New Top-hatted Fancyman Oc Just Dropped And I'm In Love

My god. I have this one world/story I wanna make a webcomic about so much but the timeline is SO BAD like it's not even funny. Way too many missing details in the worldbuilding and plot holes and contradictory stuff... agrrhgg

This is why I started making flow charts for my plots. It helps me realize everything I messed up. Me consulting my flowchart to make sure my story is coherent

Character concept cooking up

I don't really do these types of characters anymore but I felt like re-drawing an old design from 2021 because it actually. Wasn't bad.

Gosh... sigh... 2020-2021... what an era... I swear I was onto something with so many of my OCs back then. I need to pull some more of them from the depths of my files and remake them.

New character. the blue fellow

Prepare for a rant on art, my friends. This is something that's been annoying me (tldr at bottom, which probably describes what I mean better than the main rant)

For a moment I'd like to forget about the idea that art is subjective: let's say there is a foolproof way to factually define whether a piece of art is "good" or "bad," high quality or low quality, appealing or unappealing. Let's pretend art is objective.

That... doesn't change much. Not about my argument, anyway.

All the time, I see people getting upset — almost personally offended, even — just by the fact that someone is, apparently, bad at drawing. And then I see people respond to that with the fact that it's just their style. I don't disagree that the quality of art is subjective, that people can have their own styles, but people seem to cling to the idea like it's the only defense they have for their art being "bad." Even people who believe in the subjectivity of art will rush to defend themselves, to insist that their art cannot factually be bad, like that's the most heinous thing possible.

Tell me, though: what exactly IS the problem with an artist being "bad" at drawing? Who does it hurt? Who does it, at the very least, disrespect?

Don't get me wrong: giving tips and criticism and helping people can be great (if done supportively and respectfully of course, without belittling) — it can be a great journey to improve one's art, and I don't want to downplay that — but someone may not actually WANT to improve on a technical level. Maybe they only want to make art that's appealing to themselves, and maybe they don't need to know the fundamentals or anatomy or colour theory or character design to be able to entertain themselves, to have fun with it. Maybe they're just doodling because they like to doodle. Y'know?

I don't know how this post will come off. Maybe someone will think it means not to give criticism, maybe someone will think I'm just repeating the idea that art is subjective, but what I really mean with this is:

(TLDR aswell): We shouldn't act as if someone's a bad person because they can't draw. If you don't like how someone's art looks, if it's unrealistic and messy and there's poor colour theory and shitty anatomy, and they clearly aren't doing anything to improve it.... just move on. Yes, it's just their style. No, that doesn't mean they're "good" at it. No, they don't need to be good at it in the first place.

Wondering

I do not believe I've posted this.

In case I haven't mentioned, his name is Red

My current goal with my artstyle is to get more cartoony and stylized with my characters...

More about all this below!

For a while I had been strictly staying to attempts at realistic stuff. Not full-on realism, but as good as I could get it.

It was fun, but hard to do, and I was always struggling with some feature. And I never really let myself do cartoony stuff because I had this mindset that if I started doing that, I'd "lose my progress" on all the realistic skill.

Then for art class we had a unit on cartoon characters. It put me out of my comfort zone, but I was actually having WAY more fun with these characters and CONSTANTLY creating these little cartoon designs where I could, like, instantly TELL exactly who they were.

Not to say realism is boring, not at all, just that I think it's important to find which style is, personally, the most enjoyable to draw with. And as someone who is really into expressiveness and character design, I think something more stylized and exaggerated will be a good direction for me. It's already proven to be something I thoroughly enjoy...

it's not 'AI art has no soul' because soul is subjective and creating art is not necessarily a divine spark of inspiration, sometimes human made art is empty of feeling and meaning and that's okay.

it's not 'AI art is ugly' because human made art doesn't need to be pretty, it's still art, no matter if you're starting or if you intentionally make ugly things. It's still okay.

The problem, with AI art (besides the copyright theft, the environmental issues, the artists losing their jobs..)

The problem is that

AI art lacks INTENT

When a human makes something, every part of the creation is a decision made. Why this line, why this color, why this word, why this stitch, why this note.

They may be good decisions, bad decisions, it doesn't matter. The end result is something with thought, and this is why we appreciate art. There is the surface, and underneath, there is an ocean of decisions made by the artist.

AI art has no intent.

Yes, they will type prompts for a general idea. And they will pick a result.

But there is no thought about poses, colors, lines, backgrounds, details, negative space, lighting, texture, framing, etc.

Becoming a good artist means to understand these decisions and align them to make the result you want.

AI art will pick through millions of those decisions made by other people and will stick them together without meaning or reason, so they lose their intended purpose. This is why people think AI art is empty, that it has no 'soul'. Because there is no thought process behind it.

We should stop comparing human and AI art by using words like "better" or "worse". People will always have different opinions.

But as a human, I am more interested in things made by other humans, because I can observe all those tiny decisions, I can relate to some, be surprised by some, dislike some, it's all good.

Art is people communicating.

AI art has nothing to say.

"Witch" 🎀📺

Resides in peoples' minds; in the "mental space"

He/Him

More Below [UPDATE: UNVALE PAGE]

★ Character I designed like a couple weeks ago, just messing around, I ended up having a lot of fun with this guy! And I find him very draw-able

^ Some doodles I did, mainly trying to brainstorm for story ideas, the second doodle is the plot/premise I'm building off of right now; He lives in a "mental space" of sorts, but is unable to access his own mind, and so he attempts to find and convince other people to let him live in theirs.

That's all I have to give for now! Have a swell day

Oh Also He Talks Capitalizing All First Letters Like This

Cube guy.... music/band teacher helped figuring out this guy's colours.

I apologize if the whole LIMBS thing is hard to visually understand..