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Dog cartoons: Whose hermeneutic shall prevail?

-- Edward Tufte


We tried to get permission to use CAT FUD in this photo story. Gary Larson, however, does not want his cartoons on the internet. But usually the cartoon can be found by searching Google Images for CAT FUD.

CAT FUD is just about my favorite cartoon, a confection filled with intriguing assumptions about dog-cat language and communication: the dog can write words (but not spell all that well) that the cat can understand, the cat can read even misspelled dog words although may not be smart enough to stay out the dog's dryer trap. And then dogs write and cats read . . . English!

-- Edward Tufte


Response to Dog camouflage: Whose hermeneutic shall prevail?

Excellent character development for the cast-iron lion, thanks to our Kindly Contributor Tchad.

-- Edward Tufte


Response to Dog camouflage: Whose hermeneutic shall prevail?

As with many of the other (excellent) graphic items on this site, I'm very curious about the tools and workflow used during creation. I've seen other attempts at "cartoonizing" photos, but awkward execution almost always distracts from the content.

How were these images constructed?

-- Rob (email)


Response to Dog camouflage: Whose hermeneutic shall prevail?

Two standard tools on designer desktops for 10-15 years: Photoshop for color balance and removal of a photographer's shadow in an image; and Quark for layout , sizing, and typography. Cartoon fonts usually come with ballons for talk and thought; this cartoon font was purchased for $20 on the internet. I asked around about "workflow", but nobody here heard about it. The process consists of much tinkering and revision, which finally produced Zerlina's hermeneutical analysis as the tag line.

As indicated by the changes in the grass, and the snow on the roof in one image, the photographs were taken during several seasons on days when I happened to carry my camera on a field walk.

My only printed photo-cartoon is the PowerPoint Stalin in the PP essay and PP poster at https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/posters This board presents another photo-cartoon sequence (on levitating sculptures) at https://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0001s7&topic_id=1&topic=

-- Edward Tufte


Response to Dog camouflage: Whose hermeneutic shall prevail?

So it seems that Zerlina takes more of an interpretivist's stand, rather than the post- positivist's line of reasoning in this exchange. Is that your take on this? Or are they both just fooling us with their postmodernism?

-- Judy Kiel (email)


Response to Dog camouflage: Whose hermeneutic shall prevail?

Yes. No.

This is a good time to raise these fructifying possibilities since a new Zerlina story was sketched out last week (in order to avoid finishing my book) in which she contemplates Rudolf Arnheim's theory that outline drawings developed from the sun's outline glow around animals. Most of her other material comes from the 2 wonderful books by Frederick Crews, The Pooh Perplex, and Post-Modern Pooh, both parodies of unfortunate academic approaches to approaches to actually studying something. You may also wish to see the cartoons on the levitating sculpture, linked above in this thread.

-- Edward Tufte


Response to Dog camouflage: Whose hermeneutic shall prevail?

Thank you!

As one who is currently not only transgressing disciplinary boundaries but also engaging in wishful thinking as far as bridging the Great Divide between academia and "the real world" (where/whatever that may be), I appreciate not only your work but your sense of humor...

Might you consider yourself to be a visual rhetorician, or do you ascribe to the belief that there's no such thing, it all falls under "visual communication"?

-- Judy Kiel (email)


Response to Dog camouflage: Whose hermeneutic shall prevail?

Ineffective? How do we know?

A question I've pondered: How do dogs recognize each other? Do they know golden retrievers "look alike," or do they simply see Zerlina, or Abby, or Zeke, Butch, and Molly? I've hidden in plain sight from a Maltese who was scent-tracking me and didn't have the processing power to switch modes and use her eyes. The sculpture hides Zerlina's profile; does that work? Suppose upwind and downwind matter, too.

-- Karen Tiede (email)


Response to Dog camouflage: Whose hermeneutic shall prevail?

-- Edward Tufte


Our dog, Babar, and our neighbor's dog, Bailey, had occasional brawls. Both dogs once turned up at the vet for repairs separately but nearly simultaneously one Saturday morning after Swimming Pool War II.

Babar would sneak over to Bailey's toy chests and bring back large leather chew bones. This sketch memorialized the B and B adventures and was eventually a gift to our good next-door neighbors.

-- Edward Tufte


Are you trying to do for the Golden Retriever what William Wegman did for Weimaraners ?

-- Charles Spolyar (email)




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