|
Disarmist Cute and Easy SD Cartooning. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
This entry's a bit of a rant about the proliferation of cute (read easy) art and the overuse of classically SD emotion masks in comics especially.
Lately it seems there's been an explosion of popularity of that strange new breed of illustrating that celebrates the absolute minimum amount of talent needed to create a character. Limbs are replaced with blobs, hands are non existent or swapped with mittens and eyes are replaced with tiny shiny little black dots, preferably placed as close to the mouth as possible, with no nose to speak of.
Characters look like tiny little blobs and Japanese exaggerated emotion masks rule in terms of emotional expression. This movement isn't just in cartooning circles that follow manga styled directions, but even Western cartoons are getting filled with very child-like (in design and in artistic talent) characters. More often than not, Western cartoons using this are being IRONIC juxtaposing the childish images with childish protrayals of ultra violence and aduolt humour. South Park started the ball rolling, now Lenore, JTHM, Happy Tree Friends and a plethora of other titles are still convinced it's original to combine easily done minimalist cartooning with jokes built to shock. Everyone has their opinion. My opinion is that this joke is very, very old. South Park's continued success drives off it's political and media commentary of American culture. You know when even the Simpson's aren't relying on Itchy and Scratchy cartoons to get a laugh, the concept has to be older than Mesopotamia.
And then there's the 'Awah Is So Cute' style piece. These artworks have little to no storyline or character development, except for the celebration of a extremely child-like story about friendship, feel good cuteness, or general stuff that will hopefully make someone say 'awah'. A great way to get that awah factor is to try and closely emulate your chracter design to closely resemble that 'Hello Kitty' style, which is based off the feelings people get from seeing a helpless baby with it's embryonic body shape. Huge head, tiny limbs. In terms of technical skill, these cannot even begin to be compared to character designs of people that manipulate items in hands, conduct believable illustrated action scenes and have complex costumes.
Now, I'm not saying these type of cartoons, comics and illustrations have no artistic merit. In the case of Japanese minimalist super deformed awah characters, the characters are quite well done, as they are usually shrinking an already developed character design, or are really exploring the hilarity that follows with exaggerated features that summarise a character's personality if they are already established (for example, an SD Lina Inverse with a roaring face, or miniature Skuld in Oh! My Goddess) But when you get a whole bag of both western and asian artists thinking that hilarity ensues as soon as they start overusing SD emotion masks, it just seems to get a little old with me. How about instead of drawing silly masks to put over their character, they attempt to actually make their character pull a realistic face along those lines? Or is it possible to have a eastern styled character look shocked and surprised without their mouth turning into a gaping red rectangle and their eyes turn into empty white semicircles? I suspect a lot of it is pure laziness rather than a belief that emotion masks are still genuinely funny to see in anime and manga.
Ultimately, as an illustrator and a reader of comics, I am far more impressed by seeing an artists genuine grip on their character design by being able to have their main characters show a range of emotions realistically without the artist relying on easy emotion masks. I've come to this decision from studying my own work and the work of others. I'm guilty of having one stock standard face for my protagonist, replaced with slight variations with no real emotional change. It is a difficult but impressive task to deck your characters with a range of emotions. So, if you're an illustrator reading this, maybe it's time to start creating trends and leaping off the emotion overuse wagon? And while we're at it, please don't get lazy and fall into the trend of cute and easy art. Push yourself as hard as you can. Once you've reached a technical peak, by all means enjoy yourself with easily drawn simplistic cute characters. But don't fall into a rut by only drawing these thinking they are a substitute for good art.
Any and all comments are appreciated.
 Feather · Tue Nov 07, 2006 @ 05:24am · 1 Comments |
|
|
|
|
|
|
I don't know if I've been out of it, but there's been little to no music that intrigues me this year. All the bands I like haven't been releasing anything, so as a result all the cds I've been buying are previous releases. I wonder if this means I'm beginning to lose interest in music, or whether this year has just been really crap.
What do you people say? Has there been anything exciting released this year?
Feather · Wed Oct 11, 2006 @ 01:07pm · 3 Comments |
|
|
|
|
|
|
I've been breezing through the university holidays. The first two weeks were wasted on my own, frankly disappointing, dnd. My players seemed content, but I was very annoyed that a pursuit that I'd dedicated so much thought to didn't really play out how I'd liked, maybe due to lack of sleep the night before or a lack of use of challenge special abilities, or conversely, the fact one of my players can dish out far more damage than the other characters,... Whatever reason, I'm sort of disenchanted with the role of DM in that campaign, and am waiting to be properly inspired before attempting the next episode in the history of the irresponsible adventurers.
Maybe I'm just annoyed that I didn't kill any of them that session?
A lot of those first two weeks were spent reliving Red Dwarf, my mum bought all the discounted series she could from Kmart, so I'm pretty full bottle on that now. I wonder when the movie will come out, if it ever does. 'Course now none of the actors could pass for under 30, so it'll be interesting to see what they do with the usual curry-munching jokes.
After this period of extended sleeping and boxer wearing, I started my advanced radio unit at a radio station connected to my university. Despite being in such a potentially exciting situation, the station is dedicated to the elderly listeners and a demographic of over 40's only. Ain't no kids playing no decent music here. It does, however, have a fairly special radio news room and a fair few subscriptions to the major news services of Australia. I come in for about 4-5 hours every day and construct the news bulletins that are read out every hour. The good news is it's all quite enjoyable work- I really got to love the opinionated conversation of a newsroom in my first semester of journalism, and even though we only have about three of us working away in there at most times, there's always time for a bit of a chat/argument. I get to listen to BBC world and scan over sky news for decent material and am slowly filling my contact book with the mobile phone numbers of useful sources. Haven't actually read the news live yet, I think I need to build up a bit more trust with the news editor first- but it's only a matter of time.
Also turned to the dark side and am doing reviews for my native uni magazine now, instead of the embattled highschool friend managing metior. The fact is, with honours I'll still be at my uni for a while, so there's a chance to snatch the position of editor. Career-wise, it just makes far more sense. I stole like, nine free Dresden Doll badges for the gawth girl at my work, my little sister and my friend's housemate. Feel cheap, but I'm in the red now, so it doesn't matter.
I work about six hours a week now (paid work, that is) Gives me free time, but it's nightmarish financially, especially seeing as every weekday I have to drive up to inner metropolitan and then back again. Fuel = Not cheap. Worst thing is at the moment of writing the whole financial thing has put a rift between my girlfriend and I. She's yet to buy a car, so the question of moving out or travelling seems to be aeons away. She works the same job as me, so we're both destitute.
More info as it happens.
I need to learn French. If anyone knows of any free podcasts with step by step guides, let me know!
Feather · Thu Jul 06, 2006 @ 10:49am · 1 Comments |
|
|
|
|
|
|
On the changing face of Gaia.
Site feedback and Gaia Community discussion are probably my favourite forums on Gaia at the moment. (Apart from my 8 page long crusade to get the djs wearable with visors again, of course) The thing that attracts me to these forums is the whole aspect of users banding together to collectively attempt to shape the future of the site, and the response from the development of the site that'll either take the views into consideration as a driving theme, or ignore the users demands and take the site down the road that appeals most to the admins.
The latest site layout change has revealed a major difference in the interests of the Gaia administration and the user base (or a vocal minority of the user base, unlikely according to the official polls.) The Gaia administration want to hip up and Generation Y the website. It's no longer about embararassing concepts such as roleplaying and anime, but a pseudo-Japanese themed youth social networking site on par with online communities such as Myspace.
On one hand, it's about Gaia growing up into the corporate world, maybe a future where the admins will not have to rely on keeping the servers running by releasing increasingly overdone donation items that serve as everything from black wolverine claws to a beetlelike black groinal hold-all. Maybe on the other hand with increasingly mainstream presentation of the site the admins will be getting both increased advertising dollars and yet still pump out the beetle hold alls to keep the users buying up big. (Too many b's in this sentence.)
Progress without the users approval is still progress and I seriously doubt the layout changes with cause a slump in users. The gaia user base is dedicated and hooked to the site, and although the features are obscured by a wash of fakish naff hyper colour that detracts from the appeal of the 'genuine' appeal of the site- a community designed and run by a group of comfortably nerdy but totally cool comic artists and japanophiles that are more interested in ninjas and samurai than lazing out on the beach with some sort of western corporate ideal of success. Is it the layout or the implied message? I get the feeling there wouldn't have been half as many complaints if the 'portal' image depicted an emo black t-shirted teenage in a dark roomer hanging hunch-backed over a computer console screen.
Feather · Mon Jun 26, 2006 @ 08:44am · 2 Comments |
|
|
|
|
|
|
My life is a constant tirade of my own inevitable procrastinations and idle dreams. If I had a dollar every time I'd thought to myself: "I shouldn't be doing this, I should be doing this." I'd have so much money I'd be causing massive inflation, Weimar Germany style. Thing is, I have an exam in 5 days, so I have a overhanging reminder to stop me from dedicating any real time to:
-Feature on Butane abuse.
-Feature on Yok and his new magazine.
-Zombi Nation.
-Building a time capsule to hide my DS in, ready to be recovered for when Diamond and Pearl eventually come out.
In a month, I should have at least made SOME progress on one of these fronts. sweatdrop
Feather · Sun Jun 04, 2006 @ 03:54pm · 1 Comments |
|
|
|
|
Feature Article Profile: Symbiotica. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Feather · Sun Apr 02, 2006 @ 04:11pm · 1 Comments |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Feather · Sat Apr 01, 2006 @ 01:39pm · 1 Comments |
|
|
|
|
A Salute to the Real Impartial. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Feather · Tue Feb 28, 2006 @ 12:26pm · 2 Comments |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Okay, so a job is just somewhere you go to earn money, right? A necessary evil, a place that you wouldn't be caught dead in if it weren't for that whole exchanging of hard currency thing society's got going. I'm learning that, to be honest, In the real world a job becomes a lot more than that.
First off, I know I've got a six day week ahead of me. I've done this before during my summer breaks, A&M bookstore, The Orchard. Both jobs had me with no life doing whatever it was they needed me to do repeatedly. The supermarket job has become a little more difficult. I've been there a year, and damnit, I know everyone now. I even know the people who had the sanity to get the hell out of the place and find a better job. I've outlasted TWO store managers, and sure as hell outlasted the majority of the casual staff. I don't quit.
But lately, the music's ******** pissed me off. Sharon the latest and longest lasting store manager doesn't get irritated when she's heard the same ******** song about some old Mid-west american dude's dead dog 5 times in a day. I do. That's why I stayed up the night before and actually burnt a cd for the store to use while I work there. (They played it once and once only in the wee hours of the morning before playing the dead dog song another 6 times)
My friend, let's call him Izzy. He's been there 2 years. Double my time. He's in Fruit and Veg department with me, and he's cool. He's one of the few people that realises the place isn't a long term plan, and that he needs to get out. Problem is the bosses of fruit and veg are now tempting him with bullshit talk that he's up and coming for a promotion. We already have a second in charge of our piddly department, and it took him 14 years of experience and general shittiness to get it. In which loads of speed was taken to help our current 2IC to brave the ridiculous night shifts, 1am rises and all night stock rotation filling sessions.
Izzy was up all of last night. 7pm to 8am.
I'm working the day following this all night excursion with Matthew. Matthew has a dull name, so I don't need to come up with a euphemism for him. Matt's a nice kid, but he doesn't work with urgency, and isn't fast enough. He also doesn't realise I've been around the store way longer than he has, and knows far more than he gives me credit for. I don't think he realises I was in law school either. We've got a few common interests, and he's more interesting than most of the people at the job, but that's not saying much.
Matthew goes for lunch. You get an hour, and that's generous. He takes 80 minutes. Comes back and decides to take 2 hours preparing vegie cuts for the next day (tuesday, busiest day, but he's obviously ******** about behind the scenes, it doesn't take that long) He must be sitting back there without any supervision and eating stock, which he does often. I've come back from my lunch, during whioch Matthew's filled little to nothign in the department. Sharon told us to broom the place an hour ago. He hasn't done it. That constitutes big ******** waste of time.
Here's where I make a mistake. I've got no idea who to complain to, so I msg Izzy, as he knows what Matthew's like. Yes, I should have confornted Matthew directly and told him to pull his finger out. But I'm not like that. As much as it aggravates people, if I have a problem with you, I'll dart, skirt and generally dodge the topic until you pick up the hints that I'm pissed, and then I expect you to right the wrongs without having to go through the whole 'Listen, let me lecture you for a moment' bullshit. If someone needs to think why I'm angry, they should have the sense to think about their own actions and do the maths themselves. We're all big kids now.
Anyhow, I msg Izzy saying matt's being slack. IZZY COMES TO WORK. No reply msg, just hey! I'm here! I got no sleep last night and I am not being paid, but I'll happily work at this s**t-hole job which I've told you myself I hate! I'm easy! My jaw drops a full metre. "Go home" I say. "Excuse" He mumbles. What kind of person works when they're not being paid, when they're clearly sleep-deprived and when you KNOW they're better than it. It just didn't make sense. There was bad vibe for the rest of the day as I was mixed with guilt about getting Izzy up and the fact that Izzy was so tapped in the head. I hope he gets out there soon, or something happens. I guess I'll see how it eventuates.
(Sorry if the intro promised too much. I was watching Scrubs just then and I picked up some bad habits.)
Feather · Mon Jan 09, 2006 @ 03:11pm · 2 Comments |
|
|
|
|
|
