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Opinion Post (not political)
7 years ago
I felt like saying some opinions I have that I feel like doing in a journal instead of the server. While I'm sure some of these will seem like hot takes, these are my genuine feelings, however controversial. I'll start off strong with
-I don't like the term 'OC' when used to mean 'original character'. It doesn't really make any sense as a term. Most of the time it's pretty inaccurate because it's used to refer to fan characters instead of characters who are actually original, often low-effort ones. I think this is the driving factor behind a lot of artists not allowing OCs in request things, when they think of OCs they think of things like Pokemon fan characters. I don't care if you take, for example, a Lucario, give it a name, give it hair, change it's colours, give it a story and/or give it other features, it's only original in the sense that you made it. Sometimes this can be an improvement but most artists, from what I can tell, would rather draw just a Lucario than what somebody made a Lucario into. If your character is actually original, designed solely by you and not using anything from an established franchise, then the term OC is redundant because of course it's original, it's your character and intellectual property. The next and most important reason is that there is already something we use the abbreviation 'OC' for: original content. If I use OC, I will always mean original content because that makes it a useful, non-redundant term and the other use encroaches upon it.
-I don't think split colour characters look good as a design choice. By that, I mean sometimes there will be characters where one half is black and one half is white, or some other colour scheme. It's usually an inversion. These can be eye-catching but it's not as unique as you think, it doesn't take a lot to come up with a split colour character which makes me appreciate when they go beyond the split colour and look interesting in other ways. When split colour is the only thing they have going for them? Not so much.
-I think subject matter plays into art quality. This might seem to be counterproductive to objective art review, but when I look at art I think about the ideas behind it and have that as a factor in whether I decide it's good, based on whether the subject matter is a good idea. Naturally, the actual skill shown in the art is more important, but I don't think it's fair to ignore the idea side of things. People who have engaging ideas to put to paper are awesome, it gives the art some depth to appreciate. On the other hand, there are some artists I consider talented but whose subject matter lacks the depth to convince me they're really really good. It's hard to justify the subject matter making or breaking any given work of art, but you might want to consider that.
-I think YCHes are not good for art in general. What I mean is they kind of take away the point of art, at worst it's mass-produced low-effort art dressed up as something good. I could probably write an essay on this, but basically, it seems to be artists' effort to profit off of group mentality and people who want cheap art. Before anybody misunderstands, I don't think there is any moral failing in this, just an artistic failing. When I see art is a YCH, it turns me off of it, because I don't want YCH, I want to see fresh-drawn art, what you can do. I've made the mistake of buying one before, I'd never do it again because I like to see creation. For those that buy YCHes, I don't think you shouldn't enjoy what you buy, it is your choice, again you might want to consider that though.
-I think the Cushy Pen is bad in an economical sense. I have a similar dislike of Patreon but Patreon is fair at least, it isn't so bad. I'm no fan of paywalling in general, but with Patreon you can pick the artists you want to support and see their Patreon-exclusive art. With Cushy Pen, you do not get the same luxury. The message Cushy Pen sends to me is "Like this artist or this artist? Too bad, we own them, they're ours. If you want to see their art, you can't just pay to see them, you have to pay to see all of the artists we own" which is very disconcerting. It's an attempt to get a monopoly on a bunch of artists, and it's work. It screws over consumers who don't want everything they have to offer. I gotta give it to Mifmaf though, he played his cards right. That's how people good at capitalism make their money, you might think rich people do no work and didn't earn their wealth, but they did. By playing their cards right, taking smart risks, and getting smart rewards. As far as I know, that's what Mifmaf did and I'm surprised to see it worked out for him.
(Speaking of Mifmaf: I don't think the orca suit is his intellectual property because it's just an orca suit. If I ever draw my character in an orca suit, I would not credit him like other artists do, because why? It's an orca suit. It makes no sense to credit him for just a suit that is kinda like an orca. He can't have any copyright on such a general, vague idea. Picture that with any other thing, like what if I tried to get people to credit me for a caterpillar suit, or god forbid a monkey suit?)
-As far as I've seen, I think a lot of the various art communities including several sects of furry have a warped idea of stylization. The most important thing in this regard is that you should not learn to draw a stylized version of something first or start with stylized anatomy, you should start with learning to draw accurate, at least semi-realistic figures and things from references and observation. That is how you learn to be good at art. If you just copy from another artist, it won't really teach you as much. There's not much wrong with doing it that way, again no moral failing, but it is an artistic failing. What I did was I learned anatomy, done figures on my own time that I don't post, and then I graduated to stylized bodies. I didn't get good very fast, and I wasn't necessarily good when I graduated myself to stylized anatomy, but the important thing is that I knew and understood what I was drawing instead of just making my art nothing more than a fetish deal. On the other hand, as long as stylization looks good, there is nothing wrong with stylization. Realism isn't inherently better than a stylized thing, even if one is more difficult than the other. A realistic version of something doesn't have anything inherently better or worse about it when it comes just to how realistic it is, it's just different. For example, you can say that the way some of us draw diapers is "wrong" or "inaccurate" but that doesn't matter as long as we have some basic structural components that make it identifiable as a diaper are there. We just like them thick as hell, sometimes to a fault but I digress.
-The furry community is not a 'fandom', to be a fandom you have to be a fan of something. For example, the My Little Pony fandom, or the Steven Universe fandom, or anything like that. The simple thing there that sets those communities apart as fandoms is that they have an established franchise that entirely encompasses their interests. My Little Pony fans are fans of the My Little Pony franchise, whatever part of it. They can even just be fans of the comics and not the shows, but they're still fans because that's part of the franchise. Moving back to furries, what do we have that makes us that way? Zootopia? No. There's not anything that encompasses all of what it means to be furry, you can say that we are fans of anthropomorphic animals therefore we are the furry fandom, but that's too broad and can be applied to things that are definitely not in our community, as well as leaving out some things that are. So we aren't a fandom, just a loose community with many sects. This is especially true for people like me who tend to divorce themselves from established franchises.
-I don't like the term 'OC' when used to mean 'original character'. It doesn't really make any sense as a term. Most of the time it's pretty inaccurate because it's used to refer to fan characters instead of characters who are actually original, often low-effort ones. I think this is the driving factor behind a lot of artists not allowing OCs in request things, when they think of OCs they think of things like Pokemon fan characters. I don't care if you take, for example, a Lucario, give it a name, give it hair, change it's colours, give it a story and/or give it other features, it's only original in the sense that you made it. Sometimes this can be an improvement but most artists, from what I can tell, would rather draw just a Lucario than what somebody made a Lucario into. If your character is actually original, designed solely by you and not using anything from an established franchise, then the term OC is redundant because of course it's original, it's your character and intellectual property. The next and most important reason is that there is already something we use the abbreviation 'OC' for: original content. If I use OC, I will always mean original content because that makes it a useful, non-redundant term and the other use encroaches upon it.
-I don't think split colour characters look good as a design choice. By that, I mean sometimes there will be characters where one half is black and one half is white, or some other colour scheme. It's usually an inversion. These can be eye-catching but it's not as unique as you think, it doesn't take a lot to come up with a split colour character which makes me appreciate when they go beyond the split colour and look interesting in other ways. When split colour is the only thing they have going for them? Not so much.
-I think subject matter plays into art quality. This might seem to be counterproductive to objective art review, but when I look at art I think about the ideas behind it and have that as a factor in whether I decide it's good, based on whether the subject matter is a good idea. Naturally, the actual skill shown in the art is more important, but I don't think it's fair to ignore the idea side of things. People who have engaging ideas to put to paper are awesome, it gives the art some depth to appreciate. On the other hand, there are some artists I consider talented but whose subject matter lacks the depth to convince me they're really really good. It's hard to justify the subject matter making or breaking any given work of art, but you might want to consider that.
-I think YCHes are not good for art in general. What I mean is they kind of take away the point of art, at worst it's mass-produced low-effort art dressed up as something good. I could probably write an essay on this, but basically, it seems to be artists' effort to profit off of group mentality and people who want cheap art. Before anybody misunderstands, I don't think there is any moral failing in this, just an artistic failing. When I see art is a YCH, it turns me off of it, because I don't want YCH, I want to see fresh-drawn art, what you can do. I've made the mistake of buying one before, I'd never do it again because I like to see creation. For those that buy YCHes, I don't think you shouldn't enjoy what you buy, it is your choice, again you might want to consider that though.
-I think the Cushy Pen is bad in an economical sense. I have a similar dislike of Patreon but Patreon is fair at least, it isn't so bad. I'm no fan of paywalling in general, but with Patreon you can pick the artists you want to support and see their Patreon-exclusive art. With Cushy Pen, you do not get the same luxury. The message Cushy Pen sends to me is "Like this artist or this artist? Too bad, we own them, they're ours. If you want to see their art, you can't just pay to see them, you have to pay to see all of the artists we own" which is very disconcerting. It's an attempt to get a monopoly on a bunch of artists, and it's work. It screws over consumers who don't want everything they have to offer. I gotta give it to Mifmaf though, he played his cards right. That's how people good at capitalism make their money, you might think rich people do no work and didn't earn their wealth, but they did. By playing their cards right, taking smart risks, and getting smart rewards. As far as I know, that's what Mifmaf did and I'm surprised to see it worked out for him.
(Speaking of Mifmaf: I don't think the orca suit is his intellectual property because it's just an orca suit. If I ever draw my character in an orca suit, I would not credit him like other artists do, because why? It's an orca suit. It makes no sense to credit him for just a suit that is kinda like an orca. He can't have any copyright on such a general, vague idea. Picture that with any other thing, like what if I tried to get people to credit me for a caterpillar suit, or god forbid a monkey suit?)
-As far as I've seen, I think a lot of the various art communities including several sects of furry have a warped idea of stylization. The most important thing in this regard is that you should not learn to draw a stylized version of something first or start with stylized anatomy, you should start with learning to draw accurate, at least semi-realistic figures and things from references and observation. That is how you learn to be good at art. If you just copy from another artist, it won't really teach you as much. There's not much wrong with doing it that way, again no moral failing, but it is an artistic failing. What I did was I learned anatomy, done figures on my own time that I don't post, and then I graduated to stylized bodies. I didn't get good very fast, and I wasn't necessarily good when I graduated myself to stylized anatomy, but the important thing is that I knew and understood what I was drawing instead of just making my art nothing more than a fetish deal. On the other hand, as long as stylization looks good, there is nothing wrong with stylization. Realism isn't inherently better than a stylized thing, even if one is more difficult than the other. A realistic version of something doesn't have anything inherently better or worse about it when it comes just to how realistic it is, it's just different. For example, you can say that the way some of us draw diapers is "wrong" or "inaccurate" but that doesn't matter as long as we have some basic structural components that make it identifiable as a diaper are there. We just like them thick as hell, sometimes to a fault but I digress.
-The furry community is not a 'fandom', to be a fandom you have to be a fan of something. For example, the My Little Pony fandom, or the Steven Universe fandom, or anything like that. The simple thing there that sets those communities apart as fandoms is that they have an established franchise that entirely encompasses their interests. My Little Pony fans are fans of the My Little Pony franchise, whatever part of it. They can even just be fans of the comics and not the shows, but they're still fans because that's part of the franchise. Moving back to furries, what do we have that makes us that way? Zootopia? No. There's not anything that encompasses all of what it means to be furry, you can say that we are fans of anthropomorphic animals therefore we are the furry fandom, but that's too broad and can be applied to things that are definitely not in our community, as well as leaving out some things that are. So we aren't a fandom, just a loose community with many sects. This is especially true for people like me who tend to divorce themselves from established franchises.
