Policy Review Policy Review - Art Submissions

If you are not an experienced member of the CAP community, it is strongly recommended that you do not post in this thread.

This thread is intended to contain intelligent discussion and commentary by experienced members of the CAP project regarding CAP policy, process, and rules. As such, the content of this thread will be moderated more strictly than other threads on the forum. The posting rules for Policy Review threads are contained here.

Click to expand...

Art is not a competitive aspect of a pokemon, but it is easily the most popular aspect of the CAP creation process. CAP art threads consistently get the most posts, votes, and unfortunately - arguments. Since I am an artist, the art submission and selection process is very near and dear to my heart. We need to make some significant changes to the art process, to make it more fair, standardized, and usable -- while still allowing artists the freedom to express themselves to the community and be rewarded for both hard work and talent.

Here is a brief summary of a few problems with the current art submission rules, in no particular order:

• There are no standards for making submissions, which makes it difficult for the community to make side-by-side comparisons of the art, since it is somewhat akin to comparing "apples to oranges".
  
  
• There are no specific size limits on artwork. So some artists post very large artworks, possibly with the hopes of gaining more attention. Aside from the bandwidth hogging, it can make it difficult to compose a proper poll OP.
  
  
• The CAP project is now building a website, and some of the art designs submitted are not appropriate for use there, due to layout or formatting reasons.
  
  
• Some artists make multiple pieces of art for a particular design, and get no real benefit for their hard work in the polls, since only one art piece is posted in the poll.
  
  
• The art submission threads are usually a chaotic, disorganized mess. It's difficult for the community to peruse and evaluate the submissions. It's almost impossible for the TL to figure out what is there when compiling the art poll.

I propose the following rules be implemented for the art submission process and subsequent art polls:

A "Final Art Submission" will consist of two things - a "Main Design" and "Supporting Material". A Main Design is the only required element of a Final Art Submission, Supporting Material is optional.

Main Design
The Main Design is intended to follow the same general posing and layout as the "Official Art" for existing ingame pokemon. The Main Design is the definitive design for a given pokemon and should be suitable for display in the CAP Pokedex section of the upcoming CAP Website, and any other CAP propaganda where a picture of the pokemon is needed. As such, the design should be "plain" -- a basic rendering of the pokemon itself, with no extra frills or artistic embellishment. The comparison to "Official Pokemon Art" is only applicable to the basic content of the Main Design; it does not imply ANY standards or guidelines regarding artistic style or rendering technique.

The following rules of content must be followed for the Main Design:

• It must be a single pose of a single pokemon. No other pokemon can be included. Only one pose rendering is allowed in the picture.
  
  
• It must consist of the pokemon on a plain white background. No additional background detail or settings may be included. No additional background colors or patterns are allowed.
  
  
• No props, action effects, move effects, or additional objects can be rendered on or around the pokemon. If a prop is part of the pokemon's basic design (ie Farfetch'd Stick), then it is acceptable. A basic rule of thumb is -- anything that would not be appropriate in a game sprite, should not be included in the Main Design.
  
  
• It must be inked and colored lineart. Pencil sketches are not allowed. Black and white pictures are not allowed, unless those are the actual colors of the design (eg Unown). Paintings, digital 3D models, sculptures, and other non-lineart art forms are not allowed.
  
  
• It must be no larger than 800x600, no smaller than 320x240, and must be in a compressed digital format. Uncompressed bitmaps and/or high-resolution images are not allowed.
  
  
• It must be a digital rendering or a high-quality scan. No camera pictures are allowed.
  
  
• It must be an original artwork by the person making the submission. Lifts, swipes, copies, or alterations of other artists' work are not allowed.

Supporting Material
While the rules for the Main Design are somewhat rigid -- there are almost no rules when it comes to Supporting Material. Action scenes, movement studies, interaction with other pokemon, animations, sculptures, cartoon strips -- anything goes! Also non-art supporting material is also allowed. This includes detailed descriptions of the art, background data, stories, etc.

All supporting art and information must be related to the main design in some way. This rule is intended to prevent artists from posting unrelated art, in an effort to gain more attention or promote other designs or artworks.


Final Submission Post
All artists must make a Final Submission Post in order to be considered for the Art Poll. The post must be titled "Final Submission". The post should have the Main Design at the top, and Supporting Material (if applicable) below it. All supporting art must be included as links or as linked thumbnails no larger than 150x150. Do not include full images of supporting art in the Final Submission.

Only make ONE Final Submission Post. If you wish to change your Final Submission, then edit your post. Do not make a new one, even if you delete your original post. Any delete + repost will be treated as bumping, and subject to moderation.


General Posting Rules

• Artists can post any work-in-progress (WIP) artwork, in order to solicit feedback or to help develop ideas. WIP artwork does not need to conform to the standards of a Main Design. It can be in any medium or stage of completion. But, it must be related to an original art design by the poster.
  
  
• No post can contain more than 800x600 pixels of included art. If an artist wishes to post art in excess of the 800x600 limit, they should post links to the additional art or use linking thumbnails. Each thumbnail can be no larger than 150x150.
  
  
• All posted art must be in a compressed digital format. Uncompressed bitmaps or high-resolution images will be deleted.
  
  
• No art submissions should be modified by others without the explicit permission of the original artists.
  
  
• Using other submissions as "inspiration" for an original artwork is allowed. However, "stealing" of designs is prohibited.
  
  
• Do not post to state your intended design. Such posts are a weak attempt to "reserve" an idea, and serve no constructive purpose. If you aren't going to post an actual design, then don't tell us that you are "working on it".
  
  
• No bumping or begging. If your design received little attention or commentary, don't bump it. Even worse, don't make a post begging for feedback. There are PLENTY of eyes viewing every post in the thread. If your design is any good, people WILL comment on it. If your design gets no feedback, then your design isn't very good. The silence IS the feedback. Take the hint.
  
  
• No posting of design ideas in search of an artist. This is an art submission thread, not an idea submission thread. If you can't draw, then don't post your idea. If you really want to see your idea submitted, then commission an artist and ask them to post it. But don't solicit artists here.
  
  
• No posting of "inspirational references" for the artists. This includes pictures of real life animals, character artwork from other games, or even Pokemon artwork. It spams up the thread and detracts from the original art submissions.
  
  
• Do not declare any artwork as "the winner", "is clearly going to win", or similar. It's fine to post praise or support for an artwork, but don't make a statement of fact indicating the results of a poll that has not been conducted. Such posts are premature and insulting to all the other competing artists.
  
  
• Do not post that a design does or does not "look like a Pokemon". Such comments are unable to substantiated or refuted. I don't care if it is "just your opinion" -- it's a bullshit comment. It indicates the existence of an official published Pokemon artistic style guide. Such a guide does not exist, so don't act like you've read it. If you like or dislike a design, that's fine -- but don't imply the existence of defined Pokemon style rules as "reasoning" for your opinion.
  
  
• Do not post that a design "looks like a Digimon". It's a cheap shot, and you know it. See rule above.
  
  
• Do not post questions asking for help in making a submission. If you don't know how to draw, ink, color, scan, save, compress, crop, thumbnail, or link an artwork -- don't ask for help here. This isn't a tutorial thread. By the way -- Google is your friend.

Art Polls
All art polls will contain the Main Design and, if applicable, a link below it titled "Supporting Material". This will link to the artists Final Submission Post. If the Final Submission contains no significant Supporting Material, then no link will be included in the poll below the Main Design.

Art polls are "good advertising" for the CAP project. As such, the TL is strongly encouraged to include images in ALL art polls. If the total number of options in a given poll preclude the use of full images, then linked thumbnails should be used.

Since art is non-competitive and voting is almost entirely subjective -- click polls should be used whenever possible.

I disagree with the rule on only allowing digital (basically photoshop) and inked artwork. As a painter without access to photoshop, paintshop or GIMP and having very little talent with inks and such I find this unfair.

While painted artwork is in a different style and it is not really akin to the original Pokemon art, past submissions (Revankah and Stratagem is in pencils [not sure on that]) have made perfectly fine projects and since the art has no kind of implementation on the server it has little affect on the general public.

As for the website, it could be nice to have other styles on that. If not, we have many extremely talented digital artists who have reinterpreted past artworks.

My $0.02. Wouldn't bother me that much but I don't think you should discount the 2 dimensional artforms that some artists prefer to use.

All the other suggestions seem like great ideas. It certainly would keep it a lot neater.

Great job Doug. My only worry is that loads of artists won't adhere to the rules in some way, especially since there are alot of big changes.
If they don't and their artwork is not allowed its their fault, but it may be our loss.
This will all probably be fine if the TL for CAP6 knows these rules very well and monitors the Art Submissions thread closely.

I'm not sure this is the place to talk about this but - are we going to dicuss moving the art submissions and polls to the end of the competitive point of the process? It may slow down the process at the end but I know lots of people are fed up with art influencing flavour decisions all the way through a CAP.

I fully agree with all your proposed changes, Doug, but Myriad and jagged angel have some interesting points.

First, maybe allowing only digital or manual inked art is too restrictive. Yeah, pencil art looks usually bland and unfinished, but then again, some are really good even without ink. Pencil art might look too sketchy for a final submission, but I think that if it's colored, it will look finished enough, and if done well, even better than many inked drawings (I'm specifically thinking about Salvador Larroca's work in Xtreme X-Men, which used pencil and color, with no ink).

Second, if so many new rules are made (and I'd like that), the first post of the art submission should specify them clearly. Yes, everyone posting on CAP has to read the rules and the updates to the rules, but as jagged angel says, if they break the rules, it may be their fault, but also may be our loss. It will happen to some degree however well we announce the new rules (i.e., people skipping the OP and directly posting their art), but we should try to minimize it.

I am in full agreement with all the changes posited, except for the barring of painted works. As Myriad said, some people are just more comfortable with paints (and even all of Sugimori's pre-RSE artwork were in watercolor).

Regarding moving the art poll until after everything else has been selected...well, I can understand people not wanting the artwork to influence the competitive movepool of the Pokemon flavor-wise, but allowing the non-competitive/filler moves to influence the art doesn't sit well with me. It would suck to have your arm twisted into drawing a tooth-filled mouth because the movelist designer haphazardly added Bite into the movepool. Perhaps people could decide on all relevant/viable moves for a Pokemon first, and design a level up/filler list after the artwork has been decided, as those are all based on flavor anyway.

I agree with Cartoons as this is a very good compromise, but remember that, while some competitive moves dont add much to the artwork, someone effectively does. If, for example, the competitive movepool included Crunch, Focus Punch, X-Scissor, Tail Glow and Brave Bird, you see how all these moves suggest defined details for the artwork itself.

Considering Doug's proposal, I also disagree with the quality requirements. Just like we have spriters to conform the designs to the in-game, we could have drawers who conform them to the website. IT seems quite limiting, and think that good old works like Revenankh and Syclant would have been excluded because of this is quite odd.

However, I totally agree with the dimension limits of the submission. It's cheap to make overly big your picture just to catch people's attention. And you have my full support for all the limits you have introduced to the comments. They all make sense to me.

Have to agree with Myriad and others about not allowing pencil/paint artworks into the final submission. Some people are more comfortable with drawing in pencil then creating something from PS, GIMP, whatever. They're also people that are surprisingly good to making smooth, crisp line art and brilliant colors with just pencil/colored pencils.

Cartoons! said:

Perhaps people could decide on all relevant/viable moves for a Pokemon first, and design a level up/filler list after the artwork has been decided, as those are all based on flavor anyway.

Click to expand...

Doug has mention something like this on the server some day ago. They're nothing wrong with sticking art in between competitive movepool stage and the complete movepool as like you said, level-up/filler moves are just flavor moves.

Order of Operations will be a separate PR thread. Hopefully, I will post that a little later today. So, the placement of the Art thread and art poll in the overall process is not something to discuss here. Save it for that PR thread. This is already a big proposal without bringing the process order into it. Let's keep this focused on the content of the art submission thread itself, which are the only things mentioned in the OP.

Regarding this proposed rule for the Main Design:

It must be inked and colored lineart. Pencil sketches are not allowed. Black and white pictures are not allowed, unless those are the actual colors of the design (eg Unown). Paintings, digital 3D models, sculptures, and other non-lineart art forms are not allowed.

Click to expand...

I struggled with this rule. I don't like restricting artists to a specific art media. But, in recent art polls we've seen art submissions done in media not traditionally associated with a CAP design. Frosty's sculpture of his CAP 5 design comes to mind. It was a great work of art, and in Frosty's case, it was not his main design. But, if this is taken to the extreme in the future, we could end up with some main designs "rendered" in a form almost completely unusable for reuse on the project.

For example, what if someone decides to make a costume of their design and submit a video of a "performance art" peice with them acting out their pokemon design? While I doubt anyone would actually do it, it technically is not against the rules currently. And for all I know, such a submission might actually win if the community decides to bandwagon the "OMG you are so creative!" vote.

I actually don't have a problem with someone playing dress-up and making a video of themselves in full pokemon regalia. But, it can't be a Main Design. It would have to be Supporting Material. The Main Design will be the "Official Art" for a given CAP project and needs to have some rendering standards.

I don't have anything against paintings, finished pencils (not sketches), etc. And I would like them to be allowed. My proposed rule would actually prohibit my own CAP 3 design, since I didn't ink it. But I couldn't think of a way to restrict the Main Design media within certain limits without trying to post an exhaustive list of exclusions -- which is impossible, given the near-infinite range of art media. That's why I opted to make a simple rule of inclusion, restricting it to inked and colored lineart.

If someone can suggest a rule wording that allows more diverse media for the Main Design, without allowing "extremes" -- I am very open to it.

latinoheat said:

Making the full movepool vote after the Art submissions still has a huge effect on the competitive moves selected.

Lets face it if someone had submitted the "perfect competitive movepool" for Stratagem but then had submitted it with flavour moves that didn't refer to its claws or whatever they probably would have lost. Without Art to influence this people can only focus on which competitive moves have or haven't been included and not some off topic flavour ideas.

Flavour moves being based on the Artwork submitted has always caused problems. Anyone around for Fidgit will remember the clusterfuck that was Block/Spiderweb with people even researching whether Daddy Long Legs can spin webs or not. This was followed by numerous off topic debates over Daddy Long Legs and Spiderwebs, all caused because people couldn't decide how much influence Art should have on even flavour moves. Without the Art this isn't a problem.

I am not gonna go into detail but i think everyone who has followed these projects, knows that Art is basically running the Ability polls. Just on the first page alone of Stratagem's ability topic, there were 10 posts all basically saying that the only abilities it should have are Levitate/Technician/Sniper because the Art work dictated this.

You can't tell the voters that CAP is competitive and tell them they are off topic for straying from this idea, then basically go back on this by giving Art the most attention each and every project.

Art/Sprites should be used to wrap up these projects not run them, they should be the final stamp on the project if you will.

Art is flavour and if someone has a reason that Art shouldn't go last, which doesn't basically come down to flavour then i would like to hear it because i can not think of one.

Click to expand...

DJD said we would have discuss this stuff later, so I will not comment this now.

About what Doug actually said, you are right, some main rules should be respected, but once you say that the artwork cannot be a non-linear art and that the background must be plain white, it should be enough. Which instrument - computer, pencil or ink - to use should be up to the artist. If we get a submission like Syclant was like I would be ok, even if maybe what Revenankh was like its a bit too sketchy.

Myriad said:

I disagree with the rule on only allowing digital (basically photoshop) and inked artwork. As a painter without access to photoshop, paintshop or GIMP and having very little talent with inks and such I find this unfair.

Click to expand...

Agreed, I mean, why should it matter if the original art doesn't fit the website, wasn't Cartoons gonna do art anyway? :S

I'm against restricting the artists freedoms at all.

I mean, I understand where you're coming from with that video stuff but restricting pencil art?

I doubt anyone is gonna bandwagon pencil art because it's "OMG So Creative"

Cause it's not...

DougJustDoug said:

If someone can suggest a rule wording that allows more diverse media for the Main Design, without allowing "extremes" -- I am very open to it.

Click to expand...

Since I'm not an artist I guess this will have to suffice:

You may use any digital rendering or marking instrument scan (markers, colored pencils, watercolor, crayons, paint), provided your design is a single subject, two-dimensional, in color, and on a white background. [insert file type restrictions here]

I'm pretty sure, upon checking the dictionary definition of line art that I simply used more words to describe the same thing, but that should crystallize it for the less technically minded.

This avoids "CaP Majesty Theater" while allowing artists to use the medium they are most comfortable with.

Now that Deck Knight mentions it -- "lineart" is really the only requirement necessary. That allows a wide variety of media, and eliminates all the unconventional stuff. The rule could probably be simplified to simply refer to "clean colored lineart". The word "clean" is a little dubious, but would hopefully discourage posting of sketches. There's really no way to enforce it.

If we have some general standardization in the submission art form -- hopefully the community will be encouraged to compare DESIGNS, not renderings. I realize it is unrealistic to think the community will choose a poor drawing, even though it has wonderful underlying design. It will never happen. If it isn't a well-drawn picture -- it has no realistic chance to win. And, for future reuse, I want a high-quality work of art as well. But, I'd like to encourage a design competition as much as possible.

Deck Knight's suggestion pretty much covers it but some of the terms used could be confused such as digital rendering which is actually a term used for the production of 3D images on a computer. The white background was also mentioned in an earlier rule.

To clean it up:

Any 2D full colour digital or traditional media may be used so long as it contains a distinguishable outline on the subject in contrast to the background. 3D medias are not allowed.

That should cover it since everything else has been mentioned in other rules (unless you want to merge them). This means that anybody using soft traditional medias such as pencil and watercolour is probably going to have to spend a bit more time to make sure their design doesn't blend into the background and their lines aren't broken. The word clear was a bit ambiguous so I replaced it with distinguishable.

Hopefully with this we can reward people who spend more time on their submissions instead of throwing away their hard work for the voters who don't follow the submission threads.

I definatly agree with keeping it to line art and the standardization of size for the reasons mentioned already, I dont think either of these are too hindering for the artist and it keeps things uniform.

Wyverii said:

Deck Knight's suggestion pretty much covers it but some of the terms used could be confused such as digital rendering which is actually a term used for the production of 3D images on a computer. The white background was also mentioned in an earlier rule.

To clean it up:

Any 2D full colour digital or traditional media may be used so long as it contains a distinguishable outline on the subject in contrast to the background. 3D medias are not allowed.

That should cover it since everything else has been mentioned in other rules (unless you want to merge them). This means that anybody using soft traditional medias such as pencil and watercolour is probably going to have to spend a bit more time to make sure their design doesn't blend into the background and their lines aren't broken. The word clear was a bit ambiguous so I replaced it with distinguishable.

Hopefully with this we can reward people who spend more time on their submissions instead of throwing away their hard work for the voters who don't follow the submission threads.

Click to expand...

I like your suggested wording (bolded above) -- it's simple and to the point, and it will make sense to any decent artist. If I don't hear a better suggestion, I will delete my wording and use yours, Wyverii.

I agree with mostly everything, but I just wanted to make a few points.

No posting of "inspirational references" for the artists. This includes pictures of real life animals, character artwork from other games, or even Pokemon artwork. It spams up the thread and detracts from the original art submissions.

Click to expand...

I understand the point of this rule is to reduce spam and preserve the integrity of all of the original art submissions, but I was wondering if we could somehow preserve these goals while also allowing the artists to communicate exactly where they are coming from in their designs.

Maybe this was assumed and I just missed it, but could links to inspirational sources be allowed, as long as actual images aren't posted? We're allowing non-art related supporting material, so I don't see why one would be allowed to provide backstories and biological data but not a reference to what the design is supposed to be inspired by in the first place, as it's all just supplemental to the main design anyway.

I only mention this because when I was in preliminary designs for my Farfetch'd evolution I had decided to base it off a Mandarin Duck, but that reference would have been lost on most voters without an appropriate link or something. Inspirational resources would serve to put an otherwise non-traditional design in an understandable context, as long as posted images are not allowed to spam up threads and garner attention.

Do not post that a design does or does not "look like a Pokemon". Such comments are unable to substantiated or refuted. I don't care if it is "just your opinion" -- it's a bullshit comment. It indicates the existence of an official published Pokemon artistic style guide. Such a guide does not exist, so don't act like you've read it. If you like or dislike a design, that's fine -- but don't imply the existence of defined Pokemon style rules as "reasoning" for your opinion.

Click to expand...

I agree with this in a sense (I'm sure plenty of people had their preconceptions shattered when seeing Dialga and Palkia for the first time), but I want to point out a few things.

First, I don't see why this particular subjective sentiment is arbitrarily banned. Someone may be of the opinion that a design is "not evolved enough", "too simple", or just, say, "not defensive-looking enough", but I'm sure they've never read a published guide on "how an evolved pokemon looks", "how complicated a pokemon needs to look for a competitive environment", or "what makes a pokemon look defensive".

Basically, I don't know why you want to ban this particular comment over any other. The oft-quoted "Pokemon artistic style guide" can be a metaphor for anything in the least bit subjective. Your reasoning can be applied to ban any arbitrary, subjective comment.

Now, there's a problem when someone claims that a design objectively does not look like a pokemon, because that cannot be proven. I can't objectively prove that a painting was done in realistic, impressionist, or cubist style. But, there are certainly elements that one can feel is common to one particular style, and if a person wants to say that, in their opinion, my design does not look like it has elements common to a pokemon design, I can't fault him or her for saying that anymore than I could for any other reason he or she would dislike my design.

(I hope I made that clear enough, I'm kinda sleepy at the moment...)

Lofty said:

No posting of "inspirational references" for the artists. This includes pictures of real life animals, character artwork from other games, or even Pokemon artwork. It spams up the thread and detracts from the original art submissions.

Click to expand...

I understand the point of this rule is to reduce spam and preserve the integrity of all of the original art submissions, but I was wondering if we could somehow preserve these goals while also allowing the artists to communicate exactly where they are coming from in their designs.

Click to expand...

I think you misread that, it says for the artists not from the artists. Perhaps Doug should reword it. I read it as any non-submitters shouldn't spam up the thread with "inspirational material" aimed at random artists as i've seen happen so often in the past. It's in the same vein as the don't post your ideas trying to get artists to do it rule. I don't think it's talking about the actual artists references because if it was Doug would be contradicting himself.

As for the "looks like a Pokemon" argument I think the rule should stand. Saying that comment on its own tells the artist nothing except that the person criticizing wants the artists art to conform to how he/she perceives the style should be. We're not mind readers so that statement is a cop out. Much better statements could be said in its place to actually better the design. It doesn't matter if it's too complex since the sprite artists will usually automatically simplify it later on.

Wyverii said:

I think you misread that, it says for the artists not from the artists. Perhaps Doug should reword it. I read it as any non-submitters shouldn't spam up the thread with "inspirational material" aimed at random artists as i've seen happen so often in the past. It's in the same vein as the don't post your ideas trying to get artists to do it rule. I don't think it's talking about the actual artists references because if it was Doug would be contradicting himself.

Click to expand...

Well, that would make a lot more sense. :P

When I first read that, I thought it was saying something like, "As a rule for the artists." My bad. :)

As for the "looks like a Pokemon" argument I think the rule should stand. Saying that comment on its own tells the artist nothing except that the person criticizing wants the artists art to conform to how he/she perceives the style should be. We're not mind readers so that statement is a cop out. Much better statements could be said in its place to actually better the design.

Click to expand...

Well, I think that applies more to crappy criticisms in general, so if that's the case the rule should be amended with that in mind.

If someone said something like, "I don't think it has elements typical of a pokemon design, and here are the specific reasons I think that", then that's fine.

I don't see how what you're saying is any different from me saying, "It's not big enough", or "It doesn't look strong enough", or "It doesn't look like a Rock-type". Without citing specific reasons, none of those comments tell the artist anything more than saying "it doesn't look enough like a pokemon".

Really, I think this rule wants to be more of a general "No crappy criticisms" rule than a "No crappy criticisms of a specific type (but others are okay)" rule. How we define a "crappy criticism" is subjective, though, so that's why I don't know how we'd implement this beyond strict, hardcore moderating.

Lofty said:

Maybe this was assumed and I just missed it, but could links to inspirational sources be allowed, as long as actual images aren't posted? We're allowing non-art related supporting material, so I don't see why one would be allowed to provide backstories and biological data but not a reference to what the design is supposed to be inspired by in the first place, as it's all just supplemental to the main design anyway.

Click to expand...

Wyverii said:

I think you misread that, it says for the artists not from the artists. Perhaps Doug should reword it. I read it as any non-submitters shouldn't spam up the thread with "inspirational material" aimed at random artists as i've seen happen so often in the past. It's in the same vein as the don't post your ideas trying to get artists to do it rule. I don't think it's talking about the actual artists references because if it was Doug would be contradicting himself.

Click to expand...

I agree. I will change the wording to clearly state that inspirational posts by non-submitters are prohibited. However, links to inspirational material are totally acceptable, if made by the artists themselves in support of their design.

Lofty said:

Do not post that a design does or does not "look like a Pokemon".

Click to expand...

First, I don't see why this particular subjective sentiment is arbitrarily banned. Someone may be of the opinion that a design is "not evolved enough", "too simple", or just, say, "not defensive-looking enough", but I'm sure they've never read a published guide on "how an evolved pokemon looks", "how complicated a pokemon needs to look for a competitive environment", or "what makes a pokemon look defensive".

Basically, I don't know why you want to ban this particular comment over any other. The oft-quoted "Pokemon artistic style guide" can be a metaphor for anything in the least bit subjective. Your reasoning can be applied to ban any arbitrary, subjective comment.

Click to expand...

This rule is there to stop all the stupid arguments about whether something looks like a pokemon or not. It happens in every single art thread and it doesn't add any constructive value to the thread. I'm sick of it. It derails the thread into long diatribes about this mythic "Pokemon style guide" that does not exist. Repeated back-and-forths about "what Nintendo intended" ensue -- and the whole thing goes nowhere.

Yes, my "style guide argument" could be applied to anything. Personally, I'd prefer that people stay away from style comments like "it doesn't look bulky enough" (common during the Fidgit thread) or "it looks like a Steel pokemon" (common Stratagem comment) -- since they all imply a Pokemon style guide of some sort. But, I'm not going to try and list them all. The "looks like a pokemon" issue is the one that comes up over and over and over.

"Looks like a pokemon" is a comment most commonly issued by idiots that want to give the appearance of being a learned Pokemon art critic, when they really just can't come up with anything else remotely intelligent-sounding. But, they love rubbing elbows with all the cool artists in the art thread, and just HAVE to make a post. So they resort to the "does/does not look like a Pokemon" critique -- as if that means anything. If they can't come up with something better than that, then they need to leave the art critiquing to the big kids. Don't make a statement as an authority on Pokemon style, when you have no fucking clue what you are talking about. There are actually a few people on this project who DO know what they are talking about, and have made wonderful critiques of artwork in comparison to ingame Pokemon style trends. However, these people are few and far between. The majority of people who start these arguments are boneheaded wannabe-artists that are incapable of actually conducting an intelligent discussion on the subject. So rather than allow these idiotic exchanges to occur in each and every art thread -- I'm cutting it off at the source.

That is why the "looks like a Pokemon" critique has earned a special ban in the rule list.

Same thing goes for "looks like a Digimon" which is another moronic thread-derailment that happens every time, and needs to stop.

Conclusion:

I will implement the proposal in the OP with two rules reworded.

The "lineart rule":

Any 2D full colour digital or traditional media may be used so long as it contains a distinguishable outline on the subject in contrast to the background. 3D medias are not allowed.

Click to expand...

The "inspirational references" rule:

No posting of art or pictures intended to "give ideas" to artists to draw a design. This includes pictures of real life animals, character artwork from other games, or even Pokemon artwork. It spams up the thread and detracts from the original art submissions. It is acceptable for artists making a submission to post their inspirational references as part of their Supporting Material.

Click to expand...