User:Ddimarelos/sandbox

Dimitris Dimarelos (born August 2, 1994) is an award winning cartoonist from Greece and the creative director of Dimarelos Cartoons, collaborating with numerous media from inside and outside its borders, his work having a daily reach of more than one million people through a variety of mediums. He has a Master of Arts in visual communication (Evolution of Cartooning in the Digital Media) and a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in games design from the University of Central Lancashire, while he is also currently studying on his PhD in Philosophy, Art & Critical Thought at the European Graduate School in Switzerland (Philosophy of Cartoons).

Early Life & Education
Dimitris Dimarelos was born in Volos, Greece. He has shown a great passion for sketching since he was four years old, which he strongly cultivated throughout his school classes. Being self-taught, at the age of sixteen he had his first political cartoon published in Thessalia, the largest newspaper of central Greece.

At the age of seventeen, he was awarded by the Greek Ministry of Education for his participation in an art contest about Driving Safety; a year after, he signed his first contract with Cartoon Movement in Amsterdam, the largest cartoon agency on the internet, when he also started his studies in games design. During the next three years, he experimented with the arts of theatre, tai chi and doctor clown performance, and was the co-founder of the Kammena Tetradia literature & philosophy magazine and director of UbiArt Framework petition at Change.org. Furthermore, he initiated the Dimarelos Cartoons Team, which consists of the same ten people up to this day.

“When I first received samples of his work in 2012, I was immediately impressed by the fact that someone so young (at the time, he was just 18), could already have such a keen eye for politics and personal style of drawing. In the following years, his analytic skills and grasp of political satire have only improved, showing a great understanding of world events and a capacity to translate this understanding into a visual that makes people laugh and think.” -Tjeerd Royaards, Editor-in-chief, Cartoon Movement (2015)

Political Cartooning & the First Book
In 2015 he worked as a full-time political cartoonist and UX designer for the ThePressProject and as a sports cartoonist for ERT3, while he also won two international awards: the SCOPE Art Fair Miami 2015 (Human Rights Section) and KYM International 2015 (Refugee Crisis Section). In 2016 his first album, I want to tear apart my voting right, was published and distributed by Methexis Editions at Thessaloniki to all major bookstores in Greece, while he also started his Master of Arts in visual communication. Meanwhile, he travelled to the Wudang mountains of China, and studied psychotherapy for two semesters at the University of East London.

“He was always punctual, never missing his deadline, while I would like to highlight his capacity to quickly trace the right circumstances and the importance of each moment. Dimitris has a deep understanding of any subject matter he has to deal with and he focuses on those which incite reflections to the audiences; I firmly believe that he acquires all the necessary skills in order to thrive in the political cartoon scene.” -Costas Efimeros (legacy), Founder of ThePressProject, Investigative Journalist & WikiLeaks Associate

Current Work
In early 2017 he collaborating with the iefimerida news media, and also kicked off Socratoulis, the first daily comic strip (American school) in the history of Greece, praised by international industry veterans like the Washington Post cartoonist and Reuben Award winner, Nick Galifianakis. He also started his PhD in Philosophy, Art & Critical Thought at the European Graduate School in Switzerland, his thesis being entirely devoted to the history and evolution of cartoons.

“Dimitris is one of the most gifted young cartoonists I have ever met. His strive for authenticity and his absolute devotion to the art of cartooning is unprecedented. Don’t get me wrong, he is a very good cartoonist right now, but he also has a very high ceiling, his potential being unlimited.” -Nick Galifianakis, Washington Post Cartoonist & Reuben Award Winner