Editorial Cartoons

I wanted to show something that matters to me in this project, and that, as usual, circled back to dogs. In this case, a controversial training tool. A lot of people don't understand the difference between an e-collar and a shock collar, and most people tend to lump the two together. I wanted to show the difference fairly simply so it wouldn't be confusing. Since there is so much confusion around what the difference actually is I made it as simple as I could by using expressions on the dogs and some motion around the actual collars. The shock collar is shown zapping the dog while the e-collar is shown as fairly neutral though you can see it's still doing something because of the lines coming out of it. I think if you know what you're looking at you can understand very quickly what is being shown, but even if you don't I think the message is quite clear and maybe raises some questions which is good because the goal is to raise those questions in order to educate and clear confusion surrounding these two tools.

I chose to use markers for this project. I had thought about doing it digitally, but I decided markers would be a solid enough colour while still keeping the cartoon style a little more easily. I like the way the markers made it look because the colours are quite bright and solid while still being a physical work that wasn't something that would take a long time to dry like acrylics or water colours. I don't tend to like using markers because I find that they make it harder to get accurate colours, but I liked the Blick markers and the variety that the school has of them for this project.

I spent a lot of time figuring out how I wanted the dogs to be shaped. My normal style is to make dogs especially be fairly accurate in their shape and overall colouring, but in this case that didn't really match the cartoon style. It is also more difficult to show what a dog may be feeling to someone who doesn't understand the body language while staying accurate and realistic. For example in the final version of this project I had the happier dog panting with ears up and the unhappy dog with wider eyes, flat ears, and a tight mouth. Had I been doing something more realistic the unhappy dog would probably be stress panting with more of a side eye and the happy dog would probably be more relaxed overall, not panting, and less of an open/upturned mouth, but most people would probably be confused by a dog that looked "happier" being the unhappy dog. I also spent some time trying to see what this project would look like digitally and decided against it just because I liked the way the physical version came out better.