• The cartoon may not be reproduced on t-shirts etc without my sole permission. Any such use is in fact a breach of copyright and against the law. I have however created a range of t-shirts available through my website. Click on through for a look!
• You may use it on discussion forums provided you backlink to the original smoking cartoon at http://www.allancavanagh.com/connacht%20tribune/smoking.jpg .
• If you are an undergraduate student you may use it once free of charge for an assignment and credit it to www.allancavanagh.com
• If you are a health professional and would like to use it for health promotion material such as posters and leaflets, for a fee I can provide the cartoon in high resolution on CD. Price is available on request.

Many thanks for your interest in my work. If you do spot a cartoon either here or on my website and would like it on a t-shirt let me know and I'll create it for you.

New Double Vision Up...

Charlie's latest article is up on Double Vision, and you can also see it in the Connacht Tribune.

Chicken Tikka Massala

Chicken Tikka Massala, another cartoon from the Connacht Tribune. I think Charlie was claiming Chicken Tikka Massala was a British invention!

Beleagured Galway Mayor gets even more beleaguered...

...or is about to! Mayor of Galway Niall O'Brolchain gets a caricature makeover at the Mayor's Youth Conference today.

Photo courtesy of Aengus McMahon.

Indexed!

You may very well have come across these before (I know I did somewhere) but I've just rediscovered the comic brilliance of Jessica Hagy on Indexed.

Sometimes there is an inverse correlation between how funny your gag is and the number of lines needed to illustrate it.
Jessica uses very few lines.

Good Friday it's Double Vision!

Go and read Charlie!

There are no Original Ideas in Editorial Cartoons!

I winced when I saw the above cartoon on Cagle's Cartoon Index because it was followed immediately by this one:

This is exactly what every editorial cartoonist lives in fear of: that someone, somewhere, has had the same idea as you. The thing is I would guarantee there has been no plagarism here: if anything drives a cartoonist it is to be distinct by virtue of originality. This is an example of convergence.
There is a finite gene pool of tropes, references and metaphors that is at the disposal of an artist, and an idea (and don't tell anyone this because it's a trade secret) is simply the recombination of elements from that gene pool in the artist's head. And sometimes this limited gene pool mixes a remarkably similar idea in the heads of two different artists. This is a really good example of where the refinement of the idea, the composition of the image, and the execution of the gag come into play: I would consider one of the above to be more successful than the other. Read back over them and I think you'll see one of them has a sharper delivery complemented by a good composition.
I would imagine there was mutual head-slapping in Minnesota and Detroit over this, but sometimes convergence is unavoidable. I submit to the jury this example, and also my hilarious take on the bird-flu panic (I'm really flogging a dead bird at this stage, that's enough H5N1 references for now!).

Plop!

That's more of it.

Why did the cartoonist cross the road?

Looks like there's an exhibition of my work in the pipeline. Watch this space for more details!

Fowl of the world on Best Behaviour following Birdflu Outbreak...

Clearly word's got out about the Bernard Matthews Massacre among the chicken community. Not only are chickens everywhere on their best behaviour, the're keeping the peace among other species as well: