Satirical - Anthropomorphism

From looking at Steve Bell's political cartoons of Ed Miliband as a panda [1] and Jeremy Corbyn as a fox [2] for inspiration to make my own version of a current politician. In Bell's version, Miliband is transformed completely into a panda after beginning with only dark circles around his eyes, creating an extreme change but in context would still be recognisable as Miliband. Corbyn on the other hand, remains as a human but with fox characteristics of ears and a tail. The fox comparison is because he is trying to 'out-fox the Tories' [3].

For my piece I decided to use the American politician Ted Cruz who recently (unsuccessfully) ran for the presidency. I chose him because of his very recognisable face and grimace he makes when smiling to which Tumblr user Himatzu once said: 'ted cruz smiles like he has shampoo in his eyes' [4] which is very true. Also, as Cruz has attained meme status on the internet [5] I decided to stay with the theme and merge him with an animal also associated with memes, the crying cat. This is a good pairing as Cruz does look like he is about to cry most of the time.

My image is a quick digital sketch in which I attempted to add Cruz' facial features onto the crying cat's face. This task was challenging as I wanted to retain the iconic image of the crying cat but still make it look like Cruz so I used his nose and eyes however I have lost something in my final image. I think a crying cat / Ted Cruz accurately sums up his Presidency Campaign and his feelings about it.




References
[1] Bell
[2] Bell
[3] Bell 2015
[4] Himatzu 2016
[5] Know Your Meme 2016

Bibliography

Single Track World. 2013. The utter genius of Steve Bell. [ONLINE] Available at: http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/the-utter-genius-of-steve-bell. [Accessed 10 December 2016].

Know Your Meme. 2016. Ted Cruz Zodiac Killer. [ONLINE] Available at: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ted-cruz-zodiac-killer. [Accessed 10 December 2016].

Know Your Meme. 2016. Cats. [ONLINE] Available at: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/subcultures/cats. [Accessed 10 December 2016].

The Guardian. 2015. Steve Bell. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/profile/stevebell. [Accessed 10 December 2016].

Tumblr, slimetony. 2016. -. [ONLINE] Available at: http://slimetony.com/post/140069831762/kagekubi-himatzu-himatzu-ted-cruz-smiles. [Accessed 10 December 2016].

Wordpress, Picture Politics. 2015. Jeremy Corbyn meets Beatrix Potter. [ONLINE] Available at: https://picturepolitics.wordpress.com/2015/10/04/jeremy-corbyn-meets-beatrix-potter/. [Accessed 10 December 2016].