RE: Filters making art - holy shit, there are some filters and apps out there that make me want to hang myself. Artsy image in a push of a button. Granted not as good as humans overall, but better than most humans.
Re: Noam - the hope style works better with certain KINDS of photos. Something with a fair amount of contrast is going to work better, and if someone took a different photo of the guy it would have come out looking better.
BRUTE! aka Aidan Hughes has a similar style, though it is less photographic, more wood cutty with high contrast. Though his stuff has gotten more detailed with the use of more digital illustration.
RE: Knockofffs - not that it matters for knock offs. Certainly using Illustrator or even hand tracing a photo, tweaking the shapes of shadows, and deciding what to enhance and ignore is going to result in a better image than an app/filter most of the time. But for a meme or a cafe press mug, something like that is close enough. You won’t be selling $50 prints of it, but it still gets the job done.
