BLOG 4-160

Blog 4

When I was searching the web for the flash animation in which to write this blog on, I stumbled upon a site that uses animation to create political cartoons. One guy named Mark Fiore, regularly creates and posts animations on his site pertaining to what ever the hot political story of the day maybe. After watching a few I saw this as a great utilization of flash. Print political cartoons often have to hide some deeper meaning to be interesting enough to make a lasting point. This is not the case with flash animations, he is able to put more out there and touch on more issues in a unique way. In addition this delivery system is more conceive to a younger crowd who may not read the paper but still needs to know about politics. It also could inspire people that watch the cartoons to read more into the issues they touch on, this is an important service in a country where people are becoming increasing politically illiterate. One animation that i watched was about President Obama’s serge in Afghanistan, in the animation he is giving a speech that is contradictory and as he is goes on people keep “crashing” his speech. First are the famed party crashers which really have nothing to do with the issue but then others come, that are inconvenient visitors for the President, that suggest why farther deployment to Afghanistan might be a bad idea, and work to contradict the premise of the speech. The cartoon proves a valid point and is funny at the same time. There are also forums that correspond to these cartoons so there is a level of interactivity involved, as far as interactivity in the animations there is only a replay button. The cartoon is very entraining and its minimalist animation even adds to it’s appeal, if you have a couple of minutes i highly suggest taking a look at the cartoon i discussed as well as others on the site

http://www.markfiore.com/