"I'm not whining, I'm complaining. Do you want to hear whining?" -- [link] Okay, no, on a more serious note: I've just had to re-draw the last two days' worth of frames and in-betweens for Louis because I realized I'd been drawing him "wrong".
Throughout Louis's character progress he's undergone several changes, most based on my own personal decisions, but many were also due to feedback from you guys here on DA, and I realise now that the "Louis is too skinny I don't like it" comments got to me more than they should have.
What these people don't realize is that Louis is ridiculously tall and skinny on purpose: he's a
cartoon. He's not meant to be realistic, he's meant to be an exaggeration of the flamboyant gay stereotype, the skinny French stereotype, and his design reflects his wiles and cunning when it comes to out-witting his opponents. Out of all his design evolutions, this below still remains my favorite:
It's older art I realize, and the color scheme is out of date, but that to me was his most fun and most "accurate" design. It's also the point in time when I still had the most fun drawing him, and from this point on I'm going to try to go back to that style. If I'm going to be animating him frame after frame - and if I'm going to be drawing him panel after panel to tell his story in a graphic novel - then I want to have fun doing it. These proportions and caricatures for faces and body types also make it more fun to design his crew and other characters he will be interacting with in his world.
If cartoony styles aren't your thing then I'm sorry, but there are plenty of other artists out there you can find with more "realistic" proportions. Louis was, is, and always should be "fun".
Besides ... you could always just go to my sister's account to see him with more "realistic" proportions:
There. Just had to get that off my chest. Now, back to those frames ...
--Sak
`anmari has been spreading her infectious positivity throughout our community for over 6 years. Throughout this time Ana has been at the core of all things devious, passionately developing an eclectic gallery, helping organise devmeets, participating in chat events and also recently completed dedicating her time as a Community Volunteer. We are absolutely delighted to bestow the Deviousness Award for May 2013 to `anmari, congratulations! Read More
Sta.sh
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And it's important for you to have fun with him as well.
No point in drawing something that your not going to have fun with, forced art never goes well.
Hope those frames are going well!
Sorry you have to redo some of the work though.
In the end, they are your babies. People can complain all they want and deal with it. I am sure they would complain about the aforementioned characters too, but the difference is that they only get to see those characters when finished and unchangeable. You get the feed back from them during the whole of the process. Listen to the voices you trust, most of all the one inside yourself.