The best way to follow an exceptionally lame post about such boring topic as shadows I might as well go ahead in my search for blog fame by insulting someone or possibly a whole (sub)culture. Recently there was produced a line of shoes for D&D. Instead of something looking completley bad ass, they decided that the best route was something completely lame. They say you're not a star wars fan until you have livid hate for one of the films, and my hate lays upon the terribly ugly Clone Wars. Spawn as well has been blasphemed with this similar mess, the adventures of spawn.
It’s merely a matter of taste, and where better to house one’s tastes than extremist elitism. I’ll just go out and say it: I have a apprehension or strong dislike towards anime or manga or whatever bullshit you want to name it. Sure there’s been a few keepers out there, but I dare not name them and suck us into some tangent – let us focus on the point. I hate the style and not just strictly anime but more some of the terrible siblings I loosely and possibly incorrectly blame for creating. Any style that has some bug eyed, cutesy cartoon child-appealing minimalism needs to be stripped, raped and strangled, and not exactly in that order and more so with some metaphorical paint brush that will turn this disneyfied ass hattery into something that destroys retinas, minds possibly souls and most hopefully trends, codes, conventions and norms.
As stated its merely a matter of taste. From a point of studying graphic design, everything has its place, its seat – everything has its season. As I learn and make more mistakes and drive my foot mouthward, I can admit this “cartoony minimalism” can be used and done. In context this can be done well. There is a different approach for whatever idea is being executed. Whatever you’re selling, whatever you’re depicting it deserves the proper approach that evokes and speaks the core of that idea.
I was inspired to write this very rant from my emotional response to a thread on some forum depicting a version of this cartoony minimalism. I didn’t run in and start insulting everyone because that’s poor form. In hindsight I don’t have too many insults left over except to the style in and of itself.
Sometimes cartoony minimalism, it works! The images do show certain levels of expression, emotion and interest. Being used for a web comics which is the intention, it can work! In this medium, it can work really well. Penny arcade has been doing some really well done and really well executed “web comics” that really are escaping their medium. Their execution of cartoony minimalism works really really well, so well it escapes its’ medium. That is good execution, that is well placement. That is how graphic solutions should be done.
All in all I hate this direction and hope to no longer see people produce this work and use it to represent D&D. I hope to look and critique further into how D&D is presented to the world, and I feel someone in the marketing department has been making some terrible mistakes, or at least one: the goblin stompers.
What do you think of Cartoony Minimalism? Do you like this? Do you like D&D being represented by this?
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