User blog:Angel Emfrbl/A little bit of a talk

One of the legacy of drama over Miku's design is that people don't like their work being said too be too "Miku-esque". I tried to explain to someone earlier this year that a character they designed showed clear Miku influences, but they had 3 other influences that weren't showing up in the design enough. Its really hard to communicate over an idea, when I was simply trying to point out that their other influences BESIDES Miku simply needed to be more present to stop the character looking like a Miku clone with pink hair... :-/

It wasn't the pigtails, as I tried to explain, it was the outfit to, I also tried to explain that even within Vocaloid there was issues with this with Stardust and Ring. Funny thing is, I just tried to explain that they needed to be more adventuroues because Miku's design has done everything and now its getting harder to stand out from her.

I feel some people take things the wrong way, or are hyper sensitive about their work, they don't always get what your explaining. As much as its nice to consider every pig-tailed girl a special unique snowflake.... When you can't see how Iron Man is influencing a persons workor the other character, from an outsider looking in POV they could be saying that for the sake of it. To top it off, the only other character whose influence was visible in the work, also was a pigtailed character who wore outfits much like Miku Append or Vn01, and the third one I can't remember only seemed to contribute pink hair to the design. In the end they failed to understand where I was coming from.

The annoying thing is... The artwork wasn't bad... :-/

I think this is now the biggest issue with design, is that there are plenty of Vocaloid design variations now at this point within Vocaloid itself. From future-esque to retro-eques to normal clothes to robotic ones. But... People can't see how a design can be too close to miku's, given that every Vocaloid that does reference her within Vocaloid itself tends not to end up looking much like her at all.

And even worst when a person uses Miku as one of the ore designs, but they don't know what you mean by there is too much of her in the design and not enough of the other 3 characters. The design of the character was basically a few tweaks away from not being too Miku-like, but the artist wasn't going to listen as to why. :-/

This reminds me of a talk once about Dark Stalkers the video game. One of the things they did back in the 90s with the game was design each character so when they appeared as a silhouette, they could easily be picked out who they were despite being only a black image. Its much the same for Pokemon and gen.1, a lot of the way certain characters were designed was meant to be so that they could be uniquely shaped enough to be identified on a restricted pixel amount. Its also one of the reasons the original 151 stand out in modern Pokemon, the modern ones do have the same points... But they weren't designed to be in a tiny square.

Likewise, when you look at a character design, they final product shouldn't be too identical to their source materials. Only selective elements should be included, but given a personnel touch to make them unique to the source materia... This is why I said, you couldn't really see anything more then Miku in the design, its not she was literal Miku clone, it was there wasn't enough of the other characters + a unique touch.

But here is the thing... at any rate, the artist only wanted pure praise for their work. So any level of negative feed back would have given the same response. I feel anyway. I know I'm not the most tactful fan out there, and I know how people "feel" about the Miku-design influence.

Then again, I tend to be a type of person who feels too "well done" purely isn't helpful without any crit. But I've tried to fix issues with things even here on the wikia. I only didn't like things myself when nobody gave me a few days to fix up a page and they just ranted and raved without letting me get the work done. Especially when it was a experimental page... Honestly... That artist's work I'd loved to have seen tweaked to make it more unique, but instead they blocked me without being prepared to listen to anything else.

Also on DA, I've twice have had my own status as a failed artist thrown back at me as a response and an attack. The reason I gave up tho, was a mixture of real-life events, that weren't related to DA, its just DA became something not worth investing in. And this case was one of those times someone tried to throw it back at me. And to top it off, I was told "why don't I just delete my account?". Easy, because because though I'm not showing anything new or doing anything new, it doesn't mean I have nothing else to add.

I wouldn't say my own work was too glamorous, there is a reason wh I've never entered a art contest related to Vocaloid pretty much. But it surprises just as much that I lack confidence in my own artwork, people can have egos so big they don't like it when you say something negative about their work. For crying out, I've been in front of a teaching staff that tore my work apart limb from limb, never once giving me a confidence to press on forward with what I was doing. Everything I've ever said is nothing compared to the cruelty the professionals in the artworld can come up with. We're talking about staff who believe that "there is no such thing as originality as everything has been done before" to heart or "there is no such thing as talent when it comes to art" (basically they told us anyone can be an artist). And that was in the first two hours of starting a course.

I often feel like saying to some people "DA isn't the real world, the real world is much more nastier". I hated it whenever someone praised my artwork on-line because it really doesn't get you where you need to be at times. Even though I quit, as I have basically said, mine amee after 10 years of naught much at all and a lackbuster feed back session on whether it should continue. Even then, in Real Life I just went on to do other things, I didn't really give up art as a hobby I still continue it in some ways to this day. All it did was make me stop as a career, it never stopped me as a artist. :-/

Even then both negative and positive crits are needed otherwise you don't get the full specutrum. Your not going to make everyone happy 100% of the time.

I don't know, I feel like this is a rant more then a talk... Its not the first time I've come across an artist who blocks someone who says something negative. Heck, all I did once was disagree Len was the best Vocaloid on somewhere and I got banned when I said I preferred another Vocaloid over him. But that was more funny then anything else.