KPR

Through KPR, we reimagine the limits of generative art through both innovative techniques and greater objectivity, and attempt to create a standard by which to assess the quality of art: focus, fidelity and fluency. We often hear KPR's art style being called "anime", which on one hand is high praise given the cultural force and craftsmanship found in that genre, but on the other hand, doesn't quite capture our inspirations. KPR is strongly influenced by illustration-style art drawn from our favorite games and concept artists. "Anime" actually describes many things, depending on the context. It's used generically for animation, for specifically Japanese manga-style animation, and by most, to refer to any superficially similar art styles. It's not simply an anime vs non-anime discussion either! Indeed, much of modern anime and illustrative influence traces back to an interesting origin intersection in Disney's Bambi (1942). What?! Bambi was the original shōnen?! Well, not quite, but almost 😉. Two things emerged from Bambi. First, the evolution of Max Fleischer's expressive "rubber hose" cartoon style into the doe-eyed look that would inspire Osamu Tezuka, godfather of Japanese anime. Tezuka's manga work led to the anime industry, and a genre too grand and diverse to discuss here. From the same film, animator and illustrator Tyrus Wong's nearly forgotten brushwork on the lush background paintings would go on to define "Disney impressionism". This illustration style, however, didn't really make headway on popular digital fronts until Valve released Team Fortress in 2007, and published their unique rendering approach that perfectly blended its retro-Americana theme with period influences like J. C. Leyendecker and Norman Rockwell. Suddenly, game art direction acutely attended to silhouette, light values, color, and shape as functional gameplay language, not just style. Some of this was technological maturity, and some was TF2's runaway success. But a paradigm was born. From that influence, which many games continued to refine, we arrive on recent entries like Valorant, to which KPR has drawn many comparisons. As art direction in games continues to become more sophisticated, functionality for mass adoption has grown with the size of the game industry, and we continue to see more and more creative art stylization than ever. KPR strives to bring this passion to web3 as well.