New PoliticalBastards.com Site - funny

New PoliticalBastards.com Site Has an Animated Name and Animated Cartoons
By Dave Astor - E & P
Published: May 29, 2008

Two former newspaper staffers have launched a colorfully named Web site featuring a new animated editorial cartoon every week along with other content.

PoliticalBastards.com (which can also be accessed at the more mildly titled PoliticalBleep.com) is the creation of Jocelyne Leger and Mike Shelton, who both worked at The Orange County (Calif.) Register before taking buyouts in November 2006. They've been thinking about and developing the new site ever since, with no outside financial backing.

Shelton, who joined the Register in 1983, did editorial cartoons for the paper that were syndicated by King Features. Leger, who joined the Register in 1984, was illustrator and art director for the paper's "Commentary" section. Together, they also created political animations that appeared on OCRegister.com.

"Animation is where the future of editorial cartooning is heading," Shelton told E&P.

"It's an exciting time as political cartoonists animate, take it to the Web, and hope the art form doesn't die out," Leger added during a separate phone interview.

As followers of the newspaper business know, the number of staff cartoonists at print dailies has dropped sharply in recent years.

Animation IS labor-intensive; Leger said each new weekly offering can take as much as 60-80 hours to create. But she hastened to add that "we have a passion for it. It's fun."

Shelton agreed, noting: "It's been a lot of fun and it's been a lot of work."

The collaborators each come up with ideas -- with Shelton doing much of the drawing and caricatures while Leger focuses on the animation, the music (some of which she composes herself), and more.

Shelton moved to Texas after leaving the Register, while Leger remained in California. But Leger said the distance isn't a problem when creating animations except for "expensive phone bills. We do a lot of brainstorming that way."

People seeing the new site will immediately notice that the Shelton/Leger animations are at another level compared to their OCRegister.com efforts. Leger credited the improvements to better software and the duo's increased animation experience.

That experience actually dates back to the early 1990s, when Leger and Shelton began experimenting with animation long before their efforts appeared on OCRegister.com.

The duo hopes the new site -- designed by Leger -- will eventually become self-supporting via ad revenue after traffic for PoliticalBastards.com grows. "We think there's an audience for it," she said.

Currently, the site includes faux ads. Visitors will, after a minute or so, see caricatures of Joseph Biden and Fred Thompson emerge out of the lower left corner of the home page and run across the screen into the faux beer ad in the upper right corner.

"Jocelyne's a wiz at special effects," said Shelton.

Leger, who noted that caricatured cartoon figures could eventually draw attention to REAL ads, said the site will also offer other effects as it takes advantage of the latest technology.

Besides a new animation each week, the site includes updated versions of animations Shelton and Leger created in the past, print cartoons, "RantRadio/Blogs," "Rant eCards," an eStore, and more.

Shelton, in discussing the site's future, concluded: "If we can hang in there, this will pay off."

The site can be seen here:
http://www.politicalbastards.com/