Seapunk vs Vaporwave
シーパンク / ヴェイパーウェイヴ
Both were born online and both set coarse 1990s computer graphics beside pastels to look back at the same decade.
How to tell them apart. Plaster busts, Japanese type, purple and pink mean Vaporwave. Dolphins, waves, shells and blue green mean Seapunk.
Seapunk
Mixes ocean CG, turquoise, dolphins and 90s 3D with the music and fashion of the social-media age.
Vaporwave
Turns memories of consumer society and early digital life into dreamlike unease.
| Seapunk | Vaporwave | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 2011–2013 | 2010s |
| Family | Internet Aesthetics | Digital Retro |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | Turquoise / Dolphin CG / Waves and shells / Early 3D | Pink and purple / Classical statues / Early CG / Tropics and Japanese text |
| Best used for | Music announcements and merchandise that borrow the air of the early social web · Filling short videos or stream overlays with loud and familiar imagery | Handling the internet's strange homesickness · Unreality for music and art |
| Type | Extruded reflective 3D lettering, tilted rather than aligned | Serifs, pixel faces, fragments of Japanese |
| Composition | Repeat waves and shells as ground, set the subject large and central | Floating objects, horizon lines, collage |
| Material | Turquoise and purple, CG water, dolphins, coarsely rendered gloss | Purple and aqua, low resolution, VHS noise |
| Caution | Collecting the motifs without tying them to music or a scene leaves a pile of period images rather than a style. | Don't reduce Japanese to meaningless decoration. Bring criticism or personal memory. |