"Realistic vs Cartoony"
by Jeff Coleman
Heh, this is funny. He quotes massive parts of this entire conversation, but doesn’t link to the thread where it happened.
I was "Jeremy". Like the author of this post, I was also frankly amazed to see somebody saying "I didn’t think I need to do life drawing because I work cartoony"… but like he says, it was an incredibly polite discussion and I think it’s just a case of a naive young artist who’s learning new things for the first time.
Jeff
October 13th, 2007 at 3:35 pm
Actually, I think I can sympathize. Looking at his sites, he’s not a total beginner, he’s got something of a style, and what he really came for was help in drawing his own style better. The advice looks sound, but it must be easy to feel you’re being told “No, first learn to draw realistically like a pro, then you can go back and draw like yourself!” Loomis’ figure-drawing books are great, but as an aspiring simple-style cartoonist they can give you the feeling of being directed to the top of Mount Horriblyhigh when you just wanted to get to a village on the lower slope. I don’t find his reaction amazing or laughable at all, just very very understandable.
To be honest, I’m uneasy about the guy being quoted and linked like this. He came to that forum for advice, and now he’s been cut and posted in another forum as an example of the species Nice Naive Young Cartoonist With Lots To Learn. And another blog has just linked back to both that and the original thread, revealing his identity and holding him up again as a fool. Basically, I wouldn’t want it done to me.
October 13th, 2007 at 4:10 pm
Who was holding anybody up as a fool?
All I see is a message board thread and two blog posts that were respectful and appreciative of the intelligent discussion. I dispute completely the idea that anybody was being ridiculed in any way.
October 13th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
I’m sorry. You’re right, and I really do owe you and Process Junkie an apology for that last paragraph. Now that I read things properly, I can see that you were being perfectly respectful, and Process was quoting politely and appreciatively. I was being an idiotic bad-tempered jerk.
October 13th, 2007 at 8:45 pm
No worries, Tim! I was happy to see the conversation on Process Junkie’s blog, and I think it was worthwhile for the reasons he mentioned there.
I admit I was surprised to see fesworks, the original poster in the TWCL thread say “I didn’t think I needed life drawing because I work cartoony”, but as you probably know, in 99 out of 100 threads when somebody says something like that, their next posts are petulant and defensive.
In this case fesworks was open to encouragement and advice, which was refreshing and cool.