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3 Years of toonpool.com

Paul — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 17:49:11 +0000

Three years ago, on November 15, 2007 this site went online. A lot of things have changed since – most important of all, there are a lot more great cartoons and users. Just imagine that we were desperately longing to reach that magical number of a hundred cartoons. Today there are over 89,000. But, actually, things started to get serious pretty early on. We were really surprised how fast people from other countries joined the site. One of the earliest “international” cartoons was this one by Shahid Atiqullah (Afghancartoon).

Memories

People tend to remember what they did on historical dates – here is what each of us did on that fateful day three years ago:

Bernd couldn’t bear the tension of staring at the computer screen all day. Instead, he spent the afternoon at a local bar called “Pillhuhn”. He had to walk there on crutches because he had broken his ankle. The doctors used seven screws to fix it. Theyshould have been removed in 2008 but they are still in there – there’s just too much to do.

Max took a day off after working hard for weeks. He had been coding HTML until the very last minute.

Becci / Battlestar only joined toonpool.com in April 2008. In November she was still writing her BA thesis. She also dreamt that she was Dieter Bohlen’s girlfriend and wet his bed.

Paul was staying in the United States. He had not heard of toonpool.com yet. On November 15 he held a presentation on Disney World, wrote an exam on Southern Literature and went to bed early. He joined toonpool.com in August 2009.

Lars / Ches wrote an email at 1:47 AM. It said: “toonpool.com – now awailable”. He also provided the very first cartoon. You probably need to know a German browser game called “Space Pioneer” to really get the joke.

Some History

We would like to offer you a glimpse into the evolution of toonpool.com:

Click here to see an early layout, dated May 2007 – only four weeks after the initial meeting.
Click here to see three stages in the development of our logo.
Click here to see a later design for the page (please note that the logo is already in place)
Click here to see the last stage in designing the layout (June 14, 2007)
Click here to see a very early (and very small) design for the toonpool guy (September 8, 2007)
Click here to see what the site looked like in October 2008 before the first relaunch – it’s pretty close to the 2007 design. Ah, the lamella.

Outlook

Over the years we introduced several new features to toonpool.com and did some stuff that was only remotely related to the site. Some of these things probably need some more thought (toonBattle, anyone?), others went great – take the toonpool.com exhibition in Izmir, for example. That’s probably how life works. We have quite a lot of stuff planned for 2011 – new exhibitions, new features and a major relaunch. Maybe we will even change that rating system. Maybe.

And finally…

We are glad to have such a great community – and obviously none of this would have been possible without you. We hope that you will stay with us in the years to come. And we would like to give an extra shout-out to everyone who sent in their version of the toonpool guy. They are awesome – just look at them:

A toonpool girl by Ronald Slabbers

A toonpool djinn by Menekse Cam

A toonpool cowboy by Otilia Bors

A new toonpool mobile by Perugino (we really need one of those)

A colorful toonpool thing by Afroditi

the toonpool guy about to save the day by Creative Jones

A middle-aged toonpool guy by Til Mette

A toonpool gnome by Meikel Neid

Temperaments of the toonpool guy by Nicoleta Ionescu

If there should ever be a toonpool feature film we want Danny DeVito to play the guy

Fighting toonpool guy by Mailto

the toonpool.com team

Call for Presents

Paul — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 15:19:50 +0000

As you might or might not know, toonpool.com’s third birthday is coming up on November 15. Since we don’t care too much about modesty here, we would like to ask you for presents. To be precise, we want to ask you to recreate our mascot AKA “the toonpool guy” in your own way. Scroll down to see some examples.. If you would like to participate, just add your images to the “toonpool.com guy” collection.

The original toonpool.com guy

the toonpool.com team

Happy Birthday, toonpool.com!

Paul — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 12:05:02 +0000

What began in a small office in Berlin’s Potsdamer Straße remains in that very same office. But it has done so for two years now, and that’s worth celebrating. Here’s a bit about the past, something about toonpool.com’s future, the staff’s favorite cartoons and some photos. Unfortunately there are none of the company helicopter.

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