Animation Source Forums

Whoah! When did you get into photorealism??

I guess I need to visit your dA gallery more often. lol That's nothing short of a-frickin'-MAZING!

And your points are well made in total, UK. Heh. Sorry if I digressed momentarily there...

Haha, some time ago when I sorely needed the practice. xD
They take quite some time, and I've not done it a while because I am bad and I loooove stylizing things dramatically. ;;

I really should do some more, because it is a great way to get used to the shapes and fur directions and fur lengths.
I never did go back and try adding proper shadows to that one ...

It's a good example of what can be achieved with practice and patience. That picture took me hours, and I didn't do a background to go with it (that's literally scribbled airbrush, woe is me. ;; ), and that's my best attempt so far - others didn't turn out so well. xD

I guess I'll add my thoughts about this since this seems to be a hot subject.

First off, towards UK, I just don't understand how renders are any more "against copyright laws" than photemanips are. Speaking just about Balto or Lion King or any other movie source, aren't they to the same degree as theft. From you post were you explained all of this, this is what I got out of it: photomanips are okay if they are photos under the free royalty or Creative Commons license, but Disney and Universal are NOT under the license or the free royalty so therefore it is NOT OKAY to manipulate photos by Disney or Universal. To by ears, who has no clue about copyright laws, this is what your explanation said. Maybe I read it wrong or something, but this is what is sounds like to me...

Anyways, I just wanted to defend people who render. I used to do a lot of rendering and thought I'd explain why so maybe these people who do it right will gain just a little but of respect.

I can draw. I have taken art classes since I was six and have done multiple oil pantings and plan to pursue this hobby as at least a minor in Studio Art or just simply a hobby. I didn't render because I couldn't draw. Cartoon dogs are not my strong point because I deal mostly with realism, but yes I can draw a decent husky. The only reason I did renders instead of artwork is because (at the time) I did not have a scanner. People without "fancy" technology are at a great disadvantage. I tried to do artwork socailly on the computer, but I found it impossible. Holding a mouse and holding a pencil is entirely two different things I don't understand how anyone can make a decent picture using only a computer and photoshop. The pencil tool is not the same as an actual pencil.

And it takes more skill than you may realize. For those of you who are artists, yes, it is going to be easier for you because you are skills in art. What you have to realize is that art is a skill certain are gifted with. It is not something everyone can do. I know people her tried and tried and tried to draw decently, but artists just see the world differently. It is true that everyone probably CAN render... Badly. (which is technically against the rules) To render well is something entirely different.

The difference between this and this. You cannot tell me that there is no improvement seen here.

Anyways, I do have a scanner now but the reason I do not go back and draw all my characters is because I simply don't care about them anymore. That was a hobby I had a kid and grew out of it. I do like my characters and I'm mostly proud of them, but I do not have the time to waste on them anymore. I personlly don't really find the point of fanart. Yes, I do love to look at some people artwork and I watch many people on DA who are fanartists, but if you really want to pursue art as a career like I do, you will eventually have to grow up, stop doodling other people's characters, and go draw something that is completely your own.

Why does everyone try to suck the fun out of this site? Honestly, I understand and get annoyed myself when kids do something that is actually against the rules including sparkle dogs, bad renders, and bad characters. But if they do it decently, just let them go. This is a KIDS site so all of us adults need to stop trying to make this kids grow up so fast. They are immature, yes, but just let them be. Don't we all wish we could be kids again, anyways? So stop trying to speed up their simple childhood; it's going by fast on it's own.

I am no fan artist, but I can totally respect and understand the frustration and annoyance fan artists of some dedication and quality of talent feel about this on-going problem of really bad renders, line art colorings and really bad fan art. When the site is slathered with all of this mediocre or bad stuff, it substantially diminishes the overall concept of fan art, and cheapens the works done by those fair to good artists, whose material becomes lost in the grandiose "noise"...the sea of bad submissions which MOST casual surfers (be they resident members or just guests passing through) are not going to take the time to sort through to find some good material they can really enjoy.

And as I said earlier, just because someone wants to do a thing doesn't mean that they ought to do that thing. Not everyone can be a writer, not everyone can make good music videos, not everyone can be a musician. So it also follows that not everyone can be an artist. Tell me, would you be willing to sit through an amateurish attempt by a kid, teenager or young adult to play a musical piece on a guitar or keyboard, when they've had little to no practice, let alone never really took lessons? When they simply took a well-known and perhaps popular piece of music and bungled their way through it just "because they're learning and they have to start somewhere"? If you tell me "sure, I would...they deserve that chance", I'd say you were crazy. Because I've heard music rendered badly on a variety of instruments...and it sucks. Badly. Go listen to a concert of even secondary/high school level, and tell me what you hear qualifies as "music" (believe me, I know this...I used to be in concert and marching band in high school). But listen to some teenager or young adult (or adult) who has spent years learning guitar or keyboard ply through a piece of music, and it can be intense...even emotionally-moving. THAT'S worth sitting through.

The same logic follows with art (and, therefore, renders and, I suppose, line art colorings). A truly great and inspiring piece of original art (and maybe a really good rendering or line art coloring) can be incredible to see, and moving. Even an only fair piece can be interesting in its own way. But a bad one? It's like sitting through listening to a group of ten year old kids "play" a piece from Mozart...or even a rendition of a popular movie theme. Yeah. You can just imagine the horror. Same thing with fan art/renders/line art colorings. Not even a slight difference. Bad is bad is bad.


One does not have to decide to pursue a career in art or animation just to become a passionate and skilled artist. One can simply remain a lay artist. One who does it for the sheer enjoyment. What's so wrong about that? But yes, these kids and teens (and even young adults) OUGHT to be drawing their own stuff...not just rendering and coloring in blank line arts.


Who's trying to "suck the fun out of this site"? Why is expecting members to follow the rules AND make an actual effort at fan submissions such a tragic thing to you? And why is holding those who obviously are just doing it for attention and because the staff doesn't monitor it actively (in spite of how much they seem hell-bent on monitoring comments left by people...especially if they are of a critical or not-happy-happy-joy-joy and instructive bent) such a bad thing all of a sudden?

This is not a kid's site. We've all bandied that one around ad nauseum. The movies may be primarily aimed at children, sure. But it's been firmly established in discussion and by analysis that most of the membership spans an age range of about 14-25, give or take, with smaller amounts of members on either side of that range (younger and older). Yes, there ARE some kids, but they are a relatively small number. Yes, there ARE full adults, but they too are a relatively small number. All this is because most of the members who are here grew up with these movies when they WERE kids, and are still fans (to varying degrees). And while most of them find the drama and the nutty aspects of fandom here to be annoying and befuddling (even if many of them participate sooner or later in adding to that), they remain fans...and they remain here. There are, in fact, few kids to "protect" from the drama and the opining on this site. What it comes down to mostly is hypersensitive preteens and teenagers (and some hypersensitive young adults) who cannot handle criticism and contrary opinions.

That is the point.

That is exactly what I said.



I used to do ALL of my artwork with a mouse. It takes a lot more time and uses different tools but if people go looking there's hundreds of tutorials to learn from.
Then I invested in a tablet - not for everyone, but because I do art so much I found it invaluable.
People use this excuse of "I don't have photoshop!" or "I don't have a tablet!" a lot and you really don't need it. These are tools, they don't magically make it all better.
It's like Crayola pencils VS Prismacolor pencils - Prismacolors are amazing pencils and many professionals use and recommend them but if you can't afford these expensive pencils you can still draw good art with cheap Crayola pencils.

When it comes to programs, everyone knows not everyone can afford Photoshop. It's an incredibly expensive program.
But there are options. There's Paint Tool SAI, which costs roughly $50-ish I believe. ArtRage, which I am unsure of the price but significantly less than Photoshop. GIMP, which is 100% free.
Even MSPaint can create beautiful artwork. (And I direct you towards this video, in which someone recreates the Mona Lisa in MSPaint - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk2sPl_Z7ZU )

Your last sentence makes it sound like everyone who still draws fanart is immature ...
Even professional artists will draw fanart of their favourite characters, animators seldom get to draw any of their own characters because the characters created for the movie they're working on was created by someone else.
Breathing life into characters is an important and beautiful aspect of creating artwork and I've seen fanart done by some amazing artists that truly re-imagines a character and it's fantastic.
Most people on AS do not want to pursue fine art as a career, I know I don't and yet I draw an awful lot, they just want to have fun with characters they like.



You do realize if the site said "Well if we don't allow it then it won't be as much fun." this place would devolve into God-knows what.
Many people I have spoken to want AS to return to it's original purpose - A FAN SITE.
This place is overrun with things that have NOTHING to do with the movies the Sources are based upon, that makes it significantly LESS FUN.
When I found AS I would browse the fan art galleries for hours because I loved seeing the new situations people drew the official characters in, new interactions and direct relations to these characters people made as characters of their own.
That barely happens any more and it saddens me.
Renders were not even a thing when BS was made, a couple of people did it to see what it would look like and then everyone started doing it.

I think I cam off a little harsh in my last post. I really do respect fanartists and as I said before, my entire DA watch list consists of fanartists. I was just trying to say that not everyone wants to spend money on a hobby. I personally used MS paint for all my renders, and as far as I know, so does Cat(WH14T), and no one can argue that she does some amazing renders.

Also, something I forgot to add before, was that rendering does not mean tracing. As an arists, UK, you should understand the use of a base drawing. Again, to us Cat as an example, rarely do her renders look like Balto or Jenna, she just uses their body as a reference point to get a basic body. I would argue that new artists that want to become good should do a couple of renders just to learn the anatomy and style of the Balto universe. Of course, if someone really wants to make good original drawings, they do eventually have to pick up a pencil and a blank sheet of paper, but rendering is a good tool when used correctly.

I am all for this site becoming more fanbased and I never meant to say that anything should go here to make it more fun. I was part of the group that was and still is planning on cleaning up Balto source. I am also not against contractive critism at all. If something is bad, an artist should be told how to improve. I just do think that some of the "critisim" DOES border on bullying. Not necessarily anyone on this topic, but some comments I have seen that claim to be critism are just masked insults. I can understand the Mods frustration there.

What I mean by sucking the fun out of the site is all the perfectionalism. Not everyone here is going to spend hours on a drawing, image, story, video, ect... That is the cold hard truth. People are all fans to a certain extent, as Jersey said. Some just come to relife some childhood memories and some just want to try their hand at fan creations. Everyone who does dedicated hours every day should realize that not everyone cares as much as we do. If something is decent, leave it be. If something is bad, give helpful adive. If something is against the rules, report it and let the Mods deal with it. Leave people who render alone and stop assuming that they are lazy whiners who think they can't draw. I hate this generalization.

I hate to be responsible for dragging this out, but I don't see generalizations being used for the most part. I know I have spoken to at least a few members who took my opinions well (believe it or not), and even PMed me privately asking for help. I have one such PM in my inbox right now, and it was very civil, very mature and very respectful. And that person got exactly that back from me in my response.

But if a kid, teen or, worse, a young adult is going to be a hypersensitive goob, I am not going to hold back just to avoid tripping over their emotions. And I don't think anyone should. But does that mean that I or anyone else trolls or flames them by simply offering a blunt or realistic opinion? Nuh uh. Not in the least. And really, flaming and trolling on such fan creations is actually quite rare...and THAT is what would constitute bullying. Critical opinions are not bullying. Those who seem to confuse that really need to wrap their heads around the difference and resolve it in their own minds, because it is the overreactions of certain members and mods, and the so-called "white knights" which causes most of the drama and misery in this area, NOT the critical opinions themselves. Fact.

The trouble is the vast majority of people who render do NOT use the characters as a base and then make it their own.
It really is just Balto/Steele/Simba/Whoever in different colours. I'm not even gonna start on when people go and add stupid things like wings or legwarmers or mohawks to make them "unique" because that's a whole other kettle of fish.

All I am saying with this render thing is that they essentially "cheapen" the fanart "community".
Renders require work, yes. I know this, I did 1 render once just to see what the fuss was about, but they add nothing to the fan community as a whole.

I don't want anyone to think they don't belong here simply because renders probably should not be considered as highly as they are and they wanted to render, I'd just like to see people take more pride in their ability and their work and a bit more respect for the movies and the characters themselves.

And keeping Cat as an example - her renders are probably the best ones, they look like they could've come straight from the movie itself, but Cat is also a very good artist in her own right and I vastly prefer looking at her original work over the renders.
No matter how well rendered they are, they're still just renders.

I don't see why we should allow things just because "People don't want to spend a lot of time on things, they just want to have fun."
I'd also like to point out that giving helpful advice is often met with "OMG DON'T BE SO MEAN" because people have this silly notion no one should ever hear a bad word said about their work ever.
Reporting things does NOTHING because a certain few mods prefer to molly-coddle every member and will close a report with no action taken because "Just because it's not up to YOUR standards doesn't mean it's bad" and there is NO quality control any more.

I really didn't have much of anything against renders when the craze started, my dislike of them stems from the fact that people now seem to value renders above everything and even the worst renders are accepted and deemed "It's okay they're only starting" or "It's okay they can't do any better" or "It's okay this is all they want to do" and it becomes frustrating to see GOOD content buried under yet more recolours of the same screenshots over and over again.

Accessories. lol Eeek. Especially the leg warmers and glo sticks. Good Lord, what can possibly be going through the minds of people when they add such cornball crap to a wolf or dog???

I would first just like to mention that the horrible accessories don't just happen on renders. They are on drawings as well. And, for the majority, on those stupid DollDivine (or other dressing up site) dogs.

I am not trying to cause an arguement here because I do really believe in most of the points the two of you are making. I just don't want renders to become the new word for low quality when the reasons you are stating you don't like them happen else where on the site.

"They are bad quality" - So are some fan art and fanfictions and fanvideos and ect... Bad qualilty stuff is always going to out number the good because it takes less time. The same problem is happening in the roleplaying forum as well, so believe me, I know the frustration.

"They're just tracings" - I have scene multiple people post drawing on AS that are just tracing of a scene. Now whether they printed out a picture and literally traced it or just paused the movie and hand drew it, we can't be sure. Obviously one takes a lot more skill than the other, but both are still as much tracing as renders are.

I absolutely agree that the quality of everything on AS needs to go up majorly, but I have noticed that renders just seem to get picked on.

As for what I meant by people not wanting to spend time on their work here, I just meant that not every peice sent is going to be top-notch. Now, it shoudn't look like a bunch of scribbles and there should be some time put in to the work, but I personally think that the standards of the senior members are set a little too high.

Now, Jersey, I do believe in constructive critism as I said before. As for opinions, well, that is when it gets a little sketchy. If someone where to tell an artist that their head is disproportionate to the body and makes the whole thing look weird and that artist whines and cries about it to the Mods, then the Mods should just ignore them and tell them to take the advice. But if the Mods were to allow any comment and opinoin to be shared on here, the lines between bullying and opionating would be blurred. Some people think it would be alright to point out all the bad stuff and say "That sucks." That's obviously not morally right. It should not be how goal as older members to make the new members feel awful about their artwork. I like to think of it as if you wouldn't say it to their face, don't say it over the internet. If you could not look someone in the eye and tell them your blunt opinion, then it is probably a rude and unnecessary "critical" opinion. Just because we are typing out the words doesn't mean we throw all ethics out the window.

I found this somewhere on BS, before it was deactivated.

it does happen, a lot actually. Random ones such as neck-lasses, ear rings, piercings...I've see lots of them on renders.

The Batman - I wouldn't even consider that a render. There is a reason it was deactivated. My point, if you had read my post carefully, was that it does happen on renders but it doesn't ONLY happen on renders. I know perfectly well about some of the horrible stuff that gets sent to BS, and although renders are part of the problem, they are not the full problem themselves. As for the picture, it got deactivated because it is not a render. Or at least not a good one in the least. Let me make myself clear: I AM NOT DEFENDING BAD RENDERS. I am defending the good renders that got lost in the generalization that renders are just lazy fanarts.

I know.

http://www.animationsource.org/balto/en ... 37140.html
Nother 'good' render that has a hat.
http://www.animationsource.org/balto/en ... umart=7015 filled in lineart
http://www.animationsource.org/balto/en ... b_gall=660
http://www.animationsource.org/balto/en ... b_gall=660
Just random.

I'm not trying to be mean, but it's just really tiring to see renders with different variations, and sometimes with eye-damaging colors. It can really kill someone's love for the show to see the fans come up with this stuff, basically just redesigning Balto. I would enjoy to see a drawing, no matter how "bad" it may be over a render.

I do miss going into a image gallery and seeing graphics, however.

I don't understand why all of those are even on BS. The only one I don't have a problem with is the brown one with the spots. I didn't feel like looking to hard, but if that character is accepted on AS and has a decent bio, I'd just let that one go. As for the amazing Balto render with a hat, well, that may be a good render, but it is a bad character who has absolutely nothing in his bio. Like I have said again and again, I am all for cleaning up AS and making it a fansite again. I would never ever defend stuff like that. Yes, the Balto render with spots isn't really realisitc, but the render isn't horrible and it's not a sparkel dog. I WOULD defend that one as long as it is also a good character. I don't really care enough to look though.

Honestly, if AS got rid of rendering, you would get your wish, Batman. The entire site would have so many horrible "drawings" on here that there would be no good artwork to be found because it would have drowned in the ocean of dogs made with the MS Paint Brush Tool. Everyone always said they would rather see a bad drawing than a render, but think about it.... would you really? You would rather see this than this?

No offence to Saske, but yes, I'd rather see someone draw then render.