Compose styles
Rather than blending styles toward a middle, this gives them roles. The first one carries the structure, the next comes in as the accent, and anything after that shows up in a single detail. Where they fight each other, it says so before you start.
How to divide the work
- Composition
- Follow City Pop Illustration: A horizon drawn across the middle, dividing sky above from water below
- Type
- Set in City Pop Illustration's manner (A thin Latin sans set small and never explaining the picture), and let Vaporwave's lettering (Serifs, pixel faces, fragments of Japanese) appear only where you want the eye to catch.
- Material
- Ground in City Pop Illustration's material (Even airbrushed gradients and shadowless planes of saturated color); bring in exactly one thing from Vaporwave (Purple and aqua, low resolution, VHS noise).
- Colour
- Build on #f2efe6, #2ba7dc, #10365c and admit one accent from #532d8f, #ee72c8, #66dbe0.
Where they fight
These are already listed as related entries, so the join should come easily.
Caution
- City Pop Illustration Drawing in people or traces of daily life breaks the unpeopled stillness and drops the work to generic tropical illustration.
- Vaporwave Don't reduce Japanese to meaningless decoration. Bring criticism or personal memory.
Image prompt
Produce four original images that take their structure from City Pop Illustration (style, 1979–1989 / 2010s revival) and their accent from Vaporwave (style, 2010s). ## What to make Make the kind of thing City Pop Illustration exists for: summer record or beverage campaigns picturing the city as an unpeopled ideal, or travel and hotel promotion asked for nostalgia and cleanliness at once. Choose one subject and hold it across all four. ## Structure comes from City Pop Illustration - Cloudless blue and pools - Palms and horizons - Flat airbrushed surfaces - The absence of people Composition: A horizon drawn across the middle, dividing sky above from water below. Type and lettering: A thin Latin sans set small and never explaining the picture. ## Accent comes from Vaporwave, used sparingly - Pink and purple - Classical statues - Early CG - Tropics and Japanese text Let one material quality come from it: Purple and aqua, low resolution, VHS noise. ## Colour and feeling Build the ground on #f2efe6, carry the structure in #2ba7dc and #10365c, and let a single accent come from #ee72c8. These are read off real works, so a direction rather than a fixed palette. Feeling to carry: calm, nostalgia, exhilaration, futurity, rebellion. ## What goes wrong - City Pop Illustration: Drawing in people or traces of daily life breaks the unpeopled stillness and drops the work to generic tropical illustration. - Vaporwave: Don't reduce Japanese to meaningless decoration. Bring criticism or personal memory. ## Across the four Keep the roles fixed in all four. Vary the framing, the scale and the arrangement so the set shows what this pairing can do rather than four versions of one picture. ## Constraints - Do not imitate, reference or name any specific artist, studio, brand, character or copyrighted work. - Do not reproduce the composition of an existing work. - Produce original compositions in the general period languages described above.
Related entries
- City Pop Illustration 1979–1989 / 2010s revival / Style / Music Graphics
Hiroshi Nagai and Eizin Suzuki gave record sleeves a cloudless sky, a swimming pool, palm trees and a flat horizon. Vaporwave later carried this urban-resort landscape of pre-bubble longing out into the world's shared imagery.
- Vaporwave 2010s / Style / Digital Retro
Turns memories of consumer society and early digital life into dreamlike unease.
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