genshin impact and vtubers have done irreparable damage to the state of character design
Explain?
my personal feeling on the subject is that they prioritize overly complex accessorizing over clarity of concept, and are unwilling to stray from a hyperspecific and incredibly bland base. almost all genshin and vtuber designs have the same handful of body types - all skinny except for maybe a fat rack - and almost all of them are extremely pale. they all have identical 'anime' face shapes, and any and all variation in facial structure is eye shape.
the overly complex nature of the outfits/surface level aesthetics paired with the copy and paste nature of the underlying bodies and faces leads to this incredibly bizarre and somewhat paradoxical design phenomenon where every individual design has a ton happening in it but this makes them all feel more generic, not less. it all just ends up as visual noise especially when you get one or more of these designs next to each other. i also think a lot of them have really bad silhouettes and awkwardly proportioned outfits. I think the kids who grow up inspired to make art from these sort of artists are gonna end up preferring to put the cart before the horse in terms of character design.
With v-tubers its a bit different than genshin because a vtuber isnt really a character in a setting. but for genshin, especially when compared to the more mundanely and reasonably dressed npcs, the outfits are so overdesigned that they come across as actively immersion breaking to me. i havent played the game though i will say.
none of this is the end of the world, anyone who wants to draw a bunch of cluttered generic 'anime' stuff is free to do so. but i really do feel like it's a shame that art styles that have so little variation in body type, skin tone, and taste have such a large amount of cultural capital rn.
