I started mulling this assignment over on the way home last night when I heard President Obama on the radio citing “Jesus’s teaching that ‘for unto whom much is given, much shall be required.’” A troll-quote immediately sprung to mind, but mome did such a good job with the Superman/Spiderman/Iron Man mashup that I struggled for a good image. I considered using Obi-Wan Kenobi and citing Luke Skywalker (since the original verse in is in the Book of Luke), but using two characters from the same source didn’t sing to me.

In mulling things over, a line from Dune came to me, and reminded me of something Arya Stark says throughout the Song of Ice & Fire. I found an image of Arya that I liked, but I couldn’t think of a third character for attribution. I thought about Dune, and from thence to the House of Atreus–and there I got it–Electra. Citing a character from Greek mythology didn’t quite work, but using a comic-book image of Elektra with the quotation attributed to Arya Stark (which has a nice comic-book/superhero ring to it) suddenly clicked. I found an image I liked,  and here we are.

Sources:

• Cover of Elektra vol. 2 #3 by Greg Horn
• “Fear is the mind killer”: Dune, by Frank Herbert
• Arya Stark: Song of Ice & Fire, by George R.R. Martin

(Full credit for this picture goes to the original source)

Assignment: This assignment, which I think many others are doing, so probably most people know what it is, but I’ll stick to the assignment guidelines explaining what it is here; is about making a picture that inaccurately attributes a quote and the subject of the picture, therefore trolling three individuals. The initial guidelines under the ds106 assignment mention it should be someone people idolize (Herman Cain is certainly idolized by many people).

Process: I made this using GIMP which I have used a good number of times in the past. The only slightly difficult thing that was done with the text is the outline effect. It’s a simple process to apply an outline effect to any text:

Step 1: Use the text tool as normal to put some some text in your picture somewhere.

Step 2: With the text layer selected, click the “Select” menu at the top, then “Select by color”, and click any portion of your text.

Step 3: Now that you have the text selected, you can grow the selection using the “Select” menu at the top again, and then “Grow”. You can experiment which how much you grow your selection; I grew mine by 2 pixels I think.

Step 4: You can now go to the “Edit” menu on the top, then “Stroke Selection”, which allows you to basically draw a line along the selection border using whatever the foreground color is. This effect can also be completed with possibly better results using the “Path from Text” option in the text tool dialogue, but it depends on how picky you are.

Story: I thought that Herman Cain and his initially unattributed quote from “Pokémon: The Movie 2000″ were incidentally a good match for this assignment because I wouldn’t have to think of a clever quote since Cain and his staff already came up with a great one (and of course, there’s also the Pokemon relation to Japan). Also sticking to the assignment I put in Stephen Colbert’s name to keep to the assignment guidelines. Keep in mind Colbert and Cain had a rare strange appearance together just last week which can be seen here.

On a side note, I do watch “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report”, and I also follow U.S. politics for the most part, but I don’t consider myself affiliated with any party, and I certainly don’t endorse Herman Cain’s politics.