Scribit, the write&erase drawing robot, and celebrated cartoonist Bob Mankoff, of New Yorker fame, launch unprecedented robotic cartoons on the Scribit art-streaming platform to bring humor to your home
Bob Mankoff, former cartoon editor of The New Yorker and current President of Cartoon Collections, teams up with Scribit, the write&erase smart plotter, to launch the world’s first ‘Robotized’ cartoons. Drawn from the half million+ cartoons available on CartoonCollections.com, Scribit will add a selection of the most famous cartoons from the pages of the New Yorker, Esquire, The Wall Street Journal, The National Lampoon and other iconic publications to its art-streaming platform. Scribit app users will have access to a gallery of 9 cartoons - three by Bob Mankoff and six by Charles Barsotti from Mankoff’s collection - and the robot will bring the drawing from paper to their wall.
Scribit’s ability to write&erase will allow users to download a new cartoon to their wall whenever they wish. The collaboration with Mankoff - the fifth installment of the Scribit Originals series, which aims to bring critical and original content to the walls of Scribit users across the world - premiered at an event in New York City on December 6th. A total of 30 Original artworks are planned for the series which will be completed by the end of 2020.
“I have been working for over four decades as a creator, editor, entrepreneur and evangelist for cartoons,” - says Bob Mankoff. “In many ways, single-panel cartoons are the original memes. But cartoons are meaningful rather than just what I call ‘memeingfull’ -- they invite greater reflection and thought. Cartoons are a unique medium for entertainment, enlightenment, education, and insight delivered in one compact package.”
The Bob Mankoff Original pays tribute to his devotion to cartoons as a medium for communication and readapts Scribit into a tool for entertainment. With the Original, Mankoff and the Scribit team have built upon the comedic effect of the original drawings by making the process of drawing a key part of the experience.
Mankoff’s collaboration with Scribit may mark the first time that robotics has been used for humor, and Mankoff is perhaps the most well-suited humorist to pair up with - he is already pioneering the use of AI in his field. Previously, Mankoff worked on the development of algorithms designed to help cull the funniest captions from the 5,000+ reader submissions to the New Yorker cartoon caption contest each week, and as the co- founder of Botnik, he is leveraging neural networks and machine learning to create predictive keyboards for humorous effect. By teaming up with Scribit, Mankoff makes it clear that research and the application of robotics and AI isn’t just for bookworms, but also for everyone who spent their time doodling in class.
In a world of clicking, pinging and swiping, digitalization has become inevitable: more and more publications are transitioning from paper to digital formats. Scribit aims to reduce screen time by providing an analog format for consuming digitally produced and shared content.
