The 3D-model look isn't consistent and seems to mimic n-gon (as opposed to quad or tri) modeling at best. The shadows are certainly just decorations drawn in.

The 3D-model look isn't consistent and seems to mimic n-gon (as opposed to quad or tri) modeling at best. The shadows are certainly just decorations drawn in. I made similar illustrations back in the early 2000s. I'd guess that a) the fastest and b) the most overall-effective way to go here is to pay an illustrator to sketch these roughly in paper or in digital form, and then on approval go in and draw with a vector tool. Enabling features like "snap to point" would help greatly here. Take a look at some of the galleries on vector drawing software websites. You'll find a lot of things that you'd think were modeled in 3D, that weren't. Back when I was a production illustrator with my choice of 2D or 3D methods, vector 2D was such an obviously easy way to cut through a lot of BS. Vector-tracing 3D art was really only ideal for animation in e.g. Flash. I still do some illustration work as a hobby, and if I created the art for 16 Personalities, I'd do it in 2D vectors. Heck, I used to teach Adobe Illustrator at my local college, and my Art 181 students would know the technical part of how to draw this by the end of the semester...they'd just need to learn character design next. :-)