I’m seeing a lot of this around at the moment; lots of stumpy, rounded shapes in solid colours, palette consisting of pastels, muted naturals and chocolate brown.
Here’s an example:
http://www.ajoyfulheart.com/pspphotoshopbrushresources.htm
Here’s another:
-the white outlining on that first example isn’t typical of the style - often it will be in thin black, but more often it is absent altogether and the objects are self-delineated.
Does this style have a name?
I’m not sure it has a name, but if I had to come up with one, it would be “Hello Kitty” style. There’s an obvious Japanese influence, especially in the second linked example.
I wouldn’t consider these the same style. The first vaguely looks like it’s influenced by the '50s, and the second looks very Asian.
I think they’re a combination of “ewwwwww” and “tweeeee.”
Kawaii?
I don’t think the common graphic denominators you’re seeing constitute a style in the way that “Art Nouveau” or “Bauhaus” is a style and I don’t think there is a name associated with the style.
As far as I can tell, they are simply offshoots of the vector-based art style that Flash has helped to popularize.
I have to admit, those are two examples I just grabbed out of nowhere and they probably represent opposite ends of the spectrum I perceive as existing within this style. I also spotted it last night on some ad or sweeper for the TMF channel.
I see a lot of hideous avocado, baby-puke yellow, and turd brown 1970’s palette in that style. Blech.
I think “butt-ugly” is the term you’re looking for.
This style is an outgrowth of the Contemporary Character Design movement. (Not a great name, but it crops up all the time on the websites of artists working in this style.)
Check out Pictoplama, Ugly Doll, Kid Robot, Mojizu & Gama-go for more examples. It’s a fusion of a variety of different influences: action figure design, graffiti art, and commercial illustration.
Perhaps the biggest fine art “name” working in this style is Takashi Murakami. He calls what he’s doing “superflat” but I haven’t seen this term picked up in the U.S.
Don’t listen to the haters. There’s some really beautiful stuff coming out of it.
Whoops. That’s Pictoplasma.
Well?
Show us!
-FrL-
Here are a couple of series that I particularly like. I’ve bought characters out of both:
Since one of the main focuses of Contemporary Character Design is creating lots of small intriguing (and commercial) pieces instead of grand works of fine art I really don’t have a link to a “here, look at this glorious masterpiece” image.
Here’s the site belonging to the graphic designer of that magazine cover in my link above:
http://www.kanardo.com/
If you go to the next page on his website you’ll notice that he has an announcement that some of his work has been accepted into the Pictoplasma database – one of the websites I mentioned. As I said above, the closest I’ve heard for a blanket term for this type of art is “contemporary character design”.
Thanks - does that term extend to include objects that are not actual characters, but are constructed with the same sort of aesthetics?
I’ve heard it more as a description of the community. And some artists within the community are interested in things beside character design so the aesthetic diffuses outwards.
Sorry I’m not being more helpful. It seems like there should be a term for the style itself but as far as I know there’s not. Not yet, anyway. The movement is still very young – all of this has happened in the last decade or so and most of it in the last five years.
The contemporary character design aesthetic fits under the larger umbrella of Lowbrow Art. Lowbrow revolves around taking contemporary “folk art” – graffiti, skateboard deck art, comic book art, hotrod art, surfboard art, advertising art – and treating it as a serious medium. It’s related to the Pop Art of the 60’s and 70’s, but while Warhol and Lichtenstein were interested in appropriating pop culture images to create fine art that would be shown in galleries, the lowbrow artists keep their connections within the source community. So, for example, Kidrobot isn’t just showing its avant garde action figures in a museum, you can go into a store and buy them. Shag has gallery shows, but he also designs tchotches for Disneyland. Mark Ryden does album covers as well as oil paintings.
There was actually a thread similar to this one last fall about the retro-hipster style of illustration. Like Kanardo’s stuff, it’s the result of the lowbrow aesthetic feeding back into the mainstream.
Don’t underestimate yourself - you’ve actually been very helpful indeed.
I’ve been having a play with the style in Inkscape and it’s loads of fun to do. I think I’ve got a flash animation program somewhere too - I should probably get around to making a cartoon (I have an idea for one)
Just thought I’d post again here to document another sighting of contemporary character design:
This Robinson’s cordials TV ad is very typical of what I had in mind:
I probably missed someone else mentioning this, but some of the responding post links remind me of the artist that does the “Grow” games.
T.
