By Sohail Al-Jamea

August 17, 2020

We can all agree that 2020 has been a year to fear and loathe.

Remember the U.S.-led assassination of Iranian General Qassim Suleimani, which some feared would trigger a war with Iran? No? Or the televised (and streamed) theatrics of President Donald Trump’s U.S. Senate impeachment trial? Passionate, and, at times, violent public protests? Ring any bells? Dreadful natural disasters? Anyone?

Any one of these major news stories would have been in contention as the nation’s biggest events of 2020.

Then came the COVID-19 pandemic, blasting all of those stories aside.

It is hard to believe that we are only a little more than halfway through the year. As a visual journalist, I find myself overwhelmed with the here and now.

Our McClatchy Managing Editor for video, Jason Shoultz, asked me to attempt to visualize our year of infamy.

After mulling over different visual approaches, I tapped into my inner geek and drew inspiration from retro side-scrolling video games like “Streets of Rage” for the Sega Genesis, Spawn comics, and the main title sequence for Neil Gaiman’s television series “Good Omens”.

We naturally consume timelines in books, games, comics, graphic novels, and magazines in a linear fashion, and it made sense to do the same for video. The different scenes in the video needed a common thread to tie everything together. For our video, the constant character is, naturally, President Donald Trump. Every major news event either involved a direct decision by President Trump, or he tweeted his opinion about it.

Working for the McClatchy Co. allows me to collaborate with talent from newsrooms around the country. I reached out to illustrator/visual journalist Neil Nakahodo of The Kansas City Star as well as Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and Deputy California Opinion Editor Jack Ohman of The Sacramento Bee.

From the stock market roller coaster to the fish market in Wuhan, China, Nakahodo masterfully produced nearly all the background art. Ohman illustrated characters in the foreground, including President Trump, former Vice President Joe Biden, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr.Valerie Birx, and many other newsmakers.

Working off Ohman’s static drawings, I was able to construct 3D models for each character which I later animated, and those models of the characters allowed me to leverage motion capture data like Biden’s “Thriller” dance. I paired Ohman’s characters with Nakahodo’s art to bring 2020 to life in animation.

The challenge with creating a timeline about the year in which you are currently still experiencing? Stuff happens, and keeps happening--fast. The coronavirus toll reached new milestones and fresh presidential election-related headlines will emblazon the front (or home) pages of newspapers. This Rashomon-like kaleidoscopic perpetual movement of one major event after another was captured in the animation: 2020 is an endless walk that won’t slow or stop.

2020 is only slightly more than halfway over, and McClatchy’s visual editors and artists will revisit this timeline.

2020, being 2020, will need to be constantly updated, and, in the words of 17th and 18th Century English theologian Isaac Watts:

“Time, like an ever-rolling stream,

Bears all its sons away;

They fly forgotten, as a dream

Dies at the opening day.”

Isaac Watts never saw 2020. Furthermore, we might add humorist Dorothy Parker’s epic line as well:

“What fresh hell is this?”

view project on sacbee.com