Ville Ranta has previously worked as a cartoonist for Journalist and Iltalehti.
Ville Ranta’s drawings will be seen in Helsingin Sanomat twice a week in the future. He promises that they will be more annoying than before.
Prize comic book artist Ville Ranta will start as a new cartoonist at Helsingin Sanomat on Tuesday.
At the same time, the artist’s style changes. At least a little. Ranta is known for his drawings that draw from the French tradition, and now he plans to take it in an even brighter direction.
He has sought inspiration from the world of old French “scribblers” and plans to color his drawings with water colors in the future.
However, the beach itself is cautious when evaluating the renewal.
“This is the kind of traditional thing where an artist closes himself in a studio for a year to recreate his style. Then when he comes out of there, no one will notice any difference from before,” he says.
Hesarin Ranta considers the position of the cartoonist to be institutional, after all, the lower corner of the editorial page has slanted, among other things Kari Suomalainen classic drawings.
At the same time, Finns have been accustomed to the Anglo-American drawing style over the decades. However, Ranta intends to take a relaxed approach to the task of continuing the tradition and splash boldly, even if the style is not to everyone’s liking.
“I think that kind of edgier style is effective and beautiful, even though many people think it’s ugly and some even mean.”
Subjects in terms of handling, he feels more kinship with Kari Suomalainen than with later colleagues, such as Terho Ovaskan, by Henrik Karlsson and Pertti Jarlanwith
Ranta finds their style gentle, as he himself identifies with Suomalainen’s pointed and even sour irony.
“But don’t write there that Ville Ranta intends to be the new Kari Suomalainen. It’s already getting huge reviews on social media,” he says.
Ranta does not share his predecessor’s world view. In his world of values, Kari Suomalainen was a conservative who mocked, among other things, contemporary architecture, feminists, female priests and, in his later years, African immigrants as well.
Ranta remembers that, for example, his grandfather, who was Kaleva’s news manager, hated Suomalai because of the cartoonist’s old age.
”
“International politics used to not interest people, but nowadays it heats up emotions.”
Beach says that during the summer, he thought about how he plans to deal with social topics, such as politics and ordinary people, in his drawings.
He himself finds the setting in which the cartoonist laughs with ordinary people at stupid politicians to be old-fashioned. Instead, he intends to direct the mirror to the reader’s own face often enough.
Of course, the prevailing situation also offers great topics for political commentary.
“For example, international politics didn’t interest people in the past, but today it also heats up emotions,” he says.
“I also think that ordinary people deserve to be the object of criticism and not just in the victim position,” says Ranta.
At work as a cartoonist, Ranta is used to harsh feedback, but he admits that “the number one arena of cartoonists” is scary, at least a little.
Until now, citizen feedback has sometimes come in large doses, and receiving it has not always been pleasant.
“I’ve had trouble with it even when I’m suffering,” he says.
Last in Ranta was elected Journalist of the year at the Grand Journalism Award gala. In his award speech, Ranta said that a caricature can be used to comment on things that might be difficult for journalists to say.
According to him, caricatures also work in the contextless digital world, where, for example, the genre of a joke or an ironic column might be difficult for the reader to recognize.
“There is no risk of making a mistake in caricatures,” he advertises.
Ranta hopes that magazines that have given up on cartoonists in recent years will hire his colleagues for their pages. In this way, the art form would remain active, and people would come across a spectrum of different opinions more often.
“At the time of Kari Suomalainen, there was one official cartoonist, and the situation is starting to be a bit similar,” he says. “It is not desirable in any way.”
Hesarin pesti seems to start at the right time, because the illustrator who took a summer break is starting to feel anxious about what he has to say.
“In the summer, for example, there was talk of a breather in climate action. It’s such rough stuff that I’ll probably draw something from it,” he promises.