During the summer holiday we were asked to have a go a try creating some pocket cartoons. Back then I found it extremely difficult as I am not good at making up jokes nether funny pocket cartoons. It took me a while to learn what works best for me.
For the starter of our pocket cartoon project we were given small tasks in class. One of them was improving or changing another student’s cartoon. I found it hard to make up something new and funny. I found it easier to draw a cartoon based on the news rather than redrawing someone's idea. I received a joke targeting a plant to grow up. However, I thought this would suit the situation with humans instead of a plant. I think it wasn't an original idea, but it works better than a pot.
Second one required us to draw a patient of a therapist and write a quote. I decided to make a reference to Liz's Truss and the fact that she has been shorter in the business than a Chief Mouser cat Larry and yet she became the Prime Minister. In my pocket cartoon, I drew Larry going to the therapist after losing the election to Liz.
Other task was to look up funny headings in the newspaper. Headings of the news are always meant to attract attention of the audience and tend to be ridiculous. However, I found much easier to come up with ideas by drawing the cartoon the way I see the situation described in the news rather than looking at some pre-existent cartoons. I think my problem was that I strictly didn’t want to accidently create something that was already done by someone else, so I seeked a different source of inspiration in form of writing rather than art.
Artist talk- Martin Rowson
During the talk, Martin did a quick presentation about his work. From his presentation, I learnt that he is a cartoonist that specialises in creating political cartoons. Creating this type of content is not always funny to everyone. Martin told us about the dark side of working on political cartoons. Over the years he got very popular and got a lot of people who follow his social media. However, a lot of these people follow him because they don't like his work. During the meeting, Martin mentioned the bad side of the audience that sends him hate emails and openly talks about hating his content.
I think his caricatures are amazing, detailed pieces of work that perfectly resemble the government and others. However, as an artist, I don't think I could dedicate my life to creating political cartoons that would bring me so much hate from my audience.
During the session, Martin also explained his techniques of how to simplify the caricatures so that drawing them is quick and effective. The task was to use his method to draw a person sitting on the opposite within the time frame between a few minutes or seconds. I like the outcome of the second piece because the lines were loose and the face features exaggerated just like in Martin's work. It got the right amount of details and it's quick to draw.
Zoom Rockman
Zoom Rockman is a cartoonist who got experience in walking with newspapers from a very young age. He gave us a brief presentation about his work. Afterwards, we could talk to him about the cartoons we worked on.
My first idea was drawing Priminister cutting off the electricity during winter, which relates to the ongoing news about blackouts this winter. Seeing Rishi Sunak drawn as a caricature was funnier in this illustration than the actual joke behind it.
The second idea was the one that a lot of people found funny despite the poor sketch I made. I had to make small notes on the sides of the characters for people to be able to tell who they were. It had a very strong context taken from the news about poison threatening the lives of people who call themselves friends.
The third idea was related to the issue of the egg shortage we had in Stoke. Bird flu caused shops to have very few eggs in stores. Shops were blaming bird flu, but later on, it turned out that the farmers weren't paid enough to deliver eggs to stores.
From a perspective of a customer, it looked like the chickens were the ones who were severely underpaid and decided to strike. That's how the illustration of the chicken strike came to my mind.
My fourth idea was making the uno reverse joke combined with bills. A lot of people post on social media various tips for saving on bills. My advice is to use an uno reverse card.
My fifth idea was related to the news about a war between Russia and Ukraine being a threat to Poland. From a geographical point of view, Poland is never in a good position no matter where the conflict lies. However, we are in 2023, and war is a bit overrated. We had so many wars all around the world in the past, and we know the damage they can cause and yet there is another one. It feels like we are too old for this. To create a joke about it, I pictured Russia and Ukraine throwing paper plains at each other to show that their actions are very immature. To show Poland always getting caught in the middle of the war I made one of the paper plains lands in the eye of the country.
The final pocket cartoon
I found out that people prefer to laugh at other people rather than objects or animals. I decided that the cartoon about two friendly governments and one of them trying to poison another would be the best idea.
This cartoon was based on a news headline about Putin's next target may be Lukashenko. Russia and Belarus claim to be friends, but how can they explain this then?
I aimed for an adult audience that is actively engaged in the news because younger generations tend to not be interested in the news. I was a 22-year-old female and am still not interested in the news myself, so I understand why most young people choose not to engage with the news. It is because it is a constant flow of bad news that makes us feel sad and depressed. I think it's fair to say my generation has had enough of sad and depressing news after covid, so we choose to avoid the news.
I used the knowledge about designing characters from the artist's talk to create two caricatures that resemble the government of Russia and Belarus. to make them even more hilarious, I made them bubble heads with tiny bodies.
I think this joke turned out to be very dark and well-drawn. When getting the feedback I've been told they have been told that the bubble heads look too good. When designing them I thought I will give them a lot of wrinkles just like in real life. However, I think that may have been what made them too perfect. Another thing that is observed in the pictures is that the Russian government has a very oval, egg-like head and the Belarus president got a very large, square, almost box-like head. I think the shape of the head is what made them resemble real people the most, so in the end, I could leave the wrinkles out to keep them simple and easy to draw.
I thought for some people it still may not be obvious who the characters are. I decided to give Putin a little Russian flag and write Lukaszenkos's name in the newspaper he holds to relate to the news.
Overall I like how the cartoon turned out, but I also fear that some people may not find the joke funny. Drawing cartoons like this is a risk I am not ready to take as an artist. In near future, I want to build an audience that will love me for my work and the content of my comics, not the opposite.
As a cartoonist, I think this knowledge helped me to discover more work opportunities such as editorial cartoonist. It also taught me how to appeal to the older audience by making more adult humour context.
