Andres Alvez is an illustrator/caricaturist from Buenos Aires, Argentina. In 2007, he opened an art school with several colleagues, where he teaches illustration. Visit his website or blog to see his high-quality art, or take a look at the works he has already uploaded to our newsroom.
Today we publish "Tibet's Sacrifice: Exiled Lives" by Dan Carino, a multimedia piece of comics journalism examining Tibetan activists living in India and their willingness to die for their cause through self-immolation.
In New Delhi, India, Carino interviewed activist Shibayan Raha, who was arrested in 2007 for attempting to self-immolate, and visited the refugee settlement Majnu Ka Tilla to see why so many Tibetans seem willing to die for their homeland.
"The fact is that self-immolation now transcends Tibet and protesting monks," Carino says. "Everyday exiled citizens in the diaspora feel so anguished and frustrated with the Chinese process that they are willing to sacrifice their lives for the cause. Meanwhile, Tibetan settlements serve to truly support the welfare of Tibetans born in India and preserve their culture."
"Tibet's Sacrifice" blends numerous multimedia aspects, including navigation, an audio/visual slideshow, and outside links to supplemental material. You can use the multimedia navigation with the latest Chrome, Safari or Firefox browser. Otherwise, you'll be presented with the comic as a static page.
This Wednesday we'll publish "Tibet's Sacrifice: Exiled Lives" by Dan Carino, a multimedia piece of comics journalism examining Tibetan activists living in India and their willingness to die for their cause through self-immolation.
Self-immolation among Tibetan activists has been on the rise over the last few years with TIME Magazine naming it the #1 underreported story of 2011. In New Delhi, India, Carino interviewed activist Shibayan Raha, who was arrested in 2007 for attempting to self-immolate, and visited the refugee settlement Majnu Ka Tilla to see why so many Tibetans seem willing to die for their homeland.
"The fact is that self-immolation now transcends Tibet and protesting monks," Carino says. "Everyday exiled citizens in the diaspora feel so anguished and frustrated with the Chinese process that they are willing to sacrifice their lives for the cause. Meanwhile, Tibetan settlements serve to truly support the welfare of Tibetans born in India and preserve their culture."
"Tibet's Sacrifice" blends numerous multimedia aspects, including navigation, an audio/visual slideshow, and outside links to supplemental material to contextualize and support the story. "Comics journalism as an emerging field holds a lot of promise," Carino says. "Layering multimedia components seems like a natural progression of the discipline. Ultimately, this approach combines my interests in photojournalism, documentary filmmaking, political cartooning and multimedia production."
'Behind-the-Scenes' is an ongoing series that explores the different ways our cartoonists work. In this edition, Cuban artist Alfredo Martirena explains his work process:
Out of all the cartoons that have been submitted for the Cartoon Spring Competition, ten have been selected as finalists: eight by a jury, and two by public vote. The winner will be announced June 1 during the comic festival De Stripdagen in Haarlem, the Netherlands. Leading up to June 1, the ten selected cartoons will be published at Cartoon Movement.
This week we introduce new cartoonists from Ecuador, Argentina and Spain:
Rafael Carrasco (Lucas)
Rafael is from Cuenca in Ecuador; his work is published in local newspaper El Mercurio. He also works as background artist for a cartoon show on television, but he tells us: 'what I really like is editorial cartooning; I'm passionate about reaching peoples hearts and souls through this media'. He signs his work with the pseudonym 'Lucas'.
Horacio Petre
Horacio is a graphic designer, cartoonist, illustrator and painter from Buenos Aires, Argentina. He began working in comics during the 1990's, and produced a weekly comic between 2002 and 2005, titled 'Clip Clap' for Argentinian magazine Página/12. Since 2008, he publishes graphic humor on a weekly basis on his blog 'Lo invisible es esencial a los ojos' ('What is invisible is essential to the eye').
L'Avi
Lluis Recasens is a cartoonist from Spain who publishes his work signed as L'Avi. His cartoons appear in Catalan newspaper El Punt-Avui and the magazine Amaniaco. You can see more of his work on his blog.
Our comics journalism editor Matt Bors gives an acceptance speech at the 2012 Herblock Award ceremony at the Library of Congress: 'The truth is, people can go through their life without editorial cartoons — I just don’t want to let ‘em.'
Cartoon by Sherif Arafa
The Cartoonists Rights Network International (CRNI) has announced the winners of the 2012 Courage in Editorial Cartooning Award. The winners are Ali Ferzat, from Syria, and Aseem Trivedi, from India.
Every year, CRNI recognizes a cartoonist who has shown exemplary courage in the face of unrelenting threat, legal action or other pressure as punishment or disincentive for cartoons that are too powerful for some officials, sects, terrorists or demagogues. This year CRNI recognizes two such cartoonists.
Ali Ferzat was listed by Time magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World: "Ali Ferzat, 60, spent years drawing insightful cartoons, mostly staying between the prescribed lines of Syria's state-sanctioned media. But confronted with the regime's increasing brutality, he embraced the democracy movement and turned his lampoons on President Bashar Assad directly." For this, thugs were ordered to send Ali a message. They brutally beat him up, intentionally breaking both his hands. After the attack, Ali made a second courageous and potentially life-threatening decision. He decided to make public what the Assad Regime had done to him. The work of this brave and talented artist can be seen online at his website and on Facebook.
Aseem Trivedi, a young cartoonist from India, like Ali Ferzat, made two courageous decisions. First, in an atmosphere of increasing censorship and repression in the world's largest democracy, Aseem launched the Cartoons Against Corruption website. In an effort to mobilize his fellow citizens against India's pervasive political corruption, Aseem filled this site with his anti-corruption cartoons. After being charged with treason and insulting national symbols, Aseem made his second courageous act. Despite the charges and threats of additional charges, he has taken a leadership role in India's emerging free speech movement. Joining forces with other free speech activists, Aseem has launched an online freedom of expression campaign called Save Your Voice: A Movement Against Web Censorship.
The award ceremony will take place during the annual convention of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists (AAEC), on September 15.
CRNI is the only international organization exclusively devoted to defending the human rights of cartoonists imperiled because of their work. Later this month we will publish an interview with the people behind CRNI, Director Robert Russell and Depity Director Drew Rougier-Chapman.
Today we publish the fourth installment of Army Of God by David Axe and Tim Hamilton. This chapter examines the history of the infamous leader of the Lord's Resistance Army, Joseph Kony, who has long evaded capture. Over the last year, Kony has virtually become a household name and efforts to arrest him have been ramping up. Just yesterday, the Associated Press reported that Ugandan forces had captured one of his top commanders.
If you aren't caught up on Army Of God, check out previous chapters on our project page.
The winning cartoon will be announced at the Stripdagen festival on June 1st 2012; The winner of the competition will receive an iPad and membership of Cartoon Movement.
Due to the overwhelming number of high-quality contributions to the Cartoon Spring Competition, we have decided to add two more cartoons to the initial selection of 10. The audience will decide which two additional cartoons will run for the prize. In the slideshow above are 15 cartoons; these cartoons are also posted on the Facebook page of RNW (Arab division). The two cartoons which receive the largest number of ‘likes’ on the Facebook page before Wednesday 16 May at noon, will be added to the shortlist.