Animation Source Forums

I just thought of something while I was viewing a character. Why the heck to people make characters and then have it look up ending like this?

.Mate:Open
.Crush:Open
.Siblings:Open
.Parents:Open - How does your character even exist?
.Puppies:Open

The way I see it, this is just another form of laziness. If you have to depend on others to finish what you created because you're too lazy to think of anything, then don't create the character. Not only is it annoying to see the word "open" exploded all over the page, but it's also an invitation for more useless characters.

Though there is a difference between a well developed character asking for a mate vs. a character page that has open slots for nearly everything about the character. That is when I think the character should be deactivated, it's incomplete.

I hate it when I see this as well. The crush thing I understand in most cases, but the siblings and parents thing I don't. Usually, when developing a character, if I would rather not give names or details, I say the family is "Unknown", which leaves a lot more room for interpretation. Leaving it "Open" like that, however, tends to be quite irritating... so yes, I agree with you on this, Mighty. It should be deactivated for incompletion/lack of details. If they'd like it to be put back up, then they should put "unknown" or even names if they so feel like it.

I agree with you on just putting something as unknown, that isn't an issue.

But I dare post these as examples?
I mean no disrespect to the owners.
http://www.animationsource.org/balto/en ... 43009.html
http://www.animationsource.org/balto/en ... 40287.html
http://www.animationsource.org/balto/en ... 42776.html

Mighty: Wow, I've seen some but not that bad. I've never actually seen it with an open niece and everything. Woah. o-o

Wow. It's like these people just don't wanna write the characters out. At all. And I thought coloring linearts and blanks were laziness. I think this might be worse. At least there's a chance that the characters in the blanks and linearts are well written. This? Seriously, it's like they don't care at all about their character or they're too lazy to come up with their own ideas. I understand designs, but this is YOUR character, not someone else's. Make it your OWN.

I mean, if you guys need HELP then by all means ask. But we can't create characters for you. It's like the others do the work but the creator gets credit because it's THEIR character. That is NOT right at all.

I'm sorry, this got me really upset. I mean no disrespect, I'm sure the creators of the characters are nice people, but they just can't do that xD

Oh, dear gracious. -_-

Though you know what it seems I've come to realize? Very few people give a flying rat's tail about making REAL characters on this site, let alone real fancharacters. All they care about it which two coat patterns (I refrain from saying "design" because markings are only a small portion of a character design...VERY few people on here bother to give characters their own builds. In fact, most of them just take the build of whatever character they're tracing and it'll change from render to render...) look prettiest together and what they make when they get combined. Aka "let's make them mates and pups!"

Because to them, all that matters is that their character is connected to so-and-so's character so that more people are involved and somehow they are therefor more popular, or they feel like they or their character is popular when other people work on it.

(Even though the handful of members who actually know what they're doing know that that's kind of ridiculous. >.>)

Wanna be "popular"? Then get off your butt and WORK on YOUR stuff. If you rely on other people to do all your stuff, all you're gonna be seen as is a lazy wannabe. Quit relying on tracing and coloring (aka renders and linearts*) to make your pictures, quit asking for relations for your colorful coat pattern*, and for gracious' sake, just get up and do something PRODUCTIVE already!

Won't be perfect at first, no---no one's is---but you're definitely not gonna get anywhere putting in as little effort as you do. For goodness' sake!


...alright, got a tad off-topic there. But seriously. Stop being lazy.

*Note: I'm not saying that these are a horrible and abominable things that you should never do. It's totally ok if you wanna render or color in a lineart every once in a while for the fun of it, and if your character already has a substantial development and you're having a bit of trouble with some of the other characters involved in his or her story, then sure, let someone make their relation or make a contest. I'm just saying that when you use these options as a crutch and do next to no real work yourself, it's lazy, annoying, and gets you no where. So stop.

I think Natti pretty much covered what I wanted to say here.

I totally agree. It's just getting ridiculous. I know people tend to get annoyed about 'the good old days' but in this case, there really was 'good old days' when people actually put thought into their characters and used them for more than just popularity. When the fan characters section first came in, there was a lot of really well thought out and wonderfully designed (not just talking about markings here :/) characters who only got relations when necessary or already had them. Now all I'm seeing is brief three liner personalities and histories where the characters parents die, they're and orphan and an outcast and find love and have pups the end (just an example ;3) and lists of relations with the words 'open' afterwards. Natti's right. It's just darn lazy.