The idea here is to show four major playing cards from a hypothetical complete set based on a theme, and I chose dangerous or lethal fruit. Fruit amuses me, as do unfortunate happenings befalling pitiful beings. A full deck might include, as opposing “suits,” dangerous vegetables, or fruit which has qualities other than danger, such as safety (throwing a lemon at a button across the room which deactivates a doomsday laser) or repulsiveness (lemons look kind of dumb). I am optimistic about the great amount of possibilities.
Regardless of some questionable design decisions and standards compliance on my part for this project, I found the Adobe Illustrator experience to be useful. It is an effective tool for making basic art look more complicated than it is.
The “apple” shape was chosen based on no research which determined apples to be the quintessential generic American fruit. I experimented with making the apple into a lit fuse bomb or a medieval spiked ball, but these were deemed to create an outline which was needlessly difficult to manage in large quantities. In the end, a simple, unaltered apple seemed best, for that allows for minimal cutting, plus the crucial element of surprise. Nobody should expect the horror that lurks on the other side. One focus group member reported being so unsettled by the experience that even the innocuous apple on the safe side began to develop fearsome attributes such as intimidating sharp teeth and devilish glowing eyes.
Pears are fired through an automatic ball-pitching machine at a tube-nosed vagabond.
A pineapple is vigourously scraped against a restrained generic lizardoid.
A watermelon is involved in a hiking accident.
A tangerine is used to soil the garment of a respectable citizen, whose gesture of shock assists a large-eared bystander in acquainting itself with a barrel of an acidic substance.
And now you know.
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Successive Differences sez:
Produce can indeed be deadly. In my time at yonder grocer’s I have been wounded by: artichokes, cactus pears, kiwanos, and the clamshell packaging for strawberries.
PurpleSpace sez:
I did not know tangerines are the weapon of choosing for pterosaurs!
Uvprimlurx sez:
success:
Clamshell! Well there’s the problem. Those shouldn’t be kept with fruit. We humans have some progressive ideas about integration but mixed-species matters are more complicated and mollusks can’t handle it.
Spacess:
Unfortunately, with their extinction, pterosaurs took many of their secrets with them, and we only learn the full truth very gradually.
Uvprimlurx sez:
I really should change “remember potatoes” back to “submit comment” one of these days; I had meant to trick the robots with it, but the newer wordpress keeps them back better and they were not fooled by my trickery anyway!
Mxy sez:
I agree that fruit is amusing. I was thinking of doing a series on the secret lives of the most loathsome members of the fruit family (all of them).