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Note that, distorted as they are, the human figures in all of these
images obey a set of strict rules. For example, they all keep the
same proportion of a large puffy body and small head and limbs; they can
only have an angle on the internal side of a limb, while the other side
is a smooth curve; all of them are shown in an emphatically dynamic,
non-linear and horizontally stretched context, etc. By failing to
comply to one of these rules, which are immediately obvious to the
viewer (although not necessarily on a conscious level), a picture in the
series would be damaged much more seriously than by the lack of
photographic likeness.
Thus, the author has created his own world with a recognizable look and
feel, and this achievement provides a much better chance
of pleasing modern audience than sticking with graphic realism. You can
convey a surprisingly wide range of moods and attitudes if you find an
original style to express yourself, and although most of these attitudes
are likely to contain a certain degree of irony (it's difficult not to
be ironic when knowingly distorting something), they perfectly match
the prevalent style of modern business communication, with its craving
for originality and aversion from "plain boring" solutions.
Let's repeat: Drawing is hard, it's definitely not a skill to be
taught to everyone. But, I dare say that drawing in the "my own world"
style is accessible to almost any person with good aesthetic sense
after some self-training and practical experience. I don't know whether
the author of Adobe Acrobat imagery has ever undergone a formal academic
training in drawing techniques or human anatomy, of the sort that was
obligatory for an artist apprentice a century ago, but I know other
people who create amazing artwork without such training. (On the other
hand, a formal training would never hurt, and although modern art may
have redefined the notion of professionalism, it hasn't of course
abandoned it.)
There are also some formal features worth noting. Since in the real
world, crisp edges and color boundaries are always alternated with
blurs and gradients (which is the fact responsible for the peculiarity
of photographic textures), in realistic images contours are rarely
closed curves continuing each other. Instead, lines in such drawings
tend to start and end "in the air" - much as in the real world, the
characteristic outlines of an object are floating in the ocean of blurs
and unimportant details. It does indeed take an above average drawing
capability to sculpt a perfectly life-like form by a few pencil strokes,
with no shadows or color to assist, and the results of this sort are
particularly impressive.
On the contrary, the ironic and distortive "my own world" imagery most
often has an outline in proper sense of the word, represented by a
structure of prominent, usually quite bold lines separating objects from
each other and the background. For example, the Acrobat images
just discussed would obviously keep most of their impact if their color
fills were removed, leaving only the black outline. This explains
the fact that objects in these images look rather flat (since the
outline is busy delineating the exterior of objects, it cannot help in
bulging them in the third dimension), and their lines form closed
regions like those on cartoon cels (the last word being derived from
"celluloid," it also incidentally reflects the cartoon drawing style
with its "cells" of flat color with prominent contour).
Seriality is also a very important feature. A single image of the
style in question would have a smaller impact, and the percentage of
viewers just ignoring it as "weird" would be higher. Hence another hint
for aspiring artists: Once you think you've found some interesting look
in one draft, try to develop it further, make as many sketches in this
style as you can, and select a few of the best ones for your design job. |
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