Caricatures for fundraising

Originally published on Oct 2, 2010

The caricature machine at Kopiosto’s 30-year anniversary in 2009. Photo: Maria Bergenhoj

For a small organisation, money is always a problem. Fortunately, we have amongst our board members daring artistic creativity. Two of Finland’s top comics artists, Katja Tukiainen and Tarmo Koivisto put their heads together, and designed something we call “Caricature machine”. 

It is a box, built and decorated by Katja, in her trade-mark pink. Money is inserted in a slot, and five minutes later a caricature exits from another slot. The model cannot see who is in the box, or what is happening there, because of the ingenious two-way mirror.

Finnish comics artists, who are sympathetic to our work, take turns in drawing inside the box, which is actually too small for everybody (except for rather petite Katja who built it). The caricature machine is very popular at events, festivals, etc.

The Academic bookstore in Helsinki arranges an annual event called Night of the Books. Since 2002, the caricature machine has been one of the attractions there, with a long queue of aficionados, some of whom come back every year. The proceeds have been used to support our cooperation project with World Comics India.