During the last week I've dedicated more time to vector graphics experiments, that being a part of my migration from Corel Draw to Inkscape. So far I made some illustrations for a new poem that I wrote (it will be published soon), and the faces of two cartoon characters: Samurai Jack, and Gadget Hackwrench. The drawings are shared via OpenClipart, but they are not made public yet, as it seems there are some potential issues with publishing images of copyrighted cartoon characters. Until that is straightened out, the images can be found on this site (you need a browser that supports the SVG format).

Samurai Jack  

has a great personality; truly a brave warrior, the friendliest person ever! Someone who understands the importance of respect; someone who dedicates his life to his primary goal - do right. Wow! He is calm, he can master his anger, he can control his fears, he can accept it when he is defeated...

Gadget Hackwrench -

skilled, creative, not afraid to experiment, and pretty :-) The Russian version of Chip and Dale calls her "Gayka" (nut, as in "nuts and bolts"); I must say that the name gets the message across very well. I can't say I'd like it more if they called her "Gadget" or "Hack". But then, who knows, maybe in that case kids would be more curious to find out what "gadget" means, and that would encourage them to study English. Perhaps if they called her "Hack", then nowadays people would see hackers as good guys, rather than bad guys. Cartoon characters definitely influence us. In fact, I can state that a child's personality evolves by using cartoon characters as a reference. I like

• Dexter - intelligent, promotes technology
• Gadget Hackwrench - inventive, can hack things and fix broken items on-the-fly
• Samurai Jack - see above
• Powerpuff Girls - teamwork
• Courage - dedicated, can act when under pressure, not afraid to explore the unknown
• Hmm... yes, I like Aku too :-) He is a good story-teller. He is a bad guy, but he's a damn good at getting a message across. If there is something negative in me, I'd like it to be Aku-like :-)

Todo:

• Think about the role of cartoons in the education of a child; devise a schema that will put them on the right path;
• Ask my friends about their favorite cartoon characters;
• Use the harvested information to come up with a method that can be used to find out who a stranger is, by asking them about their prefered cartoon heroes.

Follow up:

You too can get a nice and shiny vector version of your favorite cartoon character, which you can later use on avatars, or print it and use as a poster. You have to tell me which character you want, and I'll see what I can do (not yet very skilled, some images can be too complex for me).