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The antithesis of this piece was an advertisement for childrens sporting apparel. It's headline, Kid's World, was set in a handwritten typeface, and images of a boy and a girl were rendered as barely more than stick figures. It was quite plain and it did not tax CorelDRAW's capabilities at all (the .cdr file was only 70K).
And it was perfect. The artist resisted the temptation to show off CorelDRAW or his own prowess with it. He held true to his minimalist pursuits. I voted for it in its category, even though I knew that it could never win. My little girl could draw that, scowled one of the judges. Of all of the responses that I could have made (But she didn', t .. Then she's more talented than you. Good, then she didn't inherit your boorishness. There appears to be hope for your lineage after all), I decided to say nothing, knowing full well the unspoken criterion of this contest: It must make you say Wow, and it must look good on a software box.
The most interesting point of controversy came from the dramatic victory in People, Plants, and Animals, in which two pieces ran neck-and-neck until the third tie-breaking vote. The winner was a charming collection of images of girls and women, with the central figure, a Dorothy-of-Oz-like girl, containing the words to a nursery rhyme etched subtly across her face. It was a very attractive and well-thought-out piece, which ironically, I didn't vote for precisely because of the text across her face. That's me and that old technology-for-its-own-sake thing, again, but that's off the point.
Anyway, when this image won its category, one of the judges was beside herself. It's just a bunch of clip art,' she bemoaned. 'It's four pieces of clip art with some enveloped text! Next year, I'm going to enter, I'm going to take a bunch of clip art and slap it together and send it in.
Well, this was just delicious. Setting aside the possibility of jealousy or resentment (the winning artist is known for his technical proficiency more than his artistic achievement), let's assume that the judge was right about his using clip art. Let's assume that the artist went to one of Corel's PhotoCD collections, pulled out several images, and arranged them on the page. Let's further assume that he used DRAW's built-in texture fills to create the backgrounds, and the Transparency tool to overlay one image over another. And finally, let's assume that the artist did indeed use the Envelope tool to wrap the text around the contour of the girl's face. |
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