There are some cartoons that simply seem to refer to the fact that the assault happened and that it happened to a person no one in their right mind feels pity for (here, here & here). Others try to make the point that Berlusconi has finally felt the power of the Italian people (here, here & here), conveniently disregarding the attacker’s history of psychological problems. The weirdest version, by far, is this Jesus Vampire Freemason Berlusconi thing. Is his ear representing some shape I should know?

While some cartoonists draw parallels to the 2008 Iraqi shoe throwing incident (here & here), others link the attack to the Copenhagen Conference (here & here). To be honest, I don’t think that any of the cartoons is very good. Except for the vampire.. and perhaps this sexy-nurses-in-a-15-year-old-boy’s-room collage. Or these cartoons  I didn’t understand because they are in Italian (here & here).

Cartoons of Interest

Christmas is coming up, so this week’s favorite is another holiday-themed cartoon. Andreas Prüstel’s untitled cartoon ["So.. what are you?" "Same thing as last year."] nicely fits into my personal (and annual) present-finding terror. There is definitely a pattern emerging in the presents I give away. Come to think of it, there has been a pattern ever since I started giving presents away. Oh, well.

This week, there are some other great works I would like to refer to: Junior Lopez has created an amazing portrait of Sherlock Holmes; fellow Brazilian William Medeiros did this cool and classic caricature of architect Oscar Niemeyer. Finally, there’s Rex May’s cartoon about potentate-people relations.

Have a merry Christmas, a happy Hanukkah or a solemn and dignified Kwanzaa.  That is, if you’re celebrating. Otherwise, have some good days anyway.

Paul Hellmich

Every time I re-read one of my blog entries, I will notice a couple of sentences that have a rather German structure. Sometimes I sneakily rewrite them, sometimes I just stay with it. I guess that these mistakes are something you can’t avoid when you’re not a native speaker and use your mother tongue all day. OK … these days I don’t do too much talking and I spend a lot of time reading English stuff on the internet. But you get the general idea.

Similar things happen on toonpool.com’s main page. There are always one or two “official” sentences that sound a bit awkward. This is part of a dilemma probably shared by other websites. Toonpool.com aims at an international audience, so we need to translate the site into a large number of languages. Until now we support seven languages, which isn’t bad for a small company as ours – but there are obvious limitations.
Most of our localized versions are one-off jobs done by trusted native speakers. This means that there is no support for features introduced after the translation has been completed, let alone newsletters, etc. For those, we have to resort to our two ‘main languages’ German and English. We could have settled for one of them, but chances for international success are clearly better if you use English and it would have been a waste of our superior German language skills not to do a German version. Also about a third of the site’s visitors are from Germany. So, yeah.

Back to the awkward English dilemma: We are trying to set up a professional website for an international audience. I would go as far as saying that we are professionals – but we’re not exactly a large team. Any resources that go into writing nice and professional English texts could also be used to improve the site design, do general administration stuff and so on. On the other hand I personally find sites that use incorrect language somewhat sketchy. So it’s either trying to balance these kinds of things or leaving the international parts of the Internet to English speakers and companies with a budget for translators.

What does everyone else think? Did you notice any irregularities at all or is this something only a blog person with too much time on their hands will notice? How would you address the dilemma mentioned above? If you are an non-native speaker of English and have a website in English, do you experience similar problems?

Of course I know that this article somewhat misses the point for a number of toonpool.com users. There are quite a few who do not speak English or German and either write in their own language or trust the hardly-trustworthy Google translator happily ignoring all warnings. I keep wondering how you experience the site. Do you ignore all written text or just cope with the mysterious syntax of auto-translation? If anyone of you auto-translates this article, please tell me. Probably toonpool.com has some advantages in that a steady number of cartoons people upload is without words. But then again any comment or questions exceeding “very good” or “*****” usually leads to either Babel-ish chaos or uncomfortable silence. The lesson to draw from this is probably that the “discursive model” of web 2.0 communication is an idealistic and, ultimately, an elitist concept. There are other factors that generate internet community. I can’t help thinking and muttering to myself, however, that my old elitist ideal is more meaningful.

Paul Hellmich

Image: London Party by Prinzparadox

There has been, however, a remarkable accumulation of portraits showing two of the 20^th century’s iconic posers: John Lennon and Salvador Dalí. As for Lennon, I simply forgot about the anniversary of his assassination on December 8. Be sure to check out some of the portraits. The most interesting one for me was this realistic portrait by Joachim Rick. Mullet-Lennon is a rare sight these days. Would this part of his image have survived if had lived? Probably not. Sir Paul has been pretty good in suppressing people’s memories of his mullet. Or of the fact that he used to have grey hair. Other interesting Lennon caricatures are these two by Doru Axinte, this blank-eyed version by Zed and Ben Heine’s triangular kitsch.

While the mystery about the Lennons has been solved pretty quickly thanks to Wikipedia, the forces behind the Dalís remain unknown. If anyone finds out why everybody did Dalí last week, tell me. As with most series of portraits, monotony develops amazingly fast – all the wide-eyed, mustachioed mock-madness, you know. So here are the highlights in quick succession: ear-hair Dalí, insane midget Dalí, Handface Dalí and geometrically deconstructed Dalí. Enjoy.

Introducing…

Eoin Coveney actually joined toonpool.com last week. But he started uploading pictures only this Wednesday, so I think it’s OK to mention him here. Eoin is from Dublin, Ireland and he’s a professional. I really like the contrast between the furry cat and the smooth snowman in this one, or the line-art in this portrait. Peter Stringfellow turns out to be a kind of British Rolf Eden, if that’s any help to you. If it isn’t, take a look at Amy Winehouse in a psychedelic shirt or Dracula sporting a slipover. They’re both good.

Cartoons of Interest

My favorite cartoon this week is “Son of Rita” by George. It nicely captures the two hens’ coldness toward H.D. Bailey’s great fall. I am sure that it will only take half an hour or so until everyone in the neighborhood knows what happened. Then, they will probably seem full of sympathy, but this cartoon unmasks their initial calculation: ‘Who is this’ and “Can I make a good story out of it’.

This is, of course, only my second-to-favorite Humpty Dumpty cartoon. It will be hard to beat Gary Larson’s classic one about how the horses want another shot at putting him back together again.

Paul Hellmich

Introducing…

New toonpool.com member Ilkay Saltık’s portfolio is strangely divided. There are some drawings that clearly lack artistic experience and are hardly more than mediocre doodles. Others – I would guess that these are his more recent works – are imaginative and promising illustrations. Take, for example, the capitalist with a hidden heart, the steam powered smiler or car crash crotch. I am sure that there will be more of the good stuff in the days to come.

Cartoons of Interest

My favorite cartoon this week  is “Der Landschaftsmaler” ["The Landscape Painter"] by Mehmet Karaman, who, incidentally, is from Switzerland. Is that painter being attacked by his own colors or by wild ones? Or have both of them joined forces against his naturalism? Anyway, this is a great cartoon. And it is mysterious in a good way.

Paul Hellmich

Farhad, two of your major topics are freedom and censorship… Do you have any personal motivation for concentrating on those two?

Censorship is an scary shadow which has followed me all my life…and I hate it. Therefore I talk about it. Freedom is a topic that concerns many people on this planet. I have never had as much freedom as I wished. Being born in Iran is just like being born in a cage. After that you will always be looking for freedom.

How did censorship follow you? Did you experience censorship in Europe as well?

Censorship loves artists and intellectuals! It never lets us go. I experienced this almost everywhere, under different names and in different shapes. But I can recognize it everywhere: even in Italy and Holland – anywhere.

Would you mind telling me in which way your work has been censored in Iran and in Europe?

If I make something that questions their politics or authorities they will find a way to let me know that they are not happy with that. I can lose my job because of that. This has happened many times in my life. They make me understand that, if I want to work and have a better life, I have to be careful about what I say.

On your website you state that you have been born three times, what do you mean by that?

I was naturally born in Teheran. Later I had to emigrate twice – once to Holland and once to Italy. Each time changing place, country and direction of my life was like being born again. I said that I have been born three times because each time I had to start everything over again, just like a baby.

You returned to Holland in 2000 after some time in Italy. How did it feel to come back to a place you had left?

It did feel like a kind of coming back home. It may sound strange, but I miss all the places that I have lived in. Even those that felt like a cage!

Could you imagine moving back to Iran? What was the reason you had to leave your birthplace – how was it like a cage for you?

Cage is maybe not the best word to describe the situation in Iran. As a bird in a cage, someone will take care of you. They will give you water and food and maybe even love. At the time that I left, Iran was more like hell than like a cage – there was the war with Iraq, daily bombardments, not having my freedom, etc. I had to go away and I did it.
I would love to go back to Iran, but after 24 years in Europe it wouldn’t be easy for me to leave my work, my friends and everything behind me. I created a life, a world for me here and I cannot leave it behind.

Do you still have any connections to Iran today?

Almost every day – with my colleagues, family, …

Would you say that Iran has changed since you left it?

Very much: cities, roads, people, culture, many things.

Would you say that there is a place that is “home” to you? How would you define it?

To me, “home” is a place where I feel that I’m not alone. A place where you can feel that you exist, where you are being seen. Sometimes I have that feeling in Iran, sometimes in Holland, even in Berlin. It is a strange feeling, but “home” to me is a wish, a dream, a utopia. Or maybe “home” is just something inside ourselves.

Thanks for your time!

Paul Hellmich

Anyway, he other event I was talking about is the Islamic Festival of Sacrifice, or عيد الأضحى, or Kurban Bayramı which is taking place between November 27 and December 1st. Even though I live in a neighborhood with a large percentage of Muslims, I would have missed the holiday if it wasn’t for toonpool.com. Just like Christmas, Kurban Bayramı is used to comment on various aspects of society. There are cartoons about swine flu, burkas, and… other topics. One picture by Saadet Yalcin made me wonder how vegan Muslims deal with the situation. I would be glad if anyone could tell me. On the opposite side of the spectrum there’s this one cartoon, that is outright scary if you think about it a bit longer.

Introducing…

This week, I would like to introduce Gud from Rome, who has contributed two interesting series of pictures so far. The first is named “Crazy Hair” (1,2,3,4) and deals with.. hair.  The second (1,2,3,4,5,6)  doesn’t have an official name but is best described as a kind of “crossover homage”. It combines characters from different comic books in a single panel – all drawn in Gud’s slightly scribbly lines. Some people might complain that these aren’t really cartoons because there is no joke, but there is something in panels like “Corto Maltese and Krazy Kat” that strikes a note in me.

Cartoons of Interest

This week’s favorite is “Praktikant” by Comicpiero. [B: "… and, where do I put this present?" S: "God, I hate interns."] Cartoons that combine Santa and the Easter Bunny might not be new but, as a former intern, I know those questions. And I did ask them – and probably was annoying as hell.

There were two close contestants this week, both of them caricatures: There is this great Manmohan Singh by Junior Lopes and Kim Yong Il hiding a loaf of bread.

Paul Hellmich

Ralph, vom 28. November bis zum 10. Januar läuft in der Berliner Cartoonfabrik “Shit Happens! – Die Ausstellung”… Was wird da zu sehen sein?

Zum einen eine große Auswahl meiner persönlichen Lieblingscartoons aus den letzten sechs Jahren – als großformatige Drucke und teilweise auch als Originalzeichnung. Zum anderen zeige ich Skizzen, Entwürfe und Scribbles, gebe also Einblick in meine Arbeitsweise. Dazu gehören sowohl die handwerkliche Seite des Zeichnens, als auch die Ideenfindung.

Die Ausstellung war Anfang April schon einmal für einige Monate im wunderschönen Literaturmuseum in Oelde zu sehen. Ich freue mich riesig, dass Wolfgang Kleinert von der Cartoonfabrik sie jetzt nach Berlin geholt hat.

Kannst du irgendworan festmachen, welche deiner eigenen Cartoons dir am besten gefallen?

Ich bin besonders stolz auf Gags, bei denen ich selbst gar nicht mehr sagen kann, wie ich darauf gekommen bin. Eigentlich sind meine Ideen nur ganz selten Geistesblitze, sondern meist wirklich konkret “erarbeitet”. Wenn sich Cartoons beim Betrachten trotzdem so spontan und direkt anfühlen, als hätte es den Arbeitsprozess nie gegeben, bin ich schon etwas stolz.

Bei der Ausstellungseröffnung am 27. November wirst du zusammen mit Flix live auftreten. Was hat man sich darunter vorzustellen?

Wir arbeiten mit einem Laptop, der über einen Beamer Cartoons, Filme oder auch ganze Comics auf eine Leinwand projiziert. Die einzelnen Elemente verbinden wir über eine Moderation. Ich selbst lese Texte vor, die eine Art roten Faden bilden. Flix liest seine Geschichten Bild für Bild vor. Das ist sehr unterhaltsam und abwechslungsreich. Sagen zumindest unsere Zuschauer.

Bevor du angefangen hast, Cartoons zu veröffentlichen, hast du als Texter gearbeitet – u.a. für “Käpt’n Blaubär”. 2007 hast du Regie bei einem halbstündigen Spielfilm geführt, für den du auch das Buch geschrieben hattest, und du trittst regelmäßig live mit deinen Cartoons auf. Wie unterscheidet sich die Arbeit an einem Cartoon von der Arbeit an einem längeren Text, z.B. einem Drehbuch?

Die Art und Weise, wie man Geschichten erarbeitet, eine Pointe perfektioniert, das ist eigentlich immer gleich und völlig unabhängig vom Medium. Sicher, bei Comic und Cartoon kann man oft noch visueller arbeiten. Aber inzwischen bin ich mit vielen Autoren befreundet, die für Spielfilme und Comedyserien arbeiten. Wir stellen immer wieder fest, wie ähnlich wir ticken und wie viele Parallelen es in unseren Arbeitsweisen gibt. Letztendlich sind wir Humoristen, Erzähler. Und es geht immer nur um die Figuren. Ob die in einem Ein-Bild-Gag gezeichnet sind oder als realer Mensch über eine Leinwand laufen ist erst mal wurscht.

Ich hatte in den letzten Jahren den Eindruck, dass in Deutschland eine bestimmte Form von Single-Panel-Cartoons immer beliebter wird: glatt und professionell gezeichnet und ein bisschen schwarzhumorig, dabei moderner als z.B. Tetsche und nicht so seltsam wie F. K. Waechter und Co. Beispielsweise werden häufig Vergleiche zwischen dir und Joscha “Nichtlustig” Sauer aufgestellt und auch auf toonpool.com gibt es mehrere Künstler mit einem ähnlichem Ansatz…

Richtig, deine Beobachtung was die Single-Panel-Cartoons betrifft kann ich bestätigen. Joscha und ich sind seit 2001 befreundet. Humormäßig lagen wir von Anfang an ziemlich auf einer Linie. Zeichnerisch haben wir uns einander über die Jahre immer mehr angenähert, ohne dass das geplant gewesen wäre. Sein Stil ist bunter und glatter geworden, meiner reduzierter und klarer. Der Erfolg unserer Sachen hat wohl wirklich viele junge Zeichner dazu bewegt, ähnliches Material zu produzieren. Wobei ich Joschas Einfluss da doch als noch etwas größer einschätze als meinen.

Gibt es da eine Szene, in der auch ein Austausch stattfindet?

Ja, Joscha und ich arbeiten oft zusammen. Einige Nichtlustig-Gags sind von mir, einige Shit-Happens-Gags sind von ihm. Mit Flix, Perscheid und Martin Zak sind wir befreundet und reden viel über die Arbeit. Ich glaube, dass sich Künstler mit ähnlichem Stil und Ansichten auf kurz oder lang immer kennenlernen werden.

Du bist ja sehr produktiv, inzwischen sind 14 Bücher von dir erschienen. Musst du aufpassen, dass du keine Gags zeichnet, die jemand anderes schon mal hatte… oder du selbst?

Dass man mal auf eine Idee kommt, die ein anderer schon hatte, ist bei einem hohen Output unvermeidbar. Das ist sowohl Perscheid als auch mir, Flix und Joscha schon passiert. Finde ich auch gar nicht schlimm. Was nicht geht, ist konkretes Klauen. Solange ich nicht wissentlich abkupfere, habe ich mit solchen Überschneidungen kein Problem. Aber ich versuche, mich selbst ständig zu überraschen und so originell wie möglich zu sein. Wenn ich eine Idee für zu naheliegend halte, mache ich sie nicht.

Gary Larson ist ja 1995 in Pension gegangen, weil er keine Lust mehr hatte, ständig neue Cartoons produzieren zu müssen. Hast du einen Plan für ein Leben nach den Cartoons?

Momentan sehe ich nicht, wieso ich aufhören sollte, Cartoons zu produzieren. Noch nie fiel mir etwas so leicht und hat gleichzeitig ein so großes Publikum erreicht. Ich will mich weiter ausprobieren, mache momentan viele Trickfilme, strecke meine Finger weiter aus Richtung Bühne . . . aber die Basis für all das, das Fundament, sind die Cartoons. Ihnen verdanke ich überhaupt, dass ich die Zeit und die finanziellen Möglichkeiten habe, mich in anderen Bereichen auszuprobieren. Und das ist ein Luxus, für den ich sehr dankbar bin.

Danke, dass du dir die Zeit genommen hast!

Paul Hellmich

“Shit Happens! – Die Ausstellung”

28. 11. 2009 bis 31.1.2010
Mittwoch – Sonntag    (14-19 Uhr)

Eintritt: 1 €

Cartoonfabrik, Krossener Str. 23 (Berlin-F’-Hain)
(am Boxhagener Platz)

Eröffnung: Freitag, den 27.11.09, 20 Uhr
(LIVESHOW mit  Ralph Ruthe & Flix)

Last week, as every week, there were some new mysterious cartoons. I think this one by Portos is a good example for the I-don’t-understand-a-word category. The I-could-understand-it-if-I-knew-anything-about-your-culture category is being adequately represented by new member Mohamed Alafia, whom I will introduce below. Then, there are some cartoons that I think I should be understanding but I don’t: one in German, one in English, and two without any dialogue. There’s one that uses clear symbolism but makes your brain hurt if you try to think about it. And there are at least two that havecrossed the line to surrealism (one, two)

Introducing…

Mohamed Alafia’s cartoons are sporadically mysterious. Sometimes this is due to my ignorance of Moroccan topics (here & here) and a little research does help. At other times it’s due to my ignorance of Moroccan topics but even Wikipedia is clueless. Who is that Ponky guy? One cartoon, however, remains mysterious even though the captions are pretty clear.  Anyway, Alafia’s style is interesting to look at – especially when he does these scribbly outlines in what might be ink, adds another layer of paler and broader ink scribbles and then puts in blotches of color on his computer (e.g. here). I’ve never quite seen anything like this before.

German artist Schwoe has uploaded only four cartoons so far (1, 2, 3, 4). And, since I am German too I understand all of them. The reason I am mentioning them here is because they are funny, well-drawn, and make my neck hurt in a peculiar way because of the perspective Schwoe employs. Seriously. It’s like looking at German newscaster Klaus Kleber [I found this cartoon when looking for the photo… toonpool.com has once again made page one of the search results. yay!]

Cartoons of Interest

I think my favorite cartoon this week is “Daylight Robbery” by Russian artist Sergej Tunin. I love those old timey pilots in their leather caps and goggles and it’s fun to imagine the sound of the plane.

Paul Hellmich

The original sketch for the toonpool.com mascot. These days it serves as decoration in our bathroom.

We went online on November 15, 2007 and since then the site has evolved quite a bit. Today, there are over 55,000 cartoons by 1430 artists from all over the world. We introduced great new features, like Collections and the Community page as well as features that turned out not so great in reality (anybody remember Bubble-It?). We stayed true to the rating system, even though a lot of users have complained over time. We witnessed and took part in several debates about topics like censorship and anti-Semitism and we survived an international scandal in the cartoon world. Throughout all of this we held some fierce internal debates about the site’s appearance that ended only a year ago. Some of us still miss the old lamella design.

The idea behind toonpool.com is quite simple, yet the artists made the site a special place on the internet: something different from other portals that provide funny illustrations and photos. It’s always amazing to see how fast artists provide topical cartoons – sometimes only ten minutes after an item has appeared on the big news portals. In the future, we want more people outside of toonpool.com to profit from this. We will work hard to make the amazing works on our site known to a greater public. We are also planning to help those who feel inspired to do a cartoon but just can’t draw. There’s more to come.. so, stay with us. And tell your friends.

We would like to thank everyone who has worked for toonpool.com in the past, interns and temporaries and loosely affiliated folks. You helped us a lot. And we would like to say thank you to all artist and users. Obviously. You’re the most important part of the whole thing.

The toonpool.com staff

Staff Picks

Max: It’s not exactly easy to pick a favorite out of 55,000 cartoons. There are so many different drawing styles on toonpool.com that I really enjoy. But I picked a “classic” cartoon: “Good Morning” by Ronald Slabbers. The cartoon is classic in several ways – it combines social criticism and a funny drawing the way great cartoons have done for 50 years now and it’s a prime example of Slabber’s classic cartoon art. His style always reminds me of cartoons in the New Yorker, which I would look at as a kid without really knowing English.

Bernd: I like “Speech” by Pawel Kuczynski best. That’s all.

Battlestar: My favorite is this one by Creative Jones. It’s about a problem in our society that affects me personally, too. Online networking has become a huge part of modern society and there are so many communities you are supposed to join and so many accounts to take care of, so much time we spend on the internet …it can drive you insane sometimes. I think it’s important to reflect that and make fun of it. Besides, I am always imagining this is the “Tom” from myspace, who is everyone’s first friend. I think he would like that cartoon as well.

Ches: I can’t really decide between “Johnny Skywalker” by Volkertoons and “Screen Shot” by Achecht. They are both ingeniously rendered word plays.

Paul: “Haarschnitt” by Peter Thulke always makes me smile. It’s about the transforming power of children’s haircuts. Well, maybe that’s my favorite cartoon for friendly days. On another day I might have chosen “Handschuhe” by Ari, for instance.

Photos

An interesting thing happens when artists link the Berlin wall to the Israeli West Bank barrier, as in this piece by Paolo Lombardi referencing “Test the Best” on Berlin’s East Side Gallery. The strong appeal of a wall as a symbol of injustice apparently overrides all difficulties that arise when you compare the historical background of the two walls. On the other hand, comparing them anyway might lead to interesting new insights as happened accidentally in the comments to this 2008 piece by Ben Heine.

Introducing…

Continuing with the West Bank theme, I would like to introduce new artist Ramzy Taweel, who actually lives in Palestine. He drew these two cartoons about his thoughts on the issue (note the one-legged background guy on the beach). Apart from fitting this week’s topic, Ramzy totally qualifies for this column by his art – a clear message, a clean, professional style and effective use of colors. My favorite among his non-political cartoons is about Henson-folk and flu. Apparently, I missed out on the passing of Big Bird some time last year.

I further would like to introduce Mallorca-based German artist Nicki Wambolt. I don’t want to write about great and innovative use of colors again (I feel that I always do), but then again, Wambolt’s use of color is great and innovative in a way different from the other artists’ individual great and innovative ways. So, yeah. Be sure to check out the dog-eared audience, the dangers of play-doh, the plate of chilies and the glass-house guy.

Cartoons of Interest

This week’s favorite is plain and simple. “Naufrago” (“Shipwrecked”) by Karlo from Chile. Things like these probably happen all the time.

Paul Hellmich