Apr 27, 2009

Cartoon Battle

A poll over at the Comics Riff blog caught my eye. It features a number of caricatures of foreign leaders and asks "which cartoonist drew your favorite?" Amazingly, the current winner is a cartoon by John Sherffius featuring Ayatollah Khomeini. He's been dead for twenty years, but I suppose his ghost ordered the Iranian government to imprison that poor journalist in his beard.

I'd hate to be jailed in a beard.




Good caricature, huh? Sherffius can draw with the best of them but when he uses Photoshop he really nails the likeness for some reason.

I wanted to see how fast I could replicate this master so I hit up Google image search and grabbed the first result. Then I opened it in Photoshop and applied the Threshold adjustment. Putting the levels at 128 seemed right. Next, I made his eyes appear like they were looking forward and extended his villainous black cloak a bit.

I added Elvis in the weird jail beard because those crazy Iranians hate that hip-shaking troublemaker and all the swooning the ladies do over him.

5 exhausting minutes later I was all done.



Which one of these cartoons is a better caricature? Whose use of Threshold captured the face better? Please vote in my comments section.

13 Comments:

Blogger J said...

God, you're brutal. You should go into political cartooning. ;-)

6:44 PM  
Blogger Mike Cullen said...

Plus, the Elvis still is from Jailhouse Rock. So many layers!

6:58 PM  
Blogger Kevin Moore said...

For Americans, when it comes to Iran it is always 1979.

This could be the start of a meme.

8:59 PM  
Blogger Aaron Manton said...

Should have used Fat Elvis.

10:27 PM  
Blogger Hans said...

just a touch darker on the contrast and I think it would be indistinguishable.

11:36 PM  
Blogger Judas Peckerwood said...

Somebody's just begging for a fatwa...

12:57 AM  
Blogger Matt S said...

Have you ever written to the papers discussing the crappiness of their cartoonists? Maybe you could get a bunch of us to do it, PZ Myers style?

2:11 AM  
Blogger Teleprompter said...

I like yours better.

Elvis lives (in the comics).

2:23 AM  
Blogger Joe Corrao 4 Eyed Animation said...

both are so powerful

7:48 AM  
Blogger Joe Corrao 4 Eyed Animation said...

ha...I just went to that poll you speak of and Sherffius is winning...i hope the yae votes were meant to be ironic....if not....

7:55 AM  
Blogger Matt Bors said...

Matt S--I'd encourage anyone to write their daily or altweekly papers to tell them which cartoonists they'd like to see in print.

2:25 PM  
Blogger Patrick O'Connor said...

You could have put the Hamburglar behind the bars. It might have taken a few extra seconds to download an image but it would have been worth it. Now that would have been exhausting.

6:50 PM  
Blogger Patrick O'Connor said...

You could have put the Hamburglar behind the bars. It might have taken a few extra seconds to download an image but it would have been worth it. Now that would have been exhausting.

6:50 PM  

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