When Your Characters STILL Fucking Suck

So Ryuu uploaded a new sketch: 

Oh fuck's sake. Here we go again.

 

I'll leave the actual art critique to everyone else, because I'm just here to call your attention to Ryuu's comments:

“Hey, everyone. I'm not dead. Just been kinda going through some... trying times, including confidence.”

If anyone's even slightly paying attention, it's pretty easy to tell he's not dead. He comments on things and has uploaded a journal since his last few sketches were posted. If he's doing this while dead, we have a serious problem that needs to be remedied immediately. I recommend buying a flamethrower, because the zombie apocalypse is officially under way. Your friendly tip of the day: the undead don't like fire, guys.

But dude, no one really gives a crap that your confidence is in the shitter. If your confidence goes to hell because of, what, six people not liking your art then you're going to have fun trying to become a professional illustrator.

“Hey, hold on," Ryuu's fan squad whines. “How do you know Ryuu wants to be an illustrator? Where do you get off making that assumption? He's never said that!”

To which I reply “BITE ME,” because he did:

His excuse for using notebook paper has been "I can't afford a sketchbook".
Sounds like it's time to find a new lie.

If Ryuu thinks we're being mean to him, he's gonna have a bad time when he applies to art school. It's generic anime-style art and shitty ripoff characters. The best thing you can hope for in this case is getting laughed out of the room. You will not get accepted into any credible institution of art in this country with your shit.

Back to the comments:

“I've been editing things on Vassi as he (along with many others) try to go to a more original story route, than LoZ. I hope the edits are all favorable.”

I'd say I hate to break it to you, but that would be a lie: these edits (if you can even call them that) suck and I'm not sure where the fuck I'm supposed to start with this.

How about here: he's making it sound like this is an overhaul that's taking a lot of time and effort, but a quick comparison with his Grandmaster's Counterstrike sketch from last October shows only minimal changes.

He's missing the dumbass pieces of cloth he had on his boots, he now has asinine epaulettes, the Sheikah symbol is gone, and he's replaced it with something he ripped from The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion.Because if you're going to half-ass a character and rip something off, you may as well half-ass the rip and steal from something extremely popular.

BUT WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT FOR AN ORIGINAL UNIVERSE. THAT DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE. THE POINT IS TO CREATE THINGS YOURSELF, NOT RUN AROUND RIPPING WHATEVER YOU LIKE FROM EXISTING FRANCHISES. FANDOMS ARE NOT A PLAGIARISM BUFFET.

... anyway, this doesn't really qualify as an extensive overall. We can still see he's a giant rip and the biggest change (removal of the Sheikah symbol) has been replaced with another damn rip.

The edits are pretty much worthless. Ripping more shit to fix a character who's already a rip is the dumbest thing I have ever heard.

Two, that “original story” thing. Just because you make a character in an original setting doesn't mean you can rip off things from other fandoms. It's still art theft, you're still lazy, and we're still going to call you on it.

Also, Ryuu's previous characters from original settings are Crosshair and Orion. The former's a ripoff of Samus Aran + Rei Ayanami from Evangelion (with added space legs!), the latter's a blatant self insert + Sora from Kingdom Hearts. If this is his idea of originality, Vassi's just going to get worse.

(As is Ryo. Which makes this squid feel just a teensy bit queasy.)

Look, he still has a ripoff name and a ripoff appearance. If you're going to move him into an original story, you should at least take the opportunity to change that much. It doesn't make him any less of a stolen sack of crap just because he's in a different universe. Theft is theft.

Three, there's genuine reason to wonder if he's doing this because he wants to or because his girlfriend is moving some of her characters into original universe settings.

See, before this picture was sketched (based on the date on that thing, anyway) Ryuu made a comment on one of LZ's most recent pieces:

If you're a kissass and you know it, fart a Keese...

This looks like standard Ryuu-tripe at first, I know. Lots of asskissing and Ryuu managed to shoehorn his vomit-inducing sue spawn into something that has nothing to do with his characters. What a surprise.

But that second-to-last sentence is a different story. That second to last sentence is actually fucking terrifying, and is pretty much exhibit A of why we say Ryuu's a creepy stalker.  And it, you know.

 Gives the impression that Ryuu's only doing this because LZ's doing it.

That's the wrong motivation. You should do this because you genuinely want to, not because your relationship with your girlfriend has been rocky for a while and you think doing everything she does will win her back... or whatever the hell his logic is.

I'm almost certain he's not doing this because he thinks it needs to be done, though. Rinku and I actually just had a discussion about this the other day, but I'm gonna paraphrase the whole thing for you guys to chew on:

It's kind of interesting that this is a hobby for LZ, but she's the one who's actually practicing, trying to improve, trying new things, and asking for advice. She's grown considerably as an artist and deserves praise for that.

But the wanna-be professional is doing the exact opposite of the hobbyist. Mr. Would-Be Illustrator keeps ripping off everything, making excuses, drawing the same doofy expression on every single character, and riding his girlfriend's coattails. He hasn't grown at all as an artist (you could actually make a fairly good argument that he got worse once he started ripping off Felsus) but expects praise.

I'm hardly the most foresighted individual on the planet but even I can see that if he keeps this up, there's a very rude awakening in his future.

Maybe he should try to stop ripping every fucking thing off because he thinks it's cool. Maybe he should actually practice. Maybe he should spend ten bucks or less on unlined paper.

Maybe none of this will actually happen and he'll cry about us being mean.

I'm putting ten rupees on the last option, personally.