Caricature of an elderly man as a bodybuilding surfer
Bodybuilder Caricature
A muscular old man in a cowboy hat poses on the beach with his surfboard.
Current Conventions in Digital Caricature
To caricature is to exaggerate. It is easy to digitally exaggerate the idiosyncrasies of a person's face simply by distorting the pixels using Photoshop's liquid filter or KPT's Goo/Super Goo. For people without photoshop there are many standalone applications such as Caricature Studio. To further parody the subject you can replace the body with one that is markedly different from their own. In this instance the old man is placed on a young muscular body. The head size is disproportionate to the body in order to maintain the cartoon nature of the treatment. We are not aiming to convince the viewer that the body really does belong to the head as this would conflict with the parody that we're trying to create. This treatment is in keeping with the traditional fairground photograph in which the subjects poke their heads through a hole in a board to place themselves on the painted bodies of sailors, muscle-men, busty beach babes, mermaids and so on.
Old Man In Cowboy Hat

Unfortunately, as we get old, our face becomes a natural caricature of the cherub-like physiognomy of our youth. Laughter lines turn to wrinkles (and then into canyons). Cheeks turn into jowls. Chins multiply. Everything sags. Such a face can be said to have 'character'. To parody such a face is simply a matter of accentuating the worst affected areas by enlarging them. With a younger face you will have to interpolate your own character, by making a big nose bigger, small nose smaller, big ears into Dumbo proportions, wide eyes into saucers etc...

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