More Like 'Lizlolfos'

So, while the three of us basically sat around and did other bullshit that didn't involve updating a blog, Ryuu remained as busy a little bee as ever, churning out drawing after drawing and uploading them to his DA, each one just as bland and manufactured as the last. Most of them can be sorted into one of two categories:

1. Sloppy pencil sketches on lined paper of one of his shitty OCs just standing around in a boring, recycled pose
2. Sloppy pencil sketches on lined paper of two of his shitty OCs doing schmoopsy-woopsie kissyface or something else that serves only to prop up Ryuu's floppy dick.

The majority of entries in both of those categories have no background to speak of, though I'm tempted to just say that none of them do, because the very few exceptions have little more than embryonic, half-formed backgrounds done in noodly lines that remind me very much of the shitty notebook doodles I made in middle school. This one is a good example.

"Come quickly, before my spine snaps completely in half!"

Nice wonky perspective there, Ryuu. I don't know why Zelda's complaining when it looks like she can just push that wall over, especially since the bricks are clearly made out of wiggly jiggly gelatin.

Of course, the only reason there's a background at all is because Zelda would've looked really silly and much less like a wimpy damsel who needs saved by her beeg bwave hewo if she was leaning up against an empty void, so like most instances where Ryuu's forced to do something that requires more than just the barest of effort, he scribbles it out as fast as he can, and then probably strokes himself some more over what a genius he is for putting in a shitty background.

But I'm not going to pick apart that pic (yet). The picture I'm focusing on today falls squarely in the first category of Ryuu's pinup-o-matic art process. Sloppy pencil sketch, check. Dumb, derivative OC that we don't care about, check. Standing in a stupid pose...

Well...

Uhhhh...

Everyone's probably already making this joke, so I see no point in prolonging it. That lizard is clearly masturbating. It's so obviously whacking off that I really have no idea how Ryuu didn't stop at some point, look at this pic, and go, "Wow, I totally just drew a picture of a lizard jerking it." He really could have put that sword somewhere--ANYWHERE--else, and even though I'm sure Ryuu was going for some sort of menacing snarl, that is a look of sleazy euphoria if ever I saw one. Put that lizard on the edge of a bed with a magazine in one hand and his belt 'round his knees and I can guaran-damn-tee that more than a few of you will find it very familiar. I'd almost suspect that he did it on purpose, except Ryuu isn't anywhere close to being that clever (and masturbation is probably THA DEVIL in his fundie house anyway), so it's more likely that this was subconscious on his part. Make of that what you will.

Ryuu also can't spell. I know, this is hardly news, but when a misspelled word is in the fucking picture for chrissake, not to mention the title of the pic--you know, the part that everyone can see displayed prominently in your gallery--it's kind of hard to miss. You'd think that'd make it important enough to spend two seconds checking Google for the proper spelling, but then again you probably aren't High King Ryuu of the Republic of Halfassia.

It's 'lizalfos', Ryuu. Notice the 'lfos' at the end, as in 'stalfos' or 'wolfos', or 'give-more-than-half-a-shit-about-your-audience-for-oncelfos'.

Yes, folks, I actually do completed monster art!

This DA entry actually illustrates pretty well the sort of distortion that shapes Ryuu's world view. For one thing, he calls this "completed monster art" when it's anything but. Completed art usually involves inking or coloring or shading or, you know, erasing the extra fucking lines, and yes that includes the ruling on your shittyass notebook paper. Completed art is stuff that's finished enough to use commercially. Can you imagine a reputable business putting something like this on their cartons? Even the money-grubbing anus weevils that created this monstrosity wouldn't touch that shit.

A lazy, low quality, blatantly derivative rip-off of a movie, and yet still more effort than anything Ryuu has ever churned out.

Notice that I said "finished enough", not "skilled enough", because I'm sure if I didn't point that out, there'd be a bunch of crying about it. Even if this was the most beautifully rendered pic with exquisite anatomy and all that other crap, it still wouldn't be completed art. It's a sketch at best, and I'm being generous to grant it even that.

Of course, all that's only true in the real world. In Ryuu's world, all that's required is that just enough effort was thrown in to allow people to praise him to his satisfaction, and with an ego as swollen as his bloated internet avatar, that doesn't take a whole lot. And in this world where everything Ryuu shits out is automatically solid fucking gold, he of course has to reassure his stunned audience, who are no doubt rendered breathless by this incredible example of artistic versatility and talent. Yes, folks, you are not hallucinating, he actually does the same mediocre crap that he's been doing for the last several years.

For all the variety and imagination that actual lizalfos have in the games, and for all the real lizards and other reptilian animals that he could've pulled from, he creates the most generic round-skulled dinosaur bullshit that he could've possibly made and then has the gall to brag about it.

The Lizofols in Hyrule are the most well-known of the specie, but Moblins are more dominant. In Dawne, Dodongos are the main threat. Gandor has its top monster as the ReDead. But in Archon, Lizofols are the kings of catastrophe.

They dwell in the forests on the outer edge of Archon, their old civilization that had crumbled and lost to weather and time still being their camps and shelter. They are reduced to just a savage tribe of lizard-men who will kill any who wander into their ruins.

They admire their legendary hero, a statue made of him with amber eyes on their temple's pedestal. Trouble brews, however, when an archeologist takes this relic and places it in the Archonian museum. The Lizafols are determined to get it back, even if it means ravaging the kingdom to do it...

It might be easier to just say that the whole description is a giant mess of mangled sentences. "Kings of catastrophe"? Is this a Saturday morning cartoon? That line about their civilization is so muddled that I don't even know what the fuck it means. Is he saying they live in the ruins of their old city? Why the fuck don't you just say that, then? So their legendary hero is a statue and it's made of... him? I'm not sure if that's redundant or disgusting. Why not just say "They admire their legendary hero and have a statue of him on their temple's pedestal"? Oops, nope, we're Ryuu and even though we half-ass everything else, for SOME REASON we have to go out of our way to write the loopiest sentences we can manage. It seems to be the only thing he puts any effort into, which is simply baffling.

It's not deep or artsy if you do it without knowing what the hell you're doing. It just makes things confusing and reeks of trying too hard.

I had fun with this guy, the head came out awesome, I think!

Surprise surprise, Ryuu thinks that something he did is awesome! Too bad he's wrong. The nose is badly skewed for one thing, which could've easily been fixed if he'd bothered with perspective lines, but more importantly, at some point between drawing the muzzle and the teeth (every single fucking tooth, thus turning his mouth into an ugly grey shaggy mess at this resolution), he seems to have forgotten where the muzzle ends and drew the canine teeth in the middle of the mouth. Either that or they aren't canines at all and are just randomly huge teeth among a whole bunch of uniformly tiny ones. It's really hard to tell with this guy. I won't get into the fact that having specialized teeth such as canines are a mammalian thing, because whatever, fantasy.

I may do more monsters in the future because both storywriting with my love and playing Skyward Sword are inspiring me. And also, because I'm playing Skyward Sword, Journal of the Wayward Redguard is on hold for a while.

I hope you all like!

Lizofols (C) Nintendo

And by "inspiring" he, of course, means that he's slinking around this fertile field, carefully sown and tended by other hard-working artists, and ripping off the ripe fruit like some kind of mutated, tumorous fox.

Pretty sure we touched several times upon why lined paper is a shitty art support, but here it is again, making his picture even more needlessly cluttered and really damn hard to make sense of, and despite his promise to clean it up before uploading, he sure couldn't be bothered to do it this time. I dunno, maybe it wasn't possible without eating away at some of the penciling, and oh, how unthinkable it would be to deny us all those totally necessary construction lines and shit. After all, that's what makes his art just like the professionals!

I like the bonus whine about people not licking his boots every time he shits out a pic.

Too bad he doesn't understand what those lines are for, as demonstrated by his claim that he doesn't "use lots of circles and lines," which of course means he doesn't actually do it like professional artists do it, but more like one step up from a rank amateur. Ryuu doesn't bother trying to learn why things are done the way they are, he just does whatever he likes, after taking a cursory glance at the superficial appearance to make sure that it kinda sorta looks the same, much like a con artist who puts fixtures in a bathroom that don't actually hook up to any plumbing. He draws the legs with no mind paid to skeletal structure or volume or proportions, just a few well-practiced lines that read "leg", and then draws over the same lines a little darker, after which he crows about what a damn genius he is.

Seriously, those legs are fucking ugly and there's no understanding whatsoever about how they're supposed to work. They're just a bendy, boneless, blocky digitigrade version of his usual "legs spread apart with one foot in side-view and the other just shy of head-on view" pose which is really boring. And that back one looks kind of like a penis, just saying. Basically everything he does is based on memorized rote, and since he thinks following a memorized formula to make art is a good thing, you end up with fifty thousand pictures in all the same god damn poses with the same legs and the same three sets of eyes and blah blah blah.

I'm not an art thief, tee-hee!

I'm not kidding, though, it's actually really hard to see what the hell's going on. The basic pose is legible enough, but it's confusing as fuck trying to find where his tail is, or how big his thigh is, or whether that's his neck flap or part of his chest, or how the fuck his chest even works for that matter. If the only way you can comprehend what the fuck you're looking at is by literally mapping it out with your eye, line by line, to see how shit lines up, then you're doing it wrong.

A good picture is discernible at a glance, bonus points if you can shrink it down to a thumbnail and still tell what you're looking at, especially if the picture is essentially a model sheet for something you created. People want to know what the fuck they're looking at, preferably without having to be told; they don't want to bother trying to work out a confused mess. But Ryuu doesn't give a shit about other people. If it's good enough for him, then it should be good enough for everyone else.