`cartoons/reference/editorial-ink-reference.js`

56 lines
// cartoons/reference/editorial-ink-reference.js
// The "Style Reference" the P24 Political Cartoon Desk draws on: the classic
// high-contrast, single-panel brush-and-ink editorial-cartoon tradition of
// mid/late-20th-century American newspaper op-ed pages. Loaded as a plain
// <script src> (matching manifest.js / stories-data.js) so it works offline
// under file:// with no fetch.
//
// This reference describes a STYLE, not any specific real artist's work —
// no biography, no named individual, no reproduced or catalogued works. The
// P24 strips the Desk generates from it are ORIGINAL drawings of invented
// officials on invented stories.

window.P24_EDITORIAL_INK_REFERENCE = {
  tradition: {
    name: "The Classic Editorial-Ink Tradition",
    era: "1960s–1980s American newspaper op-ed pages",
    who: "The savage, high-contrast, single-panel brush-and-ink editorial cartoon that dominated American newspaper op-ed pages for decades — one idea per panel, aimed squarely at the powerful.",
    creed: "Afflict the comfortable. Aim the pen at the powerful — presidents, mayors, generals, bishops — as charlatans and fools, never at the powerless."
  },

  // The visual signature the Desk should reproduce for a strip drawn "in the
  // classic editorial-ink manner".
  style: {
    line: "Savage, high-contrast brush work. Long jagged strokes, heavy solid blacks, deep shadow. Nothing pretty — the drawing should feel like an accusation.",
    composition: "One idea, one panel. Strip everything non-essential; a near-empty background throws all weight onto the subject and the single savage metaphor.",
    caricature: "Exaggerate the one feature that damns the subject. The likeness is a verdict, not a portrait.",
    caption: "Terse, often a first-person quote from the subject that convicts them out of their own mouth, or a dry news-item label. Never explain the joke.",
    palette: "Historically black ink on newsprint. In P24, render as heavy near-black line + solid fills on the current category mood's --bg, with the --accent used sparingly for the one element that must be read first.",
    device: "Build the whole cartoon on ONE borrowed cultural frame — a Bible scene, a famous painting, a nursery rhyme, a classic political cartoon — and drop the target into it."
  },

  // The recurring metaphor-devices in the Desk's toolbox — generic devices
  // drawn from the wider tradition of American editorial cartooning, not
  // attributed to any single artist's specific work.
  devices: [
    { name: "Self-crucifixion", gist: "The subject nails HIMSELF to a cross — the powerful as the authors of their own destruction." },
    { name: "Web of names", gist: "A spider web woven from the conspirators' own names; the subject caught at its center." },
    { name: "Fine-art parody", gist: "Restage a famous painting with the target in it — American Gothic, etc." },
    { name: "Ghost chorus", gist: "The unquiet dead (soldiers, victims) marching in to indict the living decision-maker." },
    { name: "The doomed ride", gist: "Leaders astride the very weapon/policy that is plunging — riding the falling bomb." },
    { name: "Barricade / won't leave", gist: "The subject clinging to power: 'come in and get me,' walled into the office." },
    { name: "Historical rhyme", gist: "Quote an older cartoon or scandal to convict the present one." },
    { name: "Deadpan absurd literalism", gist: "Take an institution's own logic one literal step too far." }
  ],

  // How the Desk should brief itself before drawing a strip in this manner.
  brief: [
    "Name the powerful party in the P24 story (the council, the marshal, the toll authority) — that, never the little guy, is the target.",
    "Pick ONE device from devices[] that fits the story's absurd escalation.",
    "Find the single savage image that fuses target + device. One panel, one idea.",
    "Write a caption that convicts them in their own words or a flat news-item label.",
    "Draw it heavy and ugly on the category mood: near-black line, solid blacks, one --accent element, empty background.",
    "Keep it ORIGINAL and clearly fictional — P24 satire of invented officials in the classic editorial-ink manner, not a copy of any real cartoon."
  ]
};