I recently joined an on-the-spot caricature contest at my office. A few days before the contest proper, all the contestants drew names of the people they'll be making caricatures of and I drew Mr. Jimmy Duavit's name. Mr Duavit is GMA Network's Executive Vice President and COO. He's very pleasant to work with (there were quite a few times I was able to present my storyboards to him personally), has a deep baritone voice and smokes a lot. I decided to emphasize his brows and grin together with his ever present cigarette.
The big hurdle was that I've never really tried my hand in making caricatures. Portraits were a bit easy but demanded time and caricatures demanded emphasizing something other than just likeness. Plus the contest was under a time limit of 1 hour. So I opted to rely on my pens and markers. Suffice it to say I was nervous during the contest and just set my mind to having fun. Surprisingly, I finished early at around fifteen minutes from the start of the contest. I didn't want to dwell too much on the drawing so I stood up and left the drawing as you see it above. Here's a picture of Mr. Duavit sans the cigarette.
I also had the chance to meet popular cartoonists and illustrators Manix Abrera of Kiko Machine fame and Pugad Baboy's Pol Medina Jr. Mr. Abrera looked quite young and reserved. So did Mr. Medina but both were gracious enough to grant autographs and their pictures taken. Check out their cartoons here and here.
Just a bit of trivia: I was once asked to audition for the role of Tomas Sabaybunot, Pugad Baboy's trigger-happy but wife-whipped military guy. This was for a TV show during the 90's. I didn't get the role because I wasn't big enough:) There were also refreshments but I was too nervous too eat anything. Imagine that! anyway, drop by the mezzanine of the GMA Network Center this week to see the other entries.
I've only joined Art Gap once before but this time around I had a lot of fun. Maybe I'll join again next time:)
Here are the links again to Mr. Abrera's and Mr. Medina's sites:
http://www.kikomachinekomix.com/
http://www.pugadbaboy.pardinas.net/