SaintxTail wrote:Hi, thanks for checking out this thread!
Problem is whenever I ask for criticism, I get hit with the "Oh, it looks fine." and it's really hard to get feedback. I think it's because while I'm not the best artist maybe my skill level is at a point where I'm not doing anything glaringly wrong and everyone enjoys my art how it is?
I know your pain, it's nice that people are trying to be respectful, but they end up just using it suck up. And also people who can't draw for shit can't criticize for shit.
Luckily, I hate everyone and have no scruples in telling you why you suck.
For starters, you're a decently talented person. This should be a good thing, but on you it meant you've coasted by on it and failed to actually improve on many incredibly basic things. I'm fairly sure to have passively seen your stuff across almost a decade and you haven't fixed them. Like, I have deeply, deeply insulted NitroTitan/ModeSeven/Whateverthefucktheirnameisnow but they have actually fixed almost all of their problems over the course of roughly a year right after having done so to the point where I can say I hate their style but within that style their quality is consistent and it would look good to people who are not put off by it like myself.
What I hate the most about you is that you have the same dipshit problem I
diddo, which is some combination of okay hand-eye-coordination but you rely too much on it. If you were 12, your linework would be amazing because you're talented. But you're not 12, so now your linework does an absolutely atrocious job at conveying correct perspective and anatomy.
I will now attempt to demonstrate what I mean:
The lines here represent an attempt at hair alignment, eye alignment, nose alignment and jaw alignment. She needs to be very close up for such a fish-eye effect. I also cannot tell how her bones work on that shoulder, and you more or less gave up on that throat ornament after vaguely conveying its shape.
In comparison
Despite the angle, this artist has correctly conveyed the anatomy in regards to viewing perspective. Even as the shoulders are in an odd position, you can still recognize that a human could bend that way with a normal human bone structure.
What is happening is something that happens a whole lot: An artist draws with an anime style. However, unlike a mangaka who took time to learn drawing first, then uses the manga/anime style to simplify in order to churn out pages in due time to hit publishing deadlines, the artist in question uses the anime style as a crutch for the face. Then, through some amount of talent or even hard work, they are able to draw things like body parts and eventually even hands, and piece them together believably, but because they never worked on actual fundamentals, this artist then begins to decorate their wonky foundation with also decent coloring, and becomes the equivalent of a very imaginative architect with no understanding of engineering. So to other people with no understanding of engineering, they make cool buildings, but all their practice goes into that while engineering is not even recognized so that if anything they designed actually existed, it would collapse and kill everyone. You make increasingly immaculate facades for shoddy and irresponsible construction, and there are countless artists out there like you who looked at a style used for simplification of anatomy to look easily appealing on an end product and confused it for the end all blueprint. Some of them have such immaculate hand-eye-coordination, that eventually they know how to perceive perfection and translate it by sheer talent, or if they lack that talent like me, correct infinitely. But I have seen you for a decade and you haven't corrected anything.
You have a lot of other problems, but this is the main one worth mentioning because if it isn't corrected, any improvements you make will just be one more layer of paint over an OSHA violation.
How to fix your problem:
Spend time to practice doing this
The human body has a structure that follows certain rules and limitations as it postures itself. For any style that is close enough to realism, it will matter, and your style is not abstract enough for it not to. You currently make boneless meat puppets that consist of individual parts following your understanding of how they look, vaguely smooshed together and then shilled to a horny audience with no better discernment on the matter. You are at what is the final stage for many amateur artists who are high off the fact that people who can't draw for shit lack the technical discernment to communicate the fundamental weakness of your method. You and all of such self-styled artists (that are not divinely blessed with complete coincidental perfection of method, or savants of abstraction) are destined to rot and decompose on that low hill summit, ever accumulating little flowers to fool the lowest denominators as long as you refuse to come down and begin climbing the actual mountain of learning how to draw.
Now I do not personally care if you die on that hill, But you asked, so I'm telling you about it. Once. Goodbye, good luck, and good effort.
