Design Contests & Competitions
Vote for the best cartoon caption for November
Naomi Price
12/5/2011 4:42 PM EST
Next to last caption contest of 2011...where'd the year go?!
The November captions are in and we’ve picked the top five for your voting pleasure. Take a gander at the cream of the captions and then go to the ballot to vote for your favorite!
The winner will receive a color print of the cartoon from Daniel Guidera with the triumphant caption proudly in place, and the august honor of being included in our end-of-year color cartoon retrospective.
Keep the clever-train rolling right up to 2012…check out our last caption contest of 2011 and entertain us with your clever caption, or two, or three!
Our November finalists are: David Ashton, TFC-SD, BobsUrUncle, JOtt, and Doug S
Here are your final five November captions and another link to the ballot.
The November captions are in and we’ve picked the top five for your voting pleasure. Take a gander at the cream of the captions and then go to the ballot to vote for your favorite!
The winner will receive a color print of the cartoon from Daniel Guidera with the triumphant caption proudly in place, and the august honor of being included in our end-of-year color cartoon retrospective.
Keep the clever-train rolling right up to 2012…check out our last caption contest of 2011 and entertain us with your clever caption, or two, or three!
Our November finalists are: David Ashton, TFC-SD, BobsUrUncle, JOtt, and Doug S
Here are your final five November captions and another link to the ballot.
- "He's got LabView running as a Picture-in-Picture on the TV, so he can carry on working on his project without missing the big game!" (David Ashton)
- The company's "employees must now supply their own chair" policy was quickly canceled when it was found out all employees liked the idea. (TFC-SD)
- This is Jerry's version of protesting..."Occupy The Lab". (BobsUrUncle)
- Let me introduce you to Dave. He is the only engineer to understand the current analog designs. Every time he threatens to retire, the company keeps adding perks. I heard he is asking for a shuffle board next. (JOtt)
- When I told him that in order to make the deadline he'd have to live in the lab the next few weeks, this isn't what I had in mind. (Doug S)
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C VanDorne
12/7/2011 10:55 AM EST
This is the best we could do? Could somebody please turn up the sense-of-humor knob. If I must though, number four is best.
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sharps_eng
12/7/2011 5:41 PM EST
Sorry: No Vote (this time).
Problem is, I don't like the cartoonist's style. Its a personal thing, but I don't find the drawings sympathetic either to their subject or to the art.
They apparently contain a ton of detail, and maybe that's the point, 'That'll please the engineers', but stand back or zoom in on any part of it and it isn't well-drawn enough to give any pleasure. Maybe that's just the new 'grotesque' fashion, typically found in crude TV cartoons where classic elements like perspective and caricature are disregarded (as if never learned).
In the UK, I loved the detail in Giles' cartoons, or Ogri in Motorcycle mag, where even in the tiniest corner, the artists's economy of line emphasised the elegance of the sketching.
The only thing that makes the cartoon look good is the terrible caption suggestions!
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Naomi Price
12/8/2011 9:11 AM EST
@sharps_eng: I happen to be a big fan of Daniel Guidera's drawing style and the world he creates -- the combination of his loose style and the addition of so many small details in what is otherwise a totally illogical scene are what make his drawings so entertaining and fun to caption. That said, you are certainly entitled to your opinion. Checked out Giles and Paul Sample's Ogri -- Giles reminds me just a bit of Edward Gorey and seems pretty entertaining; Ogri not so much, but I can see the macho attraction.
Sorry that you two don't like our top five pics -- anyone else want to weigh in on this? Are there others that you think are more deserving of top five status?
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David Ashton
12/9/2011 2:40 AM EST
Hi Naomi... notwithstanding the fact that I (finally) made the top 5 this time, I often wonder about who picks them as well. I often think it would be a good idea if the readers picked the top 5 and the judges picked the best of the 5, but I realise the logistics of getting everyone ot vote on probably a hundred or so captions are pretty mind-boggling.
You would need something other than the usual comments mechanism to do this, I have seen news sites which have the ability to give a thumbs up or a thumbs down for every comment, so it is possible (Aussie Yahoo news does this, maybe US yahoo does too?) But then if you could do this, readers votes could pick the winner as well. Possibly more democratic and certainly would eliminate any complainta about the judges.
As for Daniel's style, I wasn't mad about it when he started, but it's grown on me and I quite like his stuff now. And they've always appealed to my quirky sense of humour. The number of responses shows it's popular....
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Naomi Price
12/9/2011 10:57 AM EST
Well David, it's generally a few EE Times editors who pick the top five, me included. But we've been thinking that it would be a good thing to hand the choice over to the readers, too. As you guessed, logistics have been our stumbling block. I don't think our CMS has the ability to do thumbs up/down, but it's a good idea and I'll ask.
In the mean time, we were batting around the idea of having a panel of readers vote on the top 5 for December. What do you think? And should readers be allowed on the panel if they have a caption in the running? You see how the waters get murky quickly...
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