So Ryuu uploaded a new sketch:
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| 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:
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| 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:
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.
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:
(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:
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| 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.
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.
Heya, just wanted to give my opinions on a couple of things. I started following this blog only a few months after it was made, and I agreed with pretty much everything that you guys said, I'm not a fan of Ryuu by any means.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I checked back more recently and I must say the tone has become a lot more hostile. The very existence of this blog means it's going to be more bias towards being anti-Ryuu I understand, by it used to be a lot more...I don't know, toward the middle, being snarky whilst still giving a generally fair outlook on his characters and views. More recently though it's simply become a very hostile and outright aggressive blog to bash the guy over every little thing you can get you hands on.
Again I'll say that I don't like the guy myself, his characters are -very- poorly written Mary-Sues who take far too much 'inspiration' from existing franchises. But this blog really has devolved into simply flinging hate at him, and a lot of the things you pick up on like a tiny part of a comment he made once and ripping into it mercilessly, or focusing on a tiny feature of a picture he made a mistake on and calling him out as a terrible artist because of it, it's not constructive criticism in the slightest, it is simply criticism for the sake of criticism, and seems very petty in my eyes.
That's cool, you're entitled to your opinion.
DeleteWhat exactly do you classify as "hostile" or "picking at little things"? You didn't give any examples so I'm a bit lost as to what exactly you're finding hostile.
Delete(As far as the tone goes, someone left a really in-depth and really helpful critique of Child of the Triforce here. I don't know if Ryuu is aware that those points have been made here several times (guessing not, based on his snotty comments at the end of that), but this girl was brushed off.
With the same excuses he used in 2009 to whine about his character bios being critiqued, natch.
Unless you like putting a lot of thought into something to try and help somebody and having it dismissed out of hand, that's not really an effective way of approaching anything with him.)
In regards to examples on this very post I'll point out the ripping into him about saying he's not dead, it's just something some people say when they've been even slightly less active than usual. Also saying no one gives a crap that his confidence is in the shitter, it really reinforces my point about being pretty hostile about things that the post could really have done without.
DeleteThat actually links into something else, that ultimately you seem to claim/imply the point of this blog is to give constructive criticism for Ryuu to improve as an artist and as a person. I'll admit you do make some very good points and you do offer good advice to remedy his downfalls, but you also latch onto things like the above examples that don't really accomplish anything other than having more mud flung at him.
As for the tone changing, if being more civil, neutral and unbiased resulted in being brushed off by him, then it's only common sense to realize that being much more aggressive and hostile is only going to make him even less likely to take any advice onboard, and with the side-effect of having less people agreeing with what you're doing.
On the contrary, the best weapon against ego is mockery, and Ryuu is chock full of ego.
DeleteI'm honestly not interested in arguments about tone. It puts the way we say words over the words themselves. We lay our intentions bare with the very title of the page. We're not here to play nice. Ryuu is beyond niceness. We're here to point out his foibles, of which he is either clearly unaware or refuses to acknowledge, and to vent our grievances. While I try to be at least mostly constructive in my posts, in the hopes that others would benefit from Ryuu's mistakes, that is not my top priority. It's a happy side benefit, if anything.
If you're upset about our jokes, then perhaps the tone of the blog is simply not to your tastes. And that's fine. But I have no intention of neutering my blog just for that. Arguments about tone piss me off because most of the time they're just attempts at getting people to shut up just enough that their messages aren't effective anymore, and while I don't think that's your intention, that is ultimately what you're arguing we do.
My goals are different from those of the previous blog owner. I'm not putting civility for civility's sake at the forefront. I don't play that way. Especially not with Ryuu. Ryuu neither needs nor deserves platitudes.
Ryuu's a racist, sexist, bigoted, egotistical pig who thinks I and my crew are demons who deserve segregation and death and torture, and in return he gets jokes about his whining and his big, bulbous Mary-Sues and his incredible ego about his half-assed creations. On one blog which, as far as I can tell, he doesn't even read. I think he got the better end of the bargain here, don't you think?
Come to think of it, I don't think 'foibles' is the right word to describe his flagrant asshattery. Oh well, I can't edit it.
Delete… That was a lead-in to a joke, which I figured was obvious when I started talking about zombies. I'm not an idiot, I know what "I'm not dead” means, it was an excuse to make a zombie joke.
DeleteI'm not entirely sure how pointing out that the general public doesn't care is hostile when it's true. I'm not saying it's a nice truth, but no one outside of his friends/family is going to care.
He wants to be an illustrator, right? If he claims he missed deadlines, for example, because his confidence is gone after a few people said his art needs work, then he's SOL.
He thinks he can handle an illustrator job when he falls to pieces over a handful of people pointing errors out? Yeah, and I'm gonna grow wings out of my ass.
Not trying to be argumentative, but those are pretty crap examples. A misunderstood joke and a harsh fact of life don't automatically constitute hostility.
We all do our best to be at least somewhat constructive in posts. I looked over a bunch of posts since Rinku became the blog owner, and I'm honestly not sure what you're seeing that I'm not.
The tagline of the blog has been "where an arrogant hack is shown just how mediocre he really is” since Rinku took over. So it's been there for +/- three years. I have no idea what you expected, but if you wanted posts along the lines of the ones made by the Doc and the previous owner, you may want to find another blog to read. We really do appreciate the time you've spent reading, but if you're not comfortable with where the blog is going then why keep reading?
The previous owner's diplomacy didn't get her anywhere. Ryuu spurned her advice, but he shot himself in the foot when he did, as that was what led to Rinku taking over. Clearly I'm okay with this and the direction we're going or I'd have bailed. I've certainly had a while to do so.
Believe it or not we figure people who are interested enough will look into both sides of the issue and decide on their own whether they agree with us. If people disagree, oh well. I want the facts out there and to help people who want to improve their writing. Ryuu is clearly not one of these people, but he's a great example of what not to do.
I'm not going to stop being sarcastic. If being polite and being snarky are equally ineffective, I'm going to stick with what I'm comfortable with.
(By the way, Doc and I tried explaining things to Ryuu sans snark over email. He brushed me off, gave me a load of crap, and told Doc that he was pretty much just telling us what he thought we wanted to hear. It was a complete waste of time for Doc and I both, and it left me extremely pissed off for about a week.)
Kicking him in the ego seems to have at least gotten him to stop claiming we're Christian haters who hate him because he doesn't like yaoi (spoilers: every part of that is a crock). That's more progress than anything else has gotten us.
But you say we have good points, so why are these any less valid because we're sarcastic and sometimes really pissed off?
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