How To Choose the Best Photo for a Personal Caricature

• Use a big, clear picture of your face. It’s no problem if you’re looking a little to the left or right, but it’s extra hard to draw if you’re looking up or down.
• Zoom in on the photo you’ve selected. Is your face still clear? If it’s not clear to you, it’s not going to be clear to us.
• Can you make out the person’s eye color? Is the your hair color accurate? If you send two pics with two different hairstyles, please tell us which hairstyle you want.
• It’s worth it to spend a little extra time finding a big, clear, personal photo that captures the subject well. Then you’ll receive a big, clear caricature that really looks like the person!

Finding the right shot is the hardest part of ordering a personal caricature from photo. It’s likely, though, that if you go through your Facebook profile or other social sharing gallery, that a fairly recent photo will present itself.

If it’s blurry when zoomed in, it’s harder to draw.

Use a big, clear photo of your face

Two photos In One caricature

Remember, if you want to get two people together in one personalized caricature, you do not have to send us a photo of the two together! Just send the best individual shots you can.  We will combine them into one great cartoon. The poses and bodies are all made up, the only part of the picture you send that we really use is the head.  It’s not very useful to send full body shots. There is some benefit in seeing the style of dress and posture of the subject, but often, in a full body shot, the size and resolution of the head is compromised. It’s better to find an individual picture of each subject’s head if possible.

We make our best effort to work with every photo. We know it’s not easy to find perfect portraits of yourself or your loved ones. Even our artists struggle with that. The hardest part of ordering a personal caricature from photo online is going to be finding the photo. We’ll do the best job we can with what you send, unless we know it’s going to be impossible.

Personal Caricature from Photo:  The Difference Between Easy and Hard Requests

Easy requests:
“Draw me jumping out of a plane! Draw him with a giant plate of spaghetti! Draw us punching each other!”
It’s easy to draw a body in pretty much any situation you want.
Hard requests:
“Draw my eyes watery like I’m jumping out of a plane! Draw him eating spaghetti! Draw us getting punched in the mouth!”
It’s hard to change facial expressions from what’s available in the pictures. We’re willing to do it, but you need to be willing to accept less accurate likenesses.

Easy requests:
“Draw us standing in the rain!”
No problem. We can draw pretty much any background.
Hard requests:
“Draw us looking up at the rain!”
It’s very difficult to draw a personal caricature from photo of a person looking straight ahead at the camera, and change the angle so that they’re looking up. We won’t even tackle this one.

Easy requests:
“I know he’s bald, so draw him with a ridiculously big afro!”
Make fun of a bald man by drawing goofy hair? Yes please!
Hard requests
My hair is up in this photo. Can you draw it down?”
No. That’s your real hair. Is it long? Curly? What shape does it take when it’s down? Better find some more accurate reference for this one.

Easy requests:
“Draw me in an 18th-century Japanese kimono. I’ve included a photo for reference.”
Hard requests:
“Draw me in an 18th-century Japanese kimono. Just search for one on Google.”