Saturday, January 3, 2009

ZOMBAMA IS HUNGRY!





Betcha didn't know that Barack Obama had a twin zombie brother who was also running for president last year, didya? Alas, his platform was far too simple, and his rallying cry of "Brains..." lost to Barack's more popular and inspiring "Hope". What's a zombie to do?

Anyway, the lesser brother's campaign was just as historical as Barack's, so why not commemorate the first undead candidate in US history by buying a print from me? I've only minutes left until the secret service helicopters land in my front yard and haul me away for tastelessness involving a US President!

Oh, and by the way, if your interest in this piece is borne from some racist, murderous feelings you might have towards President Barack Obama, and you are mistaking this artist as harboring some wishful death threats against the president, please go away. I do not want your attention or your money. Good day.

I wanted to do an Obama piece (along with everybody else on the planet, evidently), but since my brain has been irreparably warped by cartoons and pop-culture nonsense I simply could not realize this intent with any level of serious meaning or maturity. I was looking at some of the parody images out there, several of which were based on the popular Shepard Fairey piece seen here...



And here's a collection of some of the parodies. Most are lame. My fave by far is the Bob Hope piece. The Soup Nazi image would be great as well, if it were at all competently executed. Oh well. (Revised to include the Luke Skywalker "New Hope" piece which my friend Adam Volker called my attention to. Thanks Adam)



Most (if not all) of the parodies I came across were a bit obvious, choosing to rely on simply basing their ideas on words that rhymed with "hope". I wanted to run in the opposite direction, so I chose to parody the parodies (as well as Fairey's reputation for using appropriated images in his art) by turning Obama into a zombie at the risk of coming across as an Obama-hater and attracting the attention of the FBI. Also, zombies are teetering on the edge of being overexposed in pop-culture (if they haven't already tumbled mindlessly over the edge of that pop-culture precipice). The slogan was easy, cuz what other slogan would a zombie choose for his campaign? Also "BRAINS" does not in any way rhyme with "HOPE", yet it somehow totally does. Think about it...

I did a search before moving forward with this image to make sure no one had beat me to the punch. A fairly thorough web search turned up many crappy "zombie Obama" images, but no one seemed to have thought to combine the concept of a zombie Obama with the "hope" poster, and no one had so far thought to coin the name "Zombama". Victory is mine! Just a note that there was no filtering an photo manipulation involved in this image. A drawing was made from scratch based on the original design and the color areas mapped out carefully with pencil and paper, imported and completed in Illustrator.



I can hear the Secret Service knocking at my door, so I must sign off for now.

15 comments:

Pop-Monkey said...

Don't worry, Pop-minions -- I haven't forgotten about DONKEY KONG. Just wanted to get this Zombama thing done before someone else beat me to it.

Back to the Kong...

Pop-Monkey said...

Well, that didn't take long.
The secret service haven't shown up yet, but my design has been placed on "pending" status awaiting review due to it being flagged for questionable content at CafePress. I sort of expected this, but I'm hoping they'll allow it. I saw several other zombie-based Obama designs on their site, and the only difference between mine and most of the others is that mine is better illustrated. Maybe it's TOO well-illustrated (meaning realistic). A more cartoony approach certainly would have got the "wacky parody" concept across better, but I had to stick as close as possible to the style and execution of the source material. Oh well.

Chrissie A said...

Omigod. I love this.

Disheartening to hear that the parody aspect is too difficult a concept for some to grasp, though. Good grief.

Adam Tamte Volker said...

dude!

My favorite Obama parody poster has got to be the one sporting an over eager Luke Skywalker with "hope" at the bottom (done in the Shepard Fairey style) I can't remember for the life of me where I saw it though. Cool stuff dude.

-Tamte

Pop-Monkey said...

Adam: you mean MY parody poster is not your favorite?! Kidding.

Thanks for calling my attention to the Skywalker piece. It didn't turn up in my initial google search, so I had to really dig for it. It's nice, but I still like the Bob Hope piece the best. It's the only one that the artist seems to have actually bothered to do an illustration for instead of just messing around with photoshop filters to get arrive at their result.

Thanks for chiming in, man!

Justice said...

Nice job! I did one of these parodies for my sons 6th grade class presidential run...

My Shepard Fairey Obama Poster Parody

Keep up the great work.

Pop-Monkey said...

It looks like it's a no-go on the t-shirt over at CafePress. The design, while in my opinion seems allowable under fair-use parody, apparently walks the line too closely for their comfort. That and a letter they got from Shepard Fairey's lawyer insisting they not allow any designs based on his, which seems ironic coming from a guy who's graphic design empire got its start with appropriated and manipulated images. Oh well.

Erik Jones said...

this is fantastic by the way

put that on a freakn shirt...soon
people will hate you

and no, that new piece i did doesnt mean anything unfortunatly

but i do like that people think it has some kind of naretive

god i wish i could spell

Store 101 said...

Well a few things. Other than dropping off the face of the planet with no real explanation. I'm more concerned about how your doing? It was extremely odd and I'm sure private on what exactly happened.

I noticed you removed me from you list of blog contacts. Weird. I've sent you several texts poking fun and asking what's up with no reply. I hope all is well man, don't worry about the Bad Guy stuff man. Its not as important as family and your health. Please write me and tell me something on the
inner workings of your brain.

Pop-Monkey said...

Store 101: Sorry about the deleted link. Must have happened by accident when I was clearing some dead links a while ago. It's back up now. Wonder who else I may have accidentally deleted.

As for my "state of well-being", I'll email you later 'bout it. My life had experienced a near-catastrophe and I had to reevaluate some things and step away from others. I've only gotten a couple texts from you several months ago -- my text and voicemail service is spotty at best. Don't know if it's my phone or the carrier. I've had several messages that will show up days later or not at all. Hope you're well -- I'll catch up soon. Busy now. Workin' on the "day job" stuff and trying to find someone with the nuts to print my Zombama shirt!

Store 101 said...

To print your artwork, well your in luck. I recently purchased a Epson 7900 for the biz and now offer that to my friends and peers. If you mean a shirt then its even easier. Yes please do so and send me an email and remember Epson 7900 it barely had its ink purged. Any who talk too you soon.

Robin said...

Ah, Jared. I've missed your sense of humor. Funny though, the Zombama still reads like a NOmbama that way. Very well done though, very well done indeed. Like the right eye (his right).
And the HOPE poster is hilarious.

Glue said...

I agree with Erik, put this in a shirt!! I would sport it happily!

...and that Luke/Hope poster one is pretty dope

Pop-Monkey said...

Everybody, the green Zombama variant design is up on my CafePress shop available as a plethora of t-shirts and stuff. Follow the link in the sidebar and order one post-haste!

Unknown said...

duude is there any way i can buy the zombama shirt iv been looking all over but i cant find it and im kinda late to buy it in teefury plese i will pay billins of dollars for it well maybe not billions but more than 9 buks but my email is hammermyballs@gmail.com i hope i get to hear back from u