2/27/11

Today's jpost.com cartoon

Yet another one about the continuing political crisis in the Arab world. Today's focus: Libya!

This one took a lot of inspiration to think up. I knew I wanted it to be about Muammar Gaddafi and the protests in Libya, tying it in to the general Arab protests if possible; in the end, I decided to go with the angle about how many of the (generally young) protesters have mobilized using new media like Facebook and Twitter. Remembering that Twitter and peace are both symbolized by birds, I decided to focus on that.
After debating for a while on just how to best represent the idea of the birds bringing down the Arab dictators, I was struck with a sudden flash of inspiration, recalling the #1 most popular iPhone game, Angry Birds, which provided a ready-made destruction metaphor (and had also been used by Israeli satirists before).
Everything came together pretty quickly after that. I'd originally intended to have the dove of peace flying in/being flung from the opposite direction, but decided that was metaphoric overkill and just had it perched on the ruins crushing Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. (Hosni Mubarak, of course, is the one under the pyramid on the left. Symbolism, folks!)
UPDATE 1: Video released on YouTube one month later by user "egorzhgun" with same basic premise. Goes viral. Cartoon just sits there. Cartoonist sighs, gets on with life.
UPDATE 2: Cartoon reposted on the Forty Two blog.

Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Black 0.4 mm pilot pen
Black 0.5 mm pilot pen
Serif PhotoPlus 6.0

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