JabJab’s latest original music video, He’s Barack Obama, which premiered at the White House Radio & Television Correspondents Dinner this week, is my favourite yet.
I visited the JibJab studios last month, and everyone was hard at work putting the finishing touches on this piece. It was great fun to see all the work in progress, and bless their hearts, the JibJab team has put all of it on their production blog.
Anyone interested in how these sorts of things are put together owes it to themselves to check it out — they cover the initial writing process, scratch music tracks, character designs, rough storyboards, and the production of all the design and animation. Don’t miss the unused stop motion sequence.
It’s still several hours before any results pour in for the U.S. presidential election, but that hasn’t stopped editorial cartoonists from making predictions and readying their submissions. Daryl Cagle’s online hub of editorial cartoons has already started compiling cartoons depicting Obama’s victory.
MAD cartoonist Tom Richmond also recently posted a look at MAD’s efforts to not predict election results, but to prepare two versions of features or cover art that feature a winning presidential candidate.
I guess if there’s any proof to the far right’s claim that Barack Obama is a socialist it’s that his face is on more t-shirts than Che Guevara these days. The Art of Obama blog aims to document the outpouring of artwork inspired by Obama’s message of hope and change, and his image itself.
There are some hits and misses, but I was struck by the elegance of this wire sculpture entitled Tension by artist Michael Murphy.
An ad agency working on the Obama campaign called me a few weeks ago. They saw my drawings over words and my drawing with words posted here and asked if I would be interested in doing a drawing for a campaign poster. They wanted a portrait of Barack Obama made from a list of issues most important to the Senator written out to form the portrait. I employed this technique once before when I was so frustrated with the media coverage I thought it an appropriate way to show the subtext. But that drawing was done for this blog rather quickly and designed to be seen 6 inches at 72 ppi (pixels per square inch) this would be viewed much larger and needed to be much more detailed. That means many many more words,.. so many in fact, that at 72 ppi, I could only show a small fraction of the drawing here, otherwise it wouldn’t read as words.
Over the next few days I’m going to post the rest of the drawing in fragments. If you’re a college student and you print the fragments out, tile them together on your dorm room wall and send me a picture, I’ll give you a shout out and post the pics here on my blog.
The latest New Yorker cover, by pop-culture visual commentator Barry Blitt, is stirring up considerable controversy. Apparently Barack Obama’s campaign headquarters don’t agree that satire helps their cause – see the story at the International Herald Tribune. That’s a pretty tricky line for a Democrat to take. Where would we be without cartoonists and caricaturists – the court jesters of our times – to speak the taboos that cover up hidden agendas and to question, hence improve and refine, cultural values?
At least two illustrators are defending The New Yorker’s willingness to keep imagemaking relevant and thought-provoking. The indefatigable DB Dowd (previously) – who brought this dust-up to my attention – has an excellent essay about it, while Person-of-the-Day caricaturist Steve Brodner has a call-to-action on his Drawger blog.
Now if only The New Yorker would stop being wimps and post about this on their new Cartoon Lounge blog, and put in message threads!! THAT would make their new blog something to bookmark, a place to regularly discuss freedom-of-sight. Instead, they are conducting all the juicy discussion over on The Huffington Post.
With a simple ballpoint pen, Larry Roibal doodles quick, yet consummate portraits of faces from current events — all on the pages of the newspaper itself.
Acclaimed poster artist Shepard Fairey (Obey Giant) has produced a set of poster prints to accompany his endorsement of Barack Obama. If I was a politician I can’t think of anyone else I’d want making propaganda posters in my honour. I can’t tell you how difficult it was not to title this post “Barack Obama Has a Posse”.
The latest New Yorker cover, by pop-culture visual commentator 
The Barack Obama campaign just launched a new
Acclaimed poster artist Shepard Fairey (
Over at the New Yorker’s website: 
