Internet Privacy

For this week's New Republic -- could punishing sexual surveillance endanger free speech? A great article, both to read and to illustrate.

Animation: Palin on the loose!

Mother Jones has just posted my animation of the Palin cover I did for them for the current issue...yes, those are my screams in the background!

CLICK this LINK TO TERRIFYING PALIN! -- if you dare! 

Turn up the volume for the full, horrifying effect!


Written, animated and acted by me.

Animation: Obama Didn't Robo-Sign

New on Mother Jones, a special foreclosure sing-along animation:

Click here to see and sing-along with the animation on Mother Jones
Written, animated and acted by me.

My Gel Video

Finally I have a blog where I can post videos and such. Here I am giving a presentation at the Gel Conference, at the TimesCenter. Every year Gel attracts about 400 managers, editors, user interface experts, finance managers...you name it... from companies like BBC, CNN, Microsoft, Google, YouTube, Time Warner, and The NY Times.

I chose to talk about how fear, anger and disappointment have served to fuel my best and most rewarding work.

Zina Saunders at Gel 2009 from Gel Conference on Vimeo.

Cover for Mother Jones

Hot off the press, here’s the new cover of Mother Jones. Tim Luddy said he wanted a spin on the old 50 Foot Woman horror movie poster, with Palin wreaking havoc in a suburb. The cover story is about how the current crop of right wingers (with Palin as their figurehead) is actually promoting policies that will hurt the middle class.

He warned me not to go too crazy with her expression, something I am wont to do; he wanted the sort of zoned-out look of the girl in the original poster. It was hard, I have to admit, to keep that meat-eating grin off her face and the maniacal gleam out of her eye. But somehow I did it.

I’ve made an animation of it, too, so check it out on my site (here's a link). Click the first thumbnail image on the upper left to open the viewer. And turn up the volume to hear my screams!

Latest Animation: Citizens United, The Frankenstein

Here’s my latest animation, appearing on the front page of Mother Jones this week. The machinations of the right wingers on the Supreme Court in their Citizens United decision earlier this year has come to life in this election season, with more money being spent by corporations and shadowy political groups than ever before.

Click here to see and hear it on Mother Jones

I’ve only been using After Effects for a few weeks, but I’m learning. A couple of weeks ago I started adding sound to them, and this week I figured out how (as best I can) to make the sound match up with the action: there’s a little wave form thing associated with the sound file that you can drag around to match up with what’s in the preview panel.

All the voices are mine, even the delightfully mellifluous tones of Frankenstein singing (though I must admit to adding some echo and tone stuff to that part in GarageBand).

Another thing I discovered about After Effects is about color. The FLV files I'd been outputting had been looking pretty dull, color-wise, but then Daniel Jay told me about how you can make an adjustment layer at the top of your layers that effect all layers underneath it. So I applied  an Adjustment layer and applied the Hue Saturation Effect to it, and bingo! Nice saturated colors.

Written, animated and acted by me. Sound effects from www.freesound.org

Slide Lecture with Me and Eric Drooker

A couple of weeks ago, Eric Drooker, whose new graphic novel based on Allen Ginsberg’s poem Howl is just out, asked if I’d like to do a slide lecture with him at Bluestockings on the Lower East Side on Saturday, Oct. 23rd starting at 7 pm. Well, what do you think I said? Right! I said “Yes!"


When we were talking last week about making a flyer, he mentioned my Palin Bags a Big One as one of my pictures that he really likes; it's one of my favorites, too, so that’s the one I'll use.


We’re calling the lecture “Native New York Visions” and I’ll be talking about my political work and personal projects like Overlooked New York. Rumor has it Eric’s bringing his banjo.






Bluestockings, Oct. 23rd at 7 pm
172 Allen St.
New York, NY 10002
212.777.6028

Hello World

Here's my first post on my new blog, a picture I did last week for The New Republic, for a piece about how ineffective Obama's "Green Initiative" is. Compared to the Chinese, for example, who are investing in high-skilled, ambitious green projects, Obama has settled on hiring inner-city youth to take up cauliking guns rather than actual guns and start replacing windows in old houses. Joe Heroun said he wanted a spin on Charlie's Angels, with Obama holding home improvement tools: a cordless drill, a nail gun and of course a caulking gun.


I got the email at about 5 pm, and they needed the sketches that evening, final art by 3 pm the next day. Just the kind of job I love. There's something about working under pressure that I really love: it must appeal to a part of me that wants to come to the rescue! So here it is, delivered the next day by 11:30.