Month: June 2016

10+ hours of Pixlr, 8 weeks of research, 2 weeks of finalization, 1 political cartoon.

Tada!

 

After much trial and error I came to my final project, one that I hope would inspire my fellow Broncos to put in their vote for the 2016 Presidential election. There are many small elements that came together in order to make the final product, a political cartoon that foresees the future of America if Trump wins.

Overall style: Using Pixlr, I put together an image of disaster to depict the future of the world if we allow Trump to take the presidency. Darkening the whole image brought down the tone of the picture and it’s purposely unsettling to look at. Hopefully this would directly impact my target audience, students at SCU, to take a stance. Because I’m personally a democrat, I stand by my decision on making this cartoon, but I also am not condoning those with opposing political views.

Placement of Trump: Putting a picture of Dictator Donald right in the middle, it’s impossible to miss him. Behind him are a series of explosions and silhouettes of guns and missiles, indicating the terror that would arise amongst many groups in America. In front of Trump are the words that are most commonly used to describe him, I picked them out of an article that covered his policies and all the terrible things he’s said in past speeches.

Tag Line: On the top of the cartoon I placed the words “SCU, is this the future? Your vote. Your voice.” With these words, I’m proposing the following scene and asking SCU students to be more politically active. This was the main point of my research- many other college voters have been more politically aware of what’s going on, yet here at SCU, students just don’t seem to care as much. (I do have to say though after submitting my paper, I saw multiple incidents of students on campus actively displaying their political views). The words “Your Voice” is faded out/ blurred to show that we currently aren’t using the power of our vote to make a stance.

Democratic Presence: Below Trump, I placed many images of well-known political leaders (including those on Mt. Rushmore) behind bars because everything they’ve worked for to make this country better will probably go to waste. It helps add to the picture overall and further gives explanation for why SCU students should vote. If they don’t, political values will be vastly changed while Trump is in the White House.

Wall: Just by paying attention to the news, it must be pretty clear as to why I added in this image. By far one of the ideas Trump pushes for the most is this wall that he wants to build. Even if his wall is only meant to keep out illegal immigrants, he’s also going to ruin ties with many other countries who probably will no longer want to be associated with America. Note the broken bridge and crack in the ground that are meant to signify this isolation from the rest of the world.

Final Thoughts: All the different aspects of this political hopefully paint a clear picture that SCU students must step it up and use their voting power to make a difference. Though I am pretty proud of my final project, I do wish I had more time to familiarize myself with Pixlr itself. From now on I’ll have a much better understanding of how to use edition tool and I’m grateful for that, but in the process it was a little challenging trying to hash out my idea on canvas with little prior experience. I expected to not have taken a very strong political stance but I realized that it’s completely ok to voice my opinion- in fact, that’s exactly what political cartoons are meant to do. I will have to be careful about how I use this image because there are people with opposing views. However, that won’t stop me from politely expressing my ideas.

Images used in the creation of this cartoon:

https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRYNDVjJ_qADFBdz0j5sHgIy7gb4LORK6VoN9UMvlSDRG4o8ph3Ow

http://www.clipartbest.com/cliparts/9i4/o7e/9i4o7ekAT.jpeg

http://images.all-free-download.com/images/graphicthumb/blue_world_map_clip_art_18867.jpg

http://imgc-cn.artprintimages.com/images/P-473-488-90/60/6064/CSCD100Z/posters/donald-reilly-mt-rushmore-lincoln-washington-and-roosevelt-look-askance-at-jefferson-new-yorker-cartoon.jpg

http://previews.123rf.com/images/ericmilos/ericmilos0912/ericmilos091200008/6015694-Jail-Bars-Isolated-in-White-Stock-Photo-prison.jpg

http://ep.yimg.com/ay/yhst-62370404758897/international-flags-flags-of-the-world-1.gif

http://www.rossrants.com/infrastructure.jpg

http://cliparts.co/cliparts/Aib/jLx/AibjLxj8T.png

http://previews.123rf.com/images/kovaleff/kovaleff1112/kovaleff111200141/11701535-Earth-ground-crack-on-white-Earthquake-Computer-generated-image–Stock-Photo.jpg

http://www.clipartlord.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/missile.png

http://preview.turbosquid.com/Preview/2016/04/27__17_29_26/trump_RigRender07_main1200px.jpga935472c-c560-4a46-8c52-fd4f16e4e100Original.jpg

Let me ask you a question.

How often have you created a multimodal composition? No really. Outside of class, for your projects, at work- do you ever recreate your topics digitally? In fact, what does “multimodal” even mean?

My Definition:

Using various forms of digital media to create a new topic.

Why is it important? 

Creating something that is multimodal allows you to truly connect with your audience in ways never seen before. In writing classes, it can be easy to fall victim to writing an essay for the sake of writing an essay. But the moment you put your audience into perspective, it becomes all the more real. And that’s exactly what a multimodal project does.

With finals just around the corner and summer right behind it, I’m quite honestly feeling pretty unmotivated. What can you expect? All my semester friends are out and high school graduations are happening while I’m staying inside studying my a** off. However, this is exactly when its MORE important to find a true purpose. Persistence is going to get us all through the final week. If we can see the purpose of our hard work, sweat, and tears, it makes it all the more bearable. Suddenly, writing a blog post (ha) is less difficult. Thinking about what we’ll be able to achieve in the future, these tasks are quite small, and honestly, life could be so much worse.

Soooooo, this is exactly what multimodal compositions bring to the world of literature. It provides perspective, and motivation to find meaning in our work. More generally, we’re all striving to become better people, and putting thought into every action will take us much, much further.

Image Creds:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pLXXVsnzPxU/VRB4KV3oeQI/AAAAAAAAABo/l7LpawvYGc0/s1600/135810412.jpg