Archer: be prepared for the DANGER ZONE

Archer is an American adult animated television series created by Adam Reed for the FX network.The inspiration for Archer came to Reed while in a cafe in Salamanca, Spain. Finding himself unable to approach a beautiful woman seated nearby, Reed conjured up the idea of a spy who "would have a perfect line".

The artistic style of the series was designed to be as realistic as possible, so the character designers used as much reference material as they could.The character drawings are based on Atlanta-area models; they coincidentally resemble some of the voice actors in the series. As Chad Hurd, the lead character designer for the series, noted, the end result resembles "a 1960s comic book come to life. Television critics have also compared the show's overall visual style to that of the drama series Mad Men, as well as noting that lead character Sterling Archer, in particular, bears a substantial resemblance to Mad Men's protagonist Don Draper. The artwork is also similar to the original Jonny Quest cartoon series penned by artist Doug Wildey in the 1960s.
Stylistically, the show is a mix of several different time periods; show creator Adam Reed described it as "intentionally ill-defined", noting that the show "cherry-pick[ed] the best and easiest from several decades". Numerous plot details arise from contemporary culture, such as affirmative action and sexual harassment complaints.

Archer is influenced by the early James Bond films, as well as OSS 117, The Man from U.N.C.L.E and The Pink Panther,and can be compared to Reed's former shows for Adult Swim, Frisky Dingo and Sealab 2021. Driven by rapid-fire dialogue and interaction-based drama, the series is "stuff[ed]...with pop-culture references"and features an anachronistic style, using fashion from the early 1960s, a mix of 1980s-era and modern technology and a political status quo in which "the Cold War never ended".

The reason I love this show is it has a very interesting visual style, reminds me of the Grand Thefts Auto posters, that are pretty realistic, yet has that artistic animation-like quality to it.

Also watching the series through the improvement in animation is very apparent- in the first series the characters were like paper cut-outs, very one dimensional, whereas in the more recent series they start having more angle to them and becoming more three dimensional. But the characters, how ever unrealistically animated, look very attractive and nice to look at. Also the sense of humor in this show is very original and fun to reference in real life.