The Public Editor: Cartoonist Rex Babin: An animated line of work

The Bee's Rex Babin has one of the best jobs in the business. He draws editorial cartoons for a living.

Love him or hate him, he uses his pen, irony and humor to poke fun at or skewer his victims, be they politicians or society.

It's a craft dating back more than 250 years in the United States. The power of its message to shape debate, whatever its legacy, has nonetheless remained static, the imagery captive to the printed page.

Not any more.

Digital technology and the Internet have provided Babin and his counterparts nationally with the tools to bring their cartoons alive with color, voices and sound effects via animation.

Take, for example, last September's "The Brain": As a giant head of President Bush fills the computer screen, tiny, dark eyes blinking rapidly, a side exit door suddenly opens. Out pops Karl Rove, running down the stairs, making a quick escape.

Or last month's "Still Going," depicting Hillary Clinton as the pink-clad and sunglasses wearing Energizer Bunny, shuffling along incessantly, beating a Hillary-for-President drum.

And then there's one of my favorites from February called "Pop!" in which an image of Rush Limbaugh, a bottle of OxyContin in his hand, talks into a radio microphone. "John McCain better not win the nomination," the voice implores, "or I'll, I'll …" Then his head explodes.

There are several others, offering commentary on Al Gore and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the issue of global warming; the spate of home foreclosures; Hillary Clinton as a punching bag; Fred Thompson's ill-fated presidential bid; sick cows at a Southern California slaughterhouse, etc.

There are 10 in all, since Babin started them a year ago.

Despite all the work creating them, there's a downside: Few readers have seen them.

The paper has done a poor job of telling readers the animated cartoons even exist, let alone guiding them to the animations.

They are, simply, overlooked by almost everyone, inside and outside The Bee.

The moving cartoons were made more prominent a couple of months ago on Babin's page at sacbee.com (www.sacbee.com/babin) and that's an improvement. But they still seem more of an afterthought.

The Bee should consistently let readers know the animations are there and then make it easy to find them. How about some teasers on the front page or on sacbee.com's home page?

Senior editors at the paper frequently talk about striving to provide Bee readers with information and content available nowhere else. Babin's animated cartoons – like the editorial cartoons he draws for the paper – certainly fit into that strategy.

More specifically, there are few people more personally linked to the paper in readers' minds or who engender more strong and visceral opinions than its political cartoonist.

For Babin, the expansion into animation has been an ongoing learning experience and experiment, one repeated around the country by other political cartoonists.

He does his animation around his day job, which is creating cartoons five times a week for The Bee's editorial page. His animations are based on cartoons that appear in the paper, one re-enforcing the other.

Babin had no idea how to create an animated cartoon when he first ventured into this new digital territory in January 2007.

Using a Flash animation program, he essentially taught himself how to use it, with help from college students he befriended who were adept at using the software.

"It was a long process initially," he said. "Getting my mind wrapped around the concept was the hardest part."

As he often does now with the animations, he worked at home ("I don't look at this as a 9-to-5 job") learning how to give his static images life.

The first piece he created on a trial basis took months. The first few posted online took a couple of weeks to complete.

Now, he creates his animations in about a day. He's learned several tricks. He's accumulated a stable of images and devices he can reuse. He uses his own voice put through a filter and either creates his own sound effects or downloads free ones from the Web. He's even had a colleague strum a cord pattern on a guitar.

Sometimes, he said laughing, "this is juvenile as all get-out."

Babin noticed while on his regular visits to high schools that students would get excited when he showed them his animated cartoons.

"Young people have iPhones and all these gadgets … and an animated cartoon is a perfect image for those devices. I'm using a different tool to present the same message (as in print). If people, especially young people, are getting this message via their (digital devices), then why not do it that way?

"Why print only static images, when now you can interact with (people), talk to them."

Most of his animated cartoons are short, between 20 to 30 seconds, and are frenetic, which is part of Babin's style.

We're not talking Disney studios or Pixar here, but that's just part of the charm and the message.

Babin sees a future with many opportunities, where animated editorial cartoons may have a different ending than those printed in the paper and where people replay images on their digital devices as often as they want.

Meanwhile, his animation skills continue to evolve and he continues improving and refining his efficiency. "I'm still no authority on this," he said.

The animation work has had a pay-off.

"It's worth it for me; it's fun and rewarding. There's a future for it," Babin said. "It's like cross-training for your brain and re-enforces what I do with my cartoons in print. It's a healthy thing."

Maybe that's what The Bee needs, too, a little cross-training to let readers know it has its own special animated cartoons and where to find them.

About the writer:

• The Public Editor deals with complaints and concerns about The Sacramento Bee's content. His opinions are his own. You can contact the Public Editor by mail at P.O. Box 15779, Sacramento, CA 95852; or by calling him directly at (916) 321-1250.