ET Might Write Cartoon Contest


First Place:  Caroline Angelo

This simple drawing put together all the elements of a message hurled from afar.
Aliens shelling earth with messages

Second and Third Place: Zhen Li and Xiangpeng Jing


These cute animated GIFs illustrated the concept nicely,  but not simply.  I would also have preferred
the astronomer looking in another direction.

Alien throwing the book Alien throwing book 2

Honorable Mentions

I also very much liked  the extremely intent E.T.  , but it did not capture the distance issue
as well as the winner .  The tourism
cartoon was also funny, but implied a return trip by live
people -- probably a near impossibility, though who really knows.  The dropping book cartoon
seemed too local to me.  These three were all Caroline Angelo creations.

bazooka book galactic tourism

purloined message

   
 


 This dark and moody (but with an adorable alien) drawing by A. Anonymous  was artistically
my favorite.  However, the astronomer is not on earth and the alien is on the same planet/asteroid/moon
as the astronomer, so it doesn't quite capture the idea of flinging a message across space.

astronaut



This drawing by Miro Samwil was really nice, but had something of the same problem as A. Anonymous' drawing -- the alien
was too close -- a notion reinforced by the paper airplane.

airplane message



This drawing by Jonathan Backhaus was similar in spirit to Miro's drawing, though
it did get the distance involved a little better, though the ETs are sending their message
from a ship -- which negates the energy efficiency of inscribed matter channels  
It's also unclear why the human  is saying "Life?" when the airplane has not hit him yet.
 
jonathan backhaus cartoon


Typical cut-to-the-chase-with-humor Dick (who's my next door neighbor at WINLAB and a National
Technology Medalist  for his work bringing you cellular phones and cordless phones while at AT&T).
He's a conceptual genius, but about as good an artist as I am :)
 Nonetheless, an expansion on this theme
would probably make a hilarious cartoon.  

dropped rock