KAL lands at UMBCs Imaging Research Center

Kevin Kallaugher, or KAL, has landed at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County as the artist-in-residence at UMBC’s Imaging Research Center where he will be involved in 3D political cartooning.

KAL:

In November, The Baltimore Sun announced they were having some cut backs in staff. They offered buyouts to everyone in my department. My boss told me that the Chicago Tribune Company that owns The Baltimore Sun was thinking of terminating the cartoon position. I thought, well, this might be a good opportunity for me to look into doing other things. I had done animation at university and I had always been fascinated by the prospect of getting back into animation. I contacted the people here, knowing that UMBC has a state of the art animation studio here at the Imaging Research Center.

We�ve decided to set up a project. The project is to build a three-dimensional bust of George W. Bush. We�re going to carve it out of foam and clay. It�s going to be scanned and digitalized. The idea is then to animate it. This George W. Bush digital puppet can actually talk to you. It�ll be like a political cartoon coming alive in the computer.

KAL will also present a lecture tomorrow on the topic of political cartooning in the 21st century.

A lecture by Kevin “KAL” Kallaugher, artist-in-residence at UMBC’s Imaging Research Center from 7 to 8:30 p.m. in Lecture Hall 7, . KAL is the international award-winning editorial cartoonist for The Economist magazine of London and former editorial cartoonist for the Baltimore Sun.

An open house and reception will precede the event in the Imaging Research Center, Information Technology/Engineering building, room 108.

This semester, KAL will be working on a research project involving the creation of 3-D real-time virtual caricatures of contemporary political figures.

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