The other day, while lecturing to a class, I wanted to use some well known historical figure within a thought experiment. So in about five seconds I drew something like the following on the blackboard, and then I continued: “Imagine if Abraham Lincoln…”
But then I paused for a moment, looked at the picture, and said “It’s funny. if I just took away the hat, it would be Jesus.”
The class laughed, but the thought stayed with me. How little do you need to draw in order to invoke any given famous person? Perhaps we can rate iconic public figures on a scale — the simpler the drawing required, the more iconic the figure.
What would be the equivalent visual sketch for Elvis or Marilyn, Groucho or Woody, Garland or Sinatra, Nixon or Thatcher, Chaplin or Hitchcock, Lennon or McCartney, Freud or Einstein, Hitler or Gandhi?
In some cases we might get it down to very little indeed, such as John Lennon as a pair of glasses. Perhaps we could apply some sort of information theoretic analysis, in the spirit of Claude Shannon, to rate our historical icons.
I wonder who would come out on top.
These characters can be recognizably represented with about 6 pixels each, apparently:
http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/jung-von-matt-imagine-lego-ad
Doug, I think recognition of those characters relies on the groupings of related characters. And the colors are crucial (I know you said pixels). Black and white would not have worked there. OTOH, color would not have helped with Lincoln or Lennon or many of the others that Ken mentions, where facial features seem to be more key. Perhaps that’s the difference in recognizing cartoons vs. real people.
Interesting article 🙂
When I was in 4th grade, this is how I would draw Gandhiji.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/50244180/Gandhi/gandhi.jpg
Wow, that is an awesome sketch!!!