Scientoons in town.

ESOF 2008 devoted a whole session to scientoons. The brainchild of Pradeep Kumar Srivastava, senior scientist at the Central Drug Research Institute (CDRI), Lucknow, India, scientoons are designed to grab the attention of non-scientists with an interest in science, by putting information across in a fast, fun way. The art lies in not just making a caricature that draws a smile, but providing information. A cartoon contains caricature and sometimes satire, perhaps in a speech bubble. A scientoon also has a box containing the relevant scientific information. Now scientoonists are hoping to move to more modern media, producing radio skits, puppet shows or puppet scientoons and multimedia scientoons on the internet and video, as well as theme-based scientoon strips, films and books.