#critique requested

[savasanajunkie]

Felt like drawing my OC Lolita in a pretty flowy gown and practicing some lighting/shading techniques.  It turned out a bit darker than I wanted, drowning out some of the details - any suggestions on how I can improve on that?  Otherwise I'm pretty pleased.

Commissions are open!

[m-vatia]

(: My tablet isn't dead! (:

The adaptor cord was broken, but I have a replacement now, and can keep making finished digital stuff! (:

Notes about the piece and the designs are under the cut, and the image description is in the Alt text! Critique is always welcome!

Columbia was based entirely off of Nell Campbell's performance in the original film and Eddie is a messy combination of a number of different depictions.

Eddie's skin is meant to look somewhat dead, but I'm not sure how well I did - some of it looks a bit flat.

I wish these two had just a bit more time together, they really seemed so happy to see each other. (:

[starswirls-planet]

2nd draft sketches for a set of playing card inspired illustrations

Any critique is welcome

[franki-lew-yo]

Looking for a second opinion: Trans and/or Black takes MUCH appreciated

WhiteAceCisgendered author on the spectrum here IN NEED OF A SECOND TAKE + possible criticism from ppl in at least one of these communities.

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So while I’d usually just hand wave this as anxiety getting to me, the actions of a certain author have sparked me to better analyze my work and ask potential viewers if something I’ve written in my published book may be a little backward/problematic, especially because it IS for children.

It could be nothing, but I want you guys’ take. PM or email me ([email protected]) and I’ll fill you in on what I want/need critiqued.

Mouse isn’t supposed to be ground breaking social commentary but I did write it at a time in my life where I didn’t quite know the things I know now.

[baebeyza]

yo, my asians again, together with some europeans. I did this to see how good one can tell my asian and european eyes apart. Anyone here wanna give critique? (the stuff in red are facts to get the complex personalities of these complex characters closer to you)

[judiciousimprecation]

Ghost in the Shell (2017)

Ghost in the Shell (2017) is a no good very bad movie. It is even more disappointing than I expected, and I had to remind myself on multiple occasions during the viewing that if I walked out of the movie I would just have to suffer through it again later. The iconic philosophical themes and questions of the original movie are abandoned or mangled beyond recognition, and replaced by cliched tropes and story elements. Scarlett Johansson (and the rest of the cast) are decent when given the chance to shine, but the bad writing and absurd story decisions weigh heavily on the entire movie.

I’ll be honest - I don’t really care about the whitewashing issues. All else being equal I would have preferred a Japanese actress (side note: It seems weird to me that people kept calling for an “Asian actress” in place of ScarJo, not specifically a Japanese one), but if they honestly found a white woman who carried the role better, than more power to them. That is not what happened, though. ScarJo did better than I expected, but I did not expect much to begin with. I think the writing and characterization hampered her far more than her acting, but nonetheless this was hardly her ideal role.

However, claims that her being a white woman were somehow important to the plot and/or the themes of identity fall flat for a number of reasons. First, the aspect of race is completely (conspicuously!) absent from the film (arguably from the source material too!), and is never mentioned or addressed by the characters. Second, if she’s supposed to seem out of place as a white woman in Japan, it doesn’t really work when half her coworkers, the villain, the anti-hero, and the majority of the supporting characters are white! Third, if it was supposed to create some sort of rift/disconnect between her past/mother and her, that could have been done in a number of less ridiculous ways. You know what would have been really clever? Making her mother a Chinese refugee. That would have been really interesting.

Besides, all of those arguments are apologetics, because the Major’s racial identity never plays into the story, and the film certainly doesn’t do anything to highlight it.

(Second side note: Togusa, arguably one of the whitest looking characters, was played by an Asian guy! Y’all are just fucking with us)

Regardless of the casting decisions, their characterization of the new Major is unbearable. The decision to take the Major, an ex-military ass-kicking woman who has been a full-body cyborg her whole life, and turn her into Mira Killian, the amnesiac runaway who they kidnapped and stuffed into an experimental cyborg body and then leased to Section 9, imho, completely destroyed their ability to create a decent movie. In the original movie, Motoko Kusanagi is incredibly important and interesting as a character, but hardly important to the plot. She drives the plot forward, but the plot is not about her (It’s more complicated than that, but we’re here to talk about the new movie, not the original). Mira Killian is devoid of any agency, and ends up getting dragged through the plot by the machinations of the Evil Robot Corporation and the unstable Failed Experiment guy whose motives I didn’t understand, and which hardly fit with the rest of the movie’s themes. To repeat: The Major (nee Motoko Kusanagi), imho one of the strongest female characters ever written, has basically zero agency in this film. Mira Killian has no fucking clue what is going on.

Speaking of the Evil Robot Corporation and the Unstable Failed Experiment, this film is rife with all sort of cliches absent from the original film (and no, not because they weren’t cliches when the original aired). The majority of the original film’s interesting themes and philosophy were ripped out and replaced with tired scifi and cyberpunk cliches, and what wasn’t removed was dumbed down to the point of just beating the audience over the head with the words “Ghost” and “Shell” dozens of times. Barely five minutes in, the Evil Robot Corporation guy literally says “I don’t see her as a machine, I see her as a weapon”. I have never wanted to walk out of a movie so badly in my life. The entire Evil Robot Corporation is yet another tired and unnecessary cliche, and seem to exist only because movie audiences can’t understand a plot that doesn’t have a monolithic Antagonist driving every bad thing in the plot, and also to give Section 9 plenty of goons to shoot.

There’s a great tumblr post I can’t find that makes fun of cybernetic characters’ tendency to get angsty and annoying about their ~humanity~ and if they are still a ~person~ (rather than just embracing their badass new robot bits), and the new movie dives belly-first into those tropes. The original film starts with a world where full cyberization is increasingly popular and asks what it means to be human when you’ve been replaced by machinery, and where the soul (ghost) fits in that equation, and ends with an AI that has managed to create its own soul, thereby obviating the question. The new film starts with an amnesiac and the world’s only full-body cyborg (±1) worrying she’s a machine and wondering if she’s really a human at all, and ends with her getting her memories and backstory back and deciding, yep, she is definitely a human after all.

Also, I want to take a moment to complain about the new film’s insistence on pointless homages and callbacks to the source material. Naming the new Evil Robot Corporation “Hanka Robotics” is an incongruous reference, but an inoffensive one. Naming the antihero Hideo Kuze, though, was completely ridiculous and destroyed any shreds of immersion I might have had, every time they said his name. Hideo Kuze is the antagonist from the second season of the TV show; he bears no resemblance to this new character, and does not even exist in the same universe as the original film!

The entire garbage man sequence is so mangled as to make no fucking sense, all the more so because they insist on callbacks to little details like showing him the photo of his “daughter”, which feels completely out of place and confusing. The diving boat scene is the victim of twisted irony - in the original it’s like the one place where the Major discusses what it means to feel and be human (and also where the Puppet Master introduces himself!). In the new film it’s almost entirely pointless conversation that gestures feebly in the direction of the original, and probably one of the only places where the Mira doesn’t complain about not being human.

The opening scene is a weird hybrid of the opening scene from the original film, and the geisha house from the episode one of the TV series (two very good scenes). And yet it misses the point of both! The geisha house scene from SAC is supposed to illustrate Section 9’s competence, planning, and teamwork, as they surveil the area and move in stealthily, resolving the situation with just a few seconds of gunfire. Meanwhile, the opening scene in the original film illustrates the darker side of Section 9’s MO, as the Major assassinates a foreign diplomat who was about to give asylum to a programmer with classified info. To be clear, none of these elements *need* to be in the new film, but it raises the question of why the new version exists at all, and demonstrates just how superficial most of the callback scenes are. Overall, the callback scenes are all the more incongruous and strange for how they don’t fit at all with the new story and characters.

There are a few bright spots, though. Beat Takeshi and Pilou Asbæk are great as Aramaki and Batou, respectively (although the characters are universally hampered by bad writing). The title sequence was neat, and I think they nailed the Ghost in the Shell’s overall visual aesthetic. The Water Fight scene was actually really cool (possibly by virtue of being a shot-for-shot recreation of the original). Also, you can watch that one scene online and save yourself a miserable two hours! The rest of the action scenes did not fare so well. The stakes are incredibly low because everyone in Section 9 is an invincible badass (even though the film does a terrible job of establishing this), reducing the scenes to meaningless flash and an obsession with rendering cool effects on the Major’s thermoptic camouflage. I would probably have more to say, but I was so bored during the final climactic action scene I spent the time writing down my notes instead.

And then there’s all the stuff I’m less comfortable critiquing because it falls more under the umbrella of “creative vision” and I don’t want to sound like an anime weeb nitpicking details. But! They completely changed the ending, which was necessitated by the fact that they removed the Puppet Master and replaced him with the aforementioned Unstable Failed Experiment walking trope. They completely changed they way most people relate to cybernetic enhancements, and basically eliminated full-body cyberization from the setting. They added another woman to Section 9, but only managed to give her and all the other supporting members like 10 seconds of screen time each.

Overall, Ghost in the Shell (2017) was a bad movie that somehow managed to greatly disappoint me despite my very low expectations. Please do not go see it. Forget it exists, and go watch anything from the GitS franchise from before 2015 instead.

[theromanticscrooge]

I feel like a lot of my latest stuff has been bombing. I'd seriously appreciate some kind of feedback or critique on what I could improve, what you don't like, etc. I can't please everybody, but hearing peoples' fan theories or comments helps come up with ideas.

I know there's issues with the YouTube algorithm, but I'm if there's something I can realistically fix or change, I'll start there.

[madeinmobius]

Princess Hubun the Tigress is a princess from a neighboring nation. Her older brother is the king, and the main villain of my universe. She was trained to be an assassin in.a desert country, but she wasn't a fan of the dark magic her brother uses, so she ran away, to join Rex's side

Art was made for me by someone who unfortunately left the platform we met on

Critique below the cut!

Hubun is a very cute character - the bright, eager look is really charming, and I like the overall color scheme - there's a good mix of values there. I'm not sure if you or the person who made the art decided on it, but at base it's very good!

I do suggest adding a splash of cool color to her palette - as it is, her palette is entirely warm, and a bit of blue in her clothing might add some visual interest. (Think of how Amy is mostly warm but has some cool color in her eyes, or Sonic is mainly cool colors but has those warm red shoes.) As she's designed now, she also looks more like a domestic tabby than a tiger - if that's the look you want that's fine, but if you wanted to make her look more tiger-like it would help to have her ears more round and her head and muzzle more square, with a bigger, more powerful look overall. (Though of course this depends on how old she is - a young teen tiger might very well be much leaner than an adult.) Tigers also usually have black ears, though of course with a Sonic character real-world colors and patterns are wholly optional! The two horizontal black stripes by her eye also look slightly out of place next to the vertical stripes on her cheeks - but I really like those cheek stripes, especially the black tipping at the very end! Those bright right eyes are also a great focal point on her face - it's a great color choice that really adds to her vibrant look!

The backstory is also really interesting - sibling rival between royalty is a fun subject, and Hubun's objection to her brother's methods is a great jumping point for her adventure! The only thing I'd suggest is digging a little more into it: is it traditional for the second child to be trained as an assassin, or is it simply her brother's way of making use of her? Is dark magic something the royal family has dabbled in in the past (as a way to subdue enemies, perhaps with consequences that caused it to be forbidden until her brother began using it), or is it a new wrinkle her brother introduced himself?

Overall, I really like Hubun! She's very cute, and I'd definitely be interested in seeing more of her story!

- Mod Nikki