Dope Meme

Layer #1

MinSun Park

I chose the famous Obama Hope poster designed by artist Shepard Fairey, which was widely described as iconic and came to represent his 2008 presidential campaign. This work is so well known that it’s been recreated and modified in more than thousands of versions; if you look up the poster online, the number of variations is as much as that of Mona Lisa. For this reason, I thought this work would be the perfect example of spreadable media that we could have some fun modifying!

Layer #2

Di Wang

I intend to add a more comical flavor to the original Obama Hope poster by integrating the famous Yao Ming face. The Yao Ming face is integrated with the help of LunaPic. The picture is based on a stillshot photograph of Yao Ming captured from a post-game press conference in May 2009. Yao Ming’s smile soon went viral on the Internet. Because the smile was both hearty and sarcastic, many memes were generated revolving the ideas of carelessness and sneering. I think in combining Yao Ming’s smile, the poster now has an ironic sense which makes it more of a meme: is there hope, or is there not?

Layer #3

Jonathan Ortiz

Yao Ming has the lovely distinction of having a very expressive face. With my volley, I changed his intention from the usual laughing, jovial face to one of dismissal. You guys think this is a game? Think that Yao Ming circa 2009 is gonna bounce for a point? “Nope.” Send that serve right back, with two palms out (taken from google images and converted by myself in photoshop, using a gradient and lassoing), in the original styling of the photo, as both a meta commentary on the volley at hand (and thus, meme warfare) and also as a direct volley response.

Layer #4

MinSun Park

The previous layer was a variation of the Yao Ming’s poster, which is again a modified version of Obama’s poster. It had a caption “NOPE” with hands that say it as well. As soon as I saw it, I wanted to do something with the hands to convey another message. So I came up with an idea of making him a rapper using one of the caps rappers wear and the “peace” sign, which is known to be a symbol of a rapper in media. I also changed the caption to “YOLO,” which is short for “You Only Live Once,” and this is another symbol of rappers known to media. I did not modify textures or colors however, to maintain the original sense of the poster.

Layer #5

Di Wang

I was truly amazed by my teammates’ creativity and braveness in creating such a fantastic meme poster! I added a few features of my taste. First, the idea of only showing the three fingers of the hand is great, but the shading does not quite fit into the rest of the picture. I changed the color and shape of that shading. It turns out that the coloring is improved, but is not perfect given the time constraint.

In order to emphasize the funky and careless aspect of the meme, I added an opaque music symbol and some hair to the Yao Ming face. 

Layer #6

Jonathan Ortiz

Once? Yao Ming doesn’t only live once, no, not with that hair. In fact, it’s clear that he’s morphed into some modern day Future homage, but YOLO? On this volley, my opponents have certainly stepped their game up, but for the final touch I realized we’re missing something: a foreigner, claiming only one life, wearing something strange on his crown and taunting some hippie length hair? Sounds like our man ming here has some similarities to history’s most prolific hippie: Jesus. So, in turn, I gave him a beard (brushed in) and recolored his long flowy hair to match, and then to ring the point home, I added the stigmata. Thank Eric Andre and his interviews on Youtube for the new relevance of stigmata to memery, but it wraps up our mythos mashup cleanly. Except for one last distinction: Jesus lived twice. #YOLT.

Approach/Process

Outline your approach to the project? How did you approach reworking of media in a collaborative way? What challenges were encountered and how did you resolve them?

• We gathered together to come up with this idea of reworking and remixing the “Hope” poster, which is used heavily in Internet meme creation. Then we worked individually. Each member worked on the previous iteration of the meme poster by adding or changing some features. The main tool that we used in reworking is Adobe Photoshop, with help from online resources like LunaPic and Wikipedia. We shared and updated our progress mainly in a Google Drive folder, and used Slack to get in touch.

• For each phase, we tried to add new elements on top of the built-up ideas from previous phase, including new styles, new sources, and most importantly, new ideas that we meant to deliver. Considering that one of the vital roles of meme is conveying messages that contain humorous, political, cultural, and artistic meanings, we thought of new captions and inserted images that weren’t originally related to previous phases.

• When working on the project, the main difficulty that we encountered was to think of new improvements to add to the previous iterations. Especially in the second round, we feel that the project is ready to be published, and it is hard to think of new ideas within the confines of the project. Eventually each of us was able to add or change some aspects to make the poster fit more into the theme.

Reflection

Reflect on the process of making this project. What did you learn? How does it relate to what you know about spreadable media? What would you do differently?

• One interesting observation is that, unlike the projects of some of the other groups, our meme picture does not change too much in terms of form between iterations. Starting from Layer #2, the theme of our project was fixed to the playful, somewhat dismissive Yao Ming face. The slogan of the poster changed between iterations, but the overall style was maintained. In the end, we find it surprisingly efficient to work on the same material in a group, where each member works on the previous member’s work.

Sources

Layer #1:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_%22Hope%22_poster

Layer #2:

http://www167.lunapic.com/editor/?action=go-obama

http://tehmeme.wikia.com/wiki/Yao_Ming_Face

Layer #3:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4WkPUQBVJHuY3JocEhmeHA3V3M

Layer #4:

Layer #5:

http://previews.123rf.com/images/grgroup/grgroup1206/grgroup120600358/14239815-Silhouette-lines-of-the-woman-s-face-isolated-on-white-background-vector-illustration-Stock-Vector.jpg

http://images.clipartpanda.com/music-note-transparent-background-RTAR6agTL.png

Layer #6:

Eric Andre on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PIIjnHE90c