Marty Cooper

Marty Cooper is an artist with a series of images where he merges cartoon characters with real life by using sheets of acrylic to draw on and put over a scene. He has even started to do short animations where the cartoons come to life. I like how he manages to make the cartoons look like they belong there by their poses and the shading he does on them. This artist also works well alongside Alexey Kondakov as she also blends two images together. Taking inspiration from these, I will experiment with placing doodle cartoons over terror attack images rather than political leaders.

Development

 

Over the past couple of lessons I have used the bamboo tablet on photoshop to create these cartoons of trump and Kim Jong Un. I furthered the idea of the political cartoons by overlapping them on photos to make them a collage. Both of these photos show trump ignoring/ overshadowing refugees. The picture on the left is a cartoon recreation of trump from one of his speeches, the background for this is a bunch of newspapers with trump on the front covers as in 2016 he was all over the media therefore blocking out more important things like the refugees in other countries. I showed this by adding small rips in the newspapers revealing the true horrors that the media do not cover. The image in the middle has a quote taken from trump during another one of his speeches which I have used to show him trying to turn the lights off the refugees and leave them in the dark as he doesn’t let them in to America. I also made one of Kim Jong Un as he is also a massive danger to people with all of his nuclear weapons which you can see being fired in the background. I added a harsh red light to it as well to make the picture feel evil and menacing. To further these ideas I can start moving on to other political or religious leaders and make a series of these cartoons each linking to terrorism in their own ways.

Experimentation

I have started experimenting with the wacom bamboo tablet on photoshop to begin drawing some sketches for my own political cartoon. I did two pieces of trump with the message that he’s going to destroy the world, these aren’t my final ideas but just something to experiment with. I made my own photoshop brush by playing around with the brush settings to create a sketchy sort of stroke to imitate a pencil. The first piece is trump as a missile, I used a rough style of drawing for the outline and did the colours with a water colour palette and brush as thats a cliche style of political cartoons. For the second piece I made it a lot neater on the outlines and did a more cartoony style of colouring. To further these idea’s I could overlay them on to real life photos similar to the workshop I did near the start of the project where I drew on top of images.

 

Charlie Hebdo

Charlie Hebdo was an organisation located in Paris who created weekly newspapers mocking current political and religious figures using cartoons. Some cartoons have been very borderline and stirred up a lot of controversy. On January the 7th 2015 two members of Al-Qaeda forced their way in to the offices of the Charlie Hebdo and unleashed fire killing 12 of the cartoonists and injuring a further 11 in reaction to a cartoon of muhammad. Shortly after this attack the slogan “Je Suis Charlie” which translates to “I am Charlie” was created by French art director Joachim Roncin which became one of the most popular hashtags trending on twitter worldwide.

Initial Idea

I had a rough idea of what I wanted to create when I made this but I made a lot of it up as I went along. It started as just a fist with some text that I kept moving around to find a good composition, Then I had the idea to use the double exposure technique to overlay another image on it, I chose to do the 9/11 attack as it is well known and everyone recognises it. However this image could come across as insensitive and too bold. If I were to continue this Idea further I would first of all narrow it down to something else not so bold like 9/11, maybe refugees or smaller terrorist attacks to open peoples eyes to things the media don’t cover. I would also take my own photo of the fist or maybe a head this time to make it seem like someones thoughts. The text on the fore arm could be something like the names of people who died or other smaller messages. I would also spend more time on the composition to make it stand out more.

 

White supremacy

White supremacy is the belief that white should be superior to every other race commonly associated the Ku Klux Klan founded in 1866 to re-establish white supremacy through violent and aggressive methods. Although a lot rarer this is still happening in 2017 and needs to be stopped as it is a form of terrorism and everyone should be treated equally.

Further research

I have been searching online for lists of terrorist attacks and have found a site with 10 major attacks, I have read through all of them and plan on developing my research on a chosen one of them.

http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-terrorist-attacks.php

For example ;

The mid air bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 which killed 270 people and injured a further 17 as it crashed on to Scotland. It was then found out the attack was caused by the Libyan Government.

Marine Barracks bombing 1983 killing 301 people and injuring a further 161 done by The Islamic Jihad with two trucks loaded with explosives.

 

Initial Research

Upon researching the etymology of the word terrorism I discovered that the word originated in the late 18th century during the French Revolution however, became more popular during attacks like 9/11. I could not find a website that had a simple clear definition of the word as there is no simple definition. Wikipedia defines the word ‘in its broadest sense, the use of intentionally indiscriminate violence as a means to create terror, or fear, to achieve a political, religious or ideological aim’

I could link this to my final piece by doing further research of the french revolution or 9/11 to make a bold striking collage.

Terrorism Mind Map

I created a mind map listing all the words connected to terrorism to give me a starting point which I can then narrow down and expand on.