Ask people for their opinions concerning those Conservative Party pre-election ads directed against Stephane Dion and the reaction you'll receive is usually one of absolute disgust. Like someone has been forced to watch the worst kind of porn. Pure filth. "How low can the Tories go", they'll protest, or it's "American style attack ads", as a means to condemn the party while connecting it to that horrible neighbour to Canada's south. "Is this where political decorum has fallen to in Canada", people will rhetorically ask before they warn that, "it's going to backfire on Harper."

Please. The Dion ads were amusing, and they were hardly as offensive as some repulsive things we're surrounded by in our everyday lives that ought to make people outraged. "Do you think it's easy to make priorities", the Liberal Leader famously whined. Apparently, you can download that quote off the Internet and program it as a cell phone ring.

To me it's hard to condemn these so-called "attack ads" on politicians when it's a cartoonist's job to go after them daily in cartoons. Isn't adversarial jousting supposed to be part of our Parliamentary system?

In my mind our political forums have two key ingredients:

a) the boring part -- a forum for thoughtful intellectual debate (behind the scenes in committee rooms and on the floor of the legislatures which would send most people to sleep);

and,

b) the exciting part -- a theatre which provides a verbal battleground for outwitting your adversary -- be they put downs during Question Period, or commercials aimed against your adversary on tv in 20 second soundbites or newsclips.

I suppose there are limits to the art of playful chiding when it starts to look like bullying because the other side can't/won't play the wits game. The Libs think they're taking the high road by not striking back, but instead they're just looking like wimps. This weeks' episode of This Hour Had 22 Minutes did a perfect parody ad of where the Liberals find themselves right now. The Liberal's simply need to play the game.

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So this cartoon above was featured on Radio Canada's cross country show Les Coulisses du Pouvoir this past weekend. I've never watched it before but the show is described as the following in english:

The Corridors of Power is hosted by Veteran correspondent Daniel Lessard who puts his long experience of the House of Commons to good use as he untangles the complex workings of our democracy.  In a fast-paced and lively program, he deals mostly with political power in Canada, but also on the international scene.

It looks like a good show. You can view the segment pertaining to the Internet where the lovely Sophie-Hélène Lebeuf discusses my cartoon near the end. Fastforward to 2:40 if you're too impatient for my bit part as: 

L'image de la semaine: 
 
Elle provient du site de Graeme MacKay, qui y va de sa lecture du scrutin de lundi: Stephen Harper a dompté le lion du séparatisme. Au tour de Stéphane Dion, Jack Layton et Gilles Duceppe. 

Visitors to my site will note my cartoons on international affairs are few and far between. My cartoons on the federal, local issues are far more abundant in numbers. Occasionally non domestic cartoons will creep in when domestic issues have become dull or just plain tired. I don't think it's unreasonable to declare that most people are fatigued with anything having to do with Quebec's election 5 days ago. The latest big national story is the RCMP coverup, which already has my eyes glazing over and having me think, well haven't we been down this road before? R.C.M.P. = Y.A.W.N. - nobody around here is talking about it.

So my mind was set on the recent debacle between Britain and Iran which is like a good old fashioned cold war like escalation of good against evil. I have a feeling the Iran thing will be hanging around as long as the RCMP thing -- months.

Speaking of international cartoons two of my old galleries have just been updated. The old September 11 gallery has now been amalgamated and showcases stuff drawn related to the War on Terror. The Iraq Gallery has also been updated.

Today's cartoon is the result of two tantalizing stories in yesterday's Hamilton Spectator. One involving a theatrical debate between two city councillors over a transit fare increase, and another regarding the low ticket sales for an upcoming local event featuring former U.S. President Bill Clinton. Here are the actual newspaper clippings along with the resultant thoughts (boxing posters) and sketches:

I boil the concept down to a face to face boxing advert that allows me to sketch in the featured speakers at the original Copps Coliseum event, Bob Rae, and Bill Clinton:

Time to go over the pencil lines with India Ink:

Inked line drawing gets scanned into my computer:

Drawing needs a background. Let's go with a archived screen shot that sorta resembles a crowd:

The white background is isolated and deleted letting the crowd scene show:

Clip off the outside stuff and add shadows, some constrast, and voila...it's done.

The future is animation...

For over a year I've been dabbling in the animation of my editorial cartoons. Actually, the real hard work in bringing life to my cartoons is done by longtime friend Scott Blackett. We're both rather new at this and we're learning about it and getting better as we go.

The seal hunt was our first animated movie. At 30 seconds, it's also our longest. It's a bit graphic but it puts out a clear message about the seal hunt with great effect. White backgrounds, it seems, work best in terms of clarity with our type of animaton. Another cartoon about Victoria and David Beckham meeting the press after arriving in Hollywood came out rather blurry after it was uploaded to YouTube.

My end of the job is pretty easy, although there are extra steps taken as l execute each cartoon if an animated clip is in the offing. Specifically, the background and features need to be drawn separately. If a lot of movement is required, extra limbs need to be created.

Once all the parts are drawn and separated they're shipped off by email to Scott who's based in Toronto. I don't know exactly what he does to bring about the magic of the movement but I always get a huge kick out of the end result. I'll let him explain the process later.

So we've begun uploading these videos onto YouTube with hopes of getting some hits and feedback. You can find our profile here.