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Posted by Andy Brown on 27 April 2020
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Using the Power BI ComicGen cartoon visual
Meet Dee:

Dee is happy because the chart is going up.
Dee is one of two current cartoon characters that you can display with the ComicGen custom visual. For each character you can set their emotional state and their pose:
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The choices of pose | The choices of emotion |
You can choose Data Driven for either parameter, which allows you to control its appearance using a measure:

Here I've created two measures to control Dee's pose and emotions.
The measure you create has to return a valid emotion/pose. Here Dee will laugh if total quantity sold is more than 10,000, or be angry otherwise:
EmotionValue = IF(
SUM(Purchase[Quantity]) > 10000,
"Laugh",
"Angry"
)
There are a few limitations: you can only have two cartoon characters on the page at one time, the emotions aren't exact and there doesn't seem to be a Happy emotion.
Probably the most fun you can have with this visual is waiting for it to redraw when you change the pose:

Here Dee is waiting to get another pose.
Or more disturbingly, head:

Here Dee is waiting to get an emotion back.
You could of course choose Dey instead:

The ComicGen site promises more characters to come in the future.
You can get the ComicGen custom visual by adding a custom visual to your report:

Click here to add a custom visual (in this case, I've already got the ComicGen visual visible).
I'd always wondered what this custom visual did! I only really wrote it to please Sam. I will wait eagerly for the roll-out of Ollie Owl ...