This month the New Yorker's Cartoon Kit Contest is titled "This Tastes Funny". Entries are accepted until October 24th.
The backdrop and many irreverent characters and props are provided, this month, by professional cartoonist Tom Cheney; you just drag and drop the icons you want, place them, re-size them, and write a funny caption - then save.
Sometimes five winners are selected, and their entries presented in a slide show.
See "FilterBlog's 'Humour' Label" to see all the submissions I've made to the New Yorker Cartoon Kit Contest - including my wining entry here in FilterBlogs or at the New Yorker. :)
Today's Cartoon at The New Yorker.
mh
Hi Michael. It seems as if they've stopped choosing winners altogether. I wrote to them and haven't received any response. Also, I know someone who contacted one of the cartoonists directly. He was specifically told that there were no winners (at least for that cartoonist's particular contest), for what that's worth. I'll probably still post a few, but it's much harder for me without the incentive. GL!
ReplyDeleteHi again Tal,
ReplyDeleteGood to hear from you.
That's too bad about the contest part of it. Thanks for the update.
I wonder if it's something to do with money, perhaps they won't hire an extra editor to go through all the entries and whittle it down to something manageable for Bob Mankoff to consider? I finally took a little time this month to look through about 100 submissions. There are a whole bunch of bad submissions every month! Some are incomplete, no caption - waste basket stuff. Some seem to be contributers just playing with the technology - experimenting. With such a high number of unprofessional - or perhaps rude behaviour by contestants - not thinking that someone has to wade through all this sh*t, it';s no wonder nobody wants to do the wading - if that's what's happening.
Conde Nast Digital is The New Yorkers parent company as you probably know; they are a ginormous concern that had before the meltdown, been buying a broad spectrum of digital media companies.
I wonder if they're trying to hold on to what they've got through cost reductions; so they'll not have to sell parts of what I assume is a grand strategy.
I'll continue to make them, I love making cartoons and I don't care if I win in the slide show - although it did make my week when it happened. I'm finding that people like the cartoons I'm publishing here; according to Google Analytics the word "cartoon" gets hits - big time. And that make me almost as happy as having Bob Mankoff and team choose one of my entries. :)
Perhaps I'll start publishing some submissions I think are good?! Perhaps the Cartoon Kit should enable voting, not just comments. Similar to Facebook's "Like" button?
mh
Yes, they need someone to discard at least 90% of the submissions before Mankoff or any other editor sees them. I'd volunteer if I could still participate in the contest. Technically, they do have voting already (each contestant may vote once a day for a cartoon by checking a small box) but the rules say that voting will only be "taken into consideration" rather than serve as the main winning criteria (I think it's better that way anyway). In any event, I'll keep a lookout for anything you do decide to "publish"... -Best Regards
ReplyDeleteHi Michael, Well, it's official---the cartoon kit is on "hiatus' according to Bob Mankoff. He was answering a question I posted on a webcast he gave yesterday (you can see the transcript on the NYker site). Basically, the large degree of freedom offered by the kit resulted in too many crappy entries! They might revive it in some more limited form. Hope so. Regards
ReplyDeleteThanks for the heads up Tal, I missed that (I haven't been opening my emails from Bob Mankoff recently).
ReplyDeleteI've come up with a way users could help whittle down the pool of submissions to something manageable for The New Yorker editorial staff:
The New Yorker's Cartoon Kit Judging on "Hiatus":
http://filter--blog.blogspot.com/2010/10/new-yorkers-cartoon-kit-judging-on.html