Michael Sherman was notoriously bad at coloring pictures, yet most of his art remains on e621 and it doesn't look like it's ever going away (several his images were deleted for quality reasons though).

Now, if somebody decides to recolor an image so that there're no longer gaps between lines and the fill, how can that not meet quality standards?

The post in question:

post #1431116

If you scale the image down to a resolution Mike usually used it's clearly higher quality than his colorings. The image obviously doesn't deserve its resolution, as there're no details, but I saw no point in downscaling if it's the resolution the coloring was done at and downscaling is performed by e621 anyway (to 600x600 I mean). Well, the image can be optimized, as indexed color would probably be enough, so file size shouldn't be an issue either (I doubt anybody cares about it though).

You can find the source on InkBunny: Nala with ringtailed raccoons by Mike Sherman (page 3).

Note that the image has been updated since it was reposted on e621. Now the lines are cleaner and there's a background (see Nala with ringtailed raccoons by Mike Sherman (page 1) ), so the there's no point in having the original recolor with noisy lines here, but I'm still interested how the quality is measured, as any of the 3 recolors are clearly an improvement over original Mike's colorings.

Compare to something like this:

post #660592

https://e621.net/forum/show/235851

also its not only the coloring quality that affects on this, its the overall quality. and the art looks pretty bad to me even with improved coloring

Commander_Eggplant said:
https://e621.net/forum/show/235851

also its not only the coloring quality that affects on this, its the overall quality. and the art looks pretty bad to me even with improved coloring

The link isn't very relevant. I want to discuss the logic behind quality decisions in general, not a specific post, and I'm not contesting this deletion, as I've already said.

The image in question isn't different from the rest of Michael Sherman's art, as far as drawing quality is concerned, and there're hundreds of posts with his art here, thoroughly discussed on the forum, so "nobody noticed" doesn't apply either.

General post quality standards were raised around late 2015. Both of those posts look terrible, but one was approved before those quality standards were changed.

Ratte said:
General post quality standards were raised around late 2015. Both of those posts look terrible, but one was approved before those quality standards were changed.

Huh. Are there any discussions about this?

Do the new quality standards apply retrospectively or are old posts grandfathered?

What about the latest version? Is it acceptable to post?

KinkyGlutamate said:
Huh. Are there any discussions about this?

Do the new quality standards apply retrospectively or are old posts grandfathered?

What about the latest version? Is it acceptable to post?

You're going to need to provide a direct link as I'm not logging into that site.

Old posts are grandfathered. This is the same reason you can find human-only posts from before the human-only image ban in 2014. We don't retroactively enforce rules upon posts that were fine to post when they were posted.

There is a clause in the uploading guidelines for this reason regarding the change in quality standards:

Any submission before 2015 has been grandfathered in and does not need to reflect our current or future guidelines. In fact, there is a substantial amount of old art that would be deleted under the current guidelines, the existence of those old submissions do not validate or invalidate anything on this list.

Ratte said:
You're going to need to provide a direct link as I'm not logging into that site.

Actually didn't have to log in, just checked a few boxes (18+, policies) and checked sexual content.

Ratte said:
You're going to need to provide a direct link as I'm not logging into that site.

Direct link.

MyNameIsOver20charac said:
Actually didn't have to log in, just checked a few boxes (18+, policies) and checked sexual content.

I don't like dealing with Inkbunny's site in general.

KinkyGlutamate said:
Direct link.

Still looks bad. Don't post it here, it'll just get deleted.

Unless you're basically going to rework Sherman's crap from the ground up you're just wasting your time trying to color it.

Ratte said:
Unless you're basically going to rework Sherman's crap from the ground up you're just wasting your time trying to color it.

Mike Sherman's fans would disagree and those with rare fetishes have lower quality bars in general, as content is scarce (hard to be elitist if you fap to scat, for example), but whatever. 😝

Any suggestions on reliable permanent image galleries allowing posting art of others, with lax rules, little to no limits on content and at least a bit inhabited by furries? Only E-hentai/ExHentai comes to my mind, but its crazy registration scheme to gain access to underage/bestiality/etc content isn't too user-friendly...

KinkyGlutamate said:
Mike Sherman's fans would disagree and those with rare fetishes have lower quality bars in general, as content is scarce (hard to be elitist if you fap to scat, for example), but whatever. 

Sucks to be them.

KinkyGlutamate said:
Any suggestions on reliable permanent image galleries allowing posting art of others, with lax rules, little to no limits on content and at least a bit inhabited by furries? Only E-hentai/ExHentai comes to my mind, but its crazy registration scheme to gain access to underage/bestiality/etc content isn't too user-friendly...

Nope, just other boorus. Boorus are not galleries, they're collections/archives.

Ratte said:
Nope, just other boorus. Boorus are not galleries, they're collections/archives.

Just terminology differences. For me, any website with images uploaded by users is a gallery. I'd rather classify them by features and configurations than broad categories.

So, any good boorus you can suggest?

KinkyGlutamate said:
Just terminology differences. For me, any website with images uploaded by users is a gallery. I'd rather classify them by features and configurations than broad categories.

So, any good boorus you can suggest?

Both serve different functions that may overlap, but they are not the same things.

The only "good" booru I know of is ours. All the others I've seen are pretty terrible for one reason or another.

Ratte said:
Both serve different functions that may overlap, but they are not the same things.

The only "good" booru I know of is ours. All the others I've seen are pretty terrible for one reason or another.

e621 definitely has the best tagging and categorization system, second only to Wikipedia. The range of accepted content is good. However, the policies regarding paid content, elitist approach to quality and some other aspects make it inappropriate for archiving purposes.

E(x)Hentai is the only website I know which works for archiving. Gaining access to unfiltered content is too hard, unfortunately, but it's caused by peculiarities of today's society's morality, I can't blame the website's owners.

It's just unfortunate that the case "an artist disappeared, let's share all their art" is so badly covered. Also technically illegal. And will be illegal forever thanks to Mickey Mouse Protection Act and other nonsense. Thanks society again.

Ratte said:
The only "good" booru I know of is ours. All the others I've seen are pretty terrible for one reason or another.

Yet we're not the first place most artists go to post stuff. I think that partially due to the low quality rule; creater need to start somewheres and e621 may be the best organized but it not quite the most understanding when it come to posts. I seen a couple users just give up after a post or two and are never heard from again.

But that rule help keep unnecessary clutter at Bay. Hmm,maybe there could be a compromise, if there is some sort of a excemption rule.

supermarcopolo said:
Yet we're not the first place most artists go to post stuff. I think that partially due to the low quality rule; creater need to start somewheres and e621 may be the best organized but it not quite the most understanding when it come to posts. I seen a couple users just give up after a post or two and are never heard from again.

But that rule help keep unnecessary clutter at Bay. Hmm,maybe there could be a compromise, if there is some sort of a excemption rule.

Because most artists post to proper galleries, not boorus, especially curated boorus like e621. Again, these are not the same things.

The "compromise" is simply to use an actual gallery site. I don't understand what about this is so hard to grasp.

supermarcopolo said:
Yet we're not the first place most artists go to post stuff. I think that partially due to the low quality rule; creater need to start somewheres and e621 may be the best organized but it not quite the most understanding when it come to posts. I seen a couple users just give up after a post or two and are never heard from again.

But that rule help keep unnecessary clutter at Bay. Hmm,maybe there could be a compromise, if there is some sort of a excemption rule.

It seems like the primary role of e621 is organizing art of top furry artists who often don't bother to tag ("why waste time on tagging if I'm already popular?"). Tagging, quality filter and working blacklists make e621 the perfect website for most furries who just want to fap.

While some artists do use e621 as their gallery, it's not the intended purpose and I don't think it ever was or ever will be. No folders, no fully functional artist pages. e621's owners created FN for this, but it suffers from elitism too, of somewhat different sort.

Ratte said:
Because most artists post to proper galleries, not boorus, especially curated boorus like e621. Again, these are not the same things.

The "compromise" is simply to use an actual gallery site. I don't understand what about this is so hard to grasp.

I just checked over the TOS and Rules page and neither of them say upfront "e621 is a curated booru, not a gallery site" (or *any* other mission statement at all, that might imply this). IMO, it would help significantly if both of them did have a clear mission statement near the top.

I don't remember whether anything particular happens when you go to do your first upload, but if a similar message could be shown only during a user's first 1 - 5 uploads, that would be further insurance.

savageorange said:
I just checked over the TOS and Rules page and neither of them say upfront "e621 is a curated booru, not a gallery site" (or *any* other mission statement at all, that might imply this). IMO, it would help significantly if both of them did have a clear mission statement near the top.

I don't remember whether anything particular happens when you go to do your first upload, but if a similar message could be shown only during a user's first 1 - 5 uploads, that would be further insurance.

I don't see a reason for a mission statement when we already have the uploading guidelines that say the same thing but with more words and detailed explanations.

savageorange said:
I don't remember whether anything particular happens when you go to do your first upload, but if a similar message could be shown only during a user's first 1 - 5 uploads, that would be further insurance.

I'll remind you. The welcome message on the upload page says, "Sucks to be you, wait another week before you upload anything, you sneaky potential troll". 😆

Ratte said:
I don't see a reason for a mission statement when we already have the uploading guidelines that say the same thing but with more words and detailed explanations.

I personally think a visual guide/examples of minimum quality standards might help.

regsmutt said:
I personally think a visual guide/examples of minimum quality standards might help.

That opens up another pita with singling out artists to use as examples, something that doesn't feel right doing.

I do think the standards aren't that mystifying as most people make them out to be. A solid grasp on artistic principles is just fancy speak for "you should know what you're doing, and be able to bring it to paper". For example things like ensuring proportions are similar (left arm the same size as right one), anatomy makes sense (no snapped necks, broken limbs, detached fingers, dislocated shoulders, etc), the perspective is adequately realized, backgrounds "fit" (same perspective as the characters mainly), linework is solid (no extremely wobbly lines, lines don't go past or stop before intersections, etc), coloring is done okay (no bucket fill, no white pixels from bucket fill, no coloring past lines, etc), shading isn't just applied randomly.

Many things can be a stylistic choice, but it's usually very visible if something is done deliberately or because of inexperience.

NotMeNotYou said:
I do think the standards aren't that mystifying as most people make them out to be. A solid grasp on artistic principles is just fancy speak for "you should know what you're doing, and be able to bring it to paper". For example things like ensuring proportions are similar (left arm the same size as right one), anatomy makes sense (no snapped necks, broken limbs, detached fingers, dislocated shoulders, etc), the perspective is adequately realized, backgrounds "fit" (same perspective as the characters mainly), linework is solid (no extremely wobbly lines, lines don't go past or stop before intersections, etc), coloring is done okay (no bucket fill, no white pixels from bucket fill, no coloring past lines, etc), shading isn't just applied randomly.

It's still subjective. Let's take a look at this picture for example:

post #709285

Let's ignore crappy coloring for the moment and judge only linework. Arms look short and back leg is a tiny bit off, but other than that I don't see blatantly wrong proportions, anatomy or perspective. Back leg anatomy may even be considered a part of his style at this point, as Sherman is pretty consistent at drawing longer feet. However, Ratte claims above that no coloring can save Sherman's artwork and, except for completely redrawing it from scratch, it's unsalvageable.

Now let's look at this:

post #1230922

Anatomy is terrible (look at buttocks). Shading, while detailed, is random (look at shoulder blades).

Why is it approved, upvoted and faved so much then? Because furries are blind. They don't see mistakes behind detailed shading.

Or this:

post #1427258

Anatomy is a failure, any sort of shading is absent. Still approved, upvoted and faved. Why? Because furries don't see mistakes when they fap to favorite characters.

Or this:

post #1135424

No lines, no shading.

Why is it approved? Well, it's uploaded by the artist, the artist has shown that he can draw properly if he wants, so let's not make him angry.

And it's not like I'm picking 1 picture out of 1000. Just click on the artist's tag and you'll see the same low quality pictures over and over.

Oh, by the way, Miles DF fails at shading and Aldem fails at anatomy. Yet the first one sells YCHs for thousands of dollars and the second one can be seen in IRL galleries.

Just admit that quality is subjective and stop pretending there's some golden standard which is understood and approved by all.

Okay. Here's my two cents:

The crappy coloring is pretty hard to ignore. The leaves are literally a squiggle. I mean, every single non-paint art program has incredibly simple ways to color around the line art better than that. But, as you said, coloring aside...

That image is not really well put together. It's poorly framed: the cat's toes are cut off. His tail is cut off. you could expand the frame another 'foot' or two to the right and keep the characters entirely within frame. Also the bottom frame is cutting off the edge of his foot, too. Yet something like the top quarter of the picture is empty space. That's badly composed.

The first picture you mention has the camera WAY closer to the action: while the one on the bottom has his feet cut off, they wouldn't really add much to the picture. The focal point of the image is the yellow one's penis. Which is pointing to the white one's mouth. Then you see his eyes, looking up at the yellow one's face, then you travel along the spine to the other penis. It's well composed. It's dynamic.

Mike Sherman's picture isn't.

Past that, it's not just that it's badly framed, it's also very... mechanical. ther'es no stylization. It, over all, reminds me of my Harvey Comics from the 50's and 60's. it's stiff. The eyes are a simple collection of lines and curves. The expression is like an 80's cartoon. There's no *expression* to the characters.

Like, literally not sure if he's feeling pleasured, angry, happy, or concerned. Honestly, he looks more concerned than anything. She, on the other hand, looks sad, but mostly because she has tears. that's... it. Nothign about her body language says that she's feeling *anything* right now. She's got some claws out, but nothing more than that. She's also grabbing on to the tree trunk, but there is no feeling of 'weight' in her arms. she looks kind of like she's strangling it, not leaning against it. Yet she manages to look off balence too. Her whole posture is basically confusing as hell.

Okay, further, again, there's no energy to this pose. "effort" isindicated by some generic water droplets that indicate both physical exertion, distress and sex. There are some random wiggly motion wiggles. Her hair is literally a scribble with a pen, just like the grass at the bottom of the tree.

This art isn't *bad* perse... the biggest problem is... this is the art I drew as a kid. But over time and practice, I improved. My style refined more. I learned what made a good picture and what didn't. I learned how to put more effort into some places and less effort in others. I learned how to make pictures exciting and not look like archie comics.

This is a process almost every artist goes through. it's why artists laugh awkwardly and go "wow! that's an old drawing..." It really doesn't look like he moved *past* it, though.

ANd y'know what, tha'ts pretty fair. he was old, and it's definetly harder to change styles--especially since the last few decades have seen drastially different ideas of what makes 'good' art. Anime has been a huge influence on all of us, even if we don't like anime styles. For someone who is older, it's reasonable for their style to be older as well.

But our modern perspective on what makes good art changes, over the years. And we now expect a higher degree of dynamic framing, posing, etc.

I'm looking at his VCL gallery and he's got some really nice stuff. I"m sure that some of these wouldn't be rejected, if posted here: x x x ... the problem is, his pictures are not all like that. Take Nala and the Ring tails, again -- one ringtail's cut off by the edige of the frame, while there's PLENTY of empty space on the other side.

also, your whole "furries are blind" arguement is a bit funny. You are saying that we don't see mistakes when they're trapped behind images we like, but that we refuse to like images we don't like, because we're distracted by the mistakes?

Just admit that quality is subjective and stop pretending there's some golden standard which is understood and approved by all.

I don't think anyone's ever really denied that.

KinkyGlutamate said:
Why is it approved? Well, it's uploaded by the artist, the artist has shown that he can draw properly if he wants, so let's not make him angry.

Oh boy, if only you could see my dmail inbox. I have gotten so many accusations from artists that I'm targeting them because I was the one handling their post and deleting them. And I'm fairly sure many others in staff has gotten similar at some point as sometimes artists take it to public by coming to blips and forums.

No, just because artist X made something doesn't make it any more or less acceptable. (Unless they are DNP, then it makes it not acceptable)

Also do keep in mind that adding in something can ruin everything. If something is posted as colored artwork and colors look like that, pretty much whole thing is ruined.

KinkyGlutamate said:
It's still subjective. Let's take a look at this picture for example:

post #709285

Let's ignore crappy coloring for the moment and judge only linework. Arms look short and back leg is a tiny bit off, but other than that I don't see blatantly wrong proportions, anatomy or perspective. Back leg anatomy may even be considered a part of his style at this point, as Sherman is pretty consistent at drawing longer feet. However, Ratte claims above that no coloring can save Sherman's artwork and, except for completely redrawing it from scratch, it's unsalvageable.

Sherman's linework is bad. SnowWolf pretty much hit it on the head with most of her criticism, it may be consistent, but it's flat, it's undynamic, the facial expressions make no sense, grass is just a single jiggly line, etc.

The other examples aren't perfect, but they're still better.

Also, why didn't you directly link to the inks if you only want to discuss the inks? They're literally parented to that one.

SnowWolf said:
Okay. Here's my two cents

I won't argue with you. You're absolutely correct. Mike Sherman's art is simple and his art style hasn't improved over the years. However, you still have to go beyond the requirements which are listed on the official upload guidelines to critisize it.

It's not like I value Sherman's art as aesthetically pleasing, for me he's primarily the artist who has drawn lots of feral porn, especially felines, especially cubs, and sometimes with humans. Ferals alone are much more rare than anthros, not to mention something as specialized as this.

Furthermore, the characters he's drawn are from 20+ years old movies. They aren't ponies, there're no heaps of newer art of higher quality. There're only a couple of artists who draw them regularly, not hundreds or thousands of artists. This makes every picture valuable.

It's actually surprising to see someone with so high standards in art. With that level of requirements on composition, dynamics, color choice, range of emotions etc. (I'd also add telling a story and provoking emotions) it's close to impossible to find anything worthy. Any picture is shit. The Blotch team probably gets closest to these standards and I'm still not sure they always satisfy them all. Zaush too, maybe. Most artists, even if they're capable of reaching high levels of drawing, tend to specialize only on some aspects.

I've just learned to appreciate the good sides of art as long as it isn't complete failure in some aspect.

In a similar way, I tend to play lots of indie games. It's not like I like cheap art in indie games more, I choose them because AAA developers don't create games in the genres I want. One AAA side-scroll platformer in a decade, several good games from medium studios, and everything else is indie.

Will that make me play first-person shooters? Nope.

KinkyGlutamate said:
I won't argue with you. You're absolutely correct. Mike Sherman's art is simple and his art style hasn't improved over the years. However, you still have to go beyond the requirements which are listed on the official upload guidelines to critisize it.

It's not like I value Sherman's art as aesthetically pleasing, for me he's primarily the artist who has drawn lots of feral porn, especially felines, especially cubs, and sometimes with humans. Ferals alone are much more rare than anthros, not to mention something as specialized as this.

Furthermore, the characters he's drawn are from 20+ years old movies. They aren't ponies, there're no heaps of newer art of higher quality. There're only a couple of artists who draw them regularly, not hundreds or thousands of artists. This makes every picture valuable.

It's actually surprising to see someone with so high standards in art. With that level of requirements on composition, dynamics, color choice, range of emotions etc. (I'd also add telling a story and provoking emotions) it's close to impossible to find anything worthy. Any picture is shit. The Blotch team probably gets closest to these standards and I'm still not sure they always satisfy them all. Zaush too, maybe. Most artists, even if they're capable of reaching high levels of drawing, tend to specialize only on some aspects.

I've just learned to appreciate the good sides of art as long as it isn't complete failure in some aspect.

In a similar way, I tend to play lots of indie games. It's not like I like cheap art in indie games more, I choose them because AAA developers don't create games in the genres I want. One AAA side-scroll platformer in a decade, several good games from medium studios, and everything else is indie.

Will that make me play first-person shooters? Nope.

For every good indie game that comes out, there's 5000 others that are garbage shovelware. Sherman's work is the shovelware.

NotMeNotYou said:
That opens up another pita with singling out artists to use as examples, something that doesn't feel right doing.

I do think the standards aren't that mystifying as most people make them out to be. A solid grasp on artistic principles is just fancy speak for "you should know what you're doing, and be able to bring it to paper". For example things like ensuring proportions are similar (left arm the same size as right one), anatomy makes sense (no snapped necks, broken limbs, detached fingers, dislocated shoulders, etc), the perspective is adequately realized, backgrounds "fit" (same perspective as the characters mainly), linework is solid (no extremely wobbly lines, lines don't go past or stop before intersections, etc), coloring is done okay (no bucket fill, no white pixels from bucket fill, no coloring past lines, etc), shading isn't just applied randomly.

Many things can be a stylistic choice, but it's usually very visible if something is done deliberately or because of inexperience.

I don't think it needs to be selecting some unlucky artist's work as 'barely passable'. It could be a volunteer's older art or specifically created by a volunteer. A lot of times it is obvious, but it would be helpful to show more borderline cases.

KinkyGlutamate said:
I won't argue with you. You're absolutely correct. Mike Sherman's art is simple and his art style hasn't improved over the years. However, you still have to go beyond the requirements which are listed on the official upload guidelines to critisize it.

It's not like I value Sherman's art as aesthetically pleasing, for me he's primarily the artist who has drawn lots of feral porn, especially felines, especially cubs, and sometimes with humans. Ferals alone are much more rare than anthros, not to mention something as specialized as this.

Furthermore, the characters he's drawn are from 20+ years old movies. They aren't ponies, there're no heaps of newer art of higher quality. There're only a couple of artists who draw them regularly, not hundreds or thousands of artists. This makes every picture valuable.

There aren't exemptions for a subject's rareness. I know it's tough to find stuff that's really niche or simply unpopular, but that's just how it be sometimes. I like really weird niche stuff myself that I really couldn't find very much of. My solution was to draw it myself. Some people choose to commission stuff they see little of but want more of. Good artists aren't that rare and quite a few take commissions or requests.

KinkyGlutamate said:
I won't argue with you. You're absolutely correct. Mike Sherman's art is simple and his art style hasn't improved over the years. However, you still have to go beyond the requirements which are listed on the official upload guidelines to critisize it.

Well, no. it does say "All submissions need to display a solid grasp of artistic principles" which is basically a specifically vague statement that means 'decent-to-good art'.

It's not like I value Sherman's art as aesthetically pleasing, for me he's primarily the artist who has drawn lots of feral porn, especially felines, especially cubs, and sometimes with humans. Ferals alone are much more rare than anthros, not to mention something as specialized as this.

Furthermore, the characters he's drawn are from 20+ years old movies. They aren't ponies, there're no heaps of newer art of higher quality. There're only a couple of artists who draw them regularly, not hundreds or thousands of artists. This makes every picture valuable.

I feel you on that. That said, we've got 2800 posts tagged the_lion_king... over 800 of them are tagged cub and most of them are rating:e. we've got over 44,000 cub images. cub feral rating:e has over 5300 posts. ...I feel you, I do, but there is more of this art available. Inkbunny is FULL of cub stuff--there are something like 700 posts tagged 'nala' over there.

I really do understand, though-- two of my favorite artists occasionally get their art deleted when posted here-- too simplistic, or not skilled enough yet. It's always hard because they post stuff I really like, that there's not a lot of, but...

My kinks are not the kink of the website in general. Jsut because it interests me, doesn't mean it interests everyone. This website values aesthetics. It's frustrating, but it's how it is.

It's actually surprising to see someone with so high standards in art. With that level of requirements on composition, dynamics, color choice, range of emotions etc. (I'd also add telling a story and provoking emotions) it's close to impossible to find anything worthy.

Well, I'm an artist. I draw. I have devoted time to learning what makes good art. That said, I'm just a user here. I don't pick who's art stays or goes. This is probably a good thing, because I'm pretty critical.

That said, above all else: the point of art is to provoke emotions. A sketch can be evocative. full color detail and shading can be dull and stiff. Actually it's pretty common among artists to be frustrated about how our sketches look and feel 100% better than the works we pour hours more work into. Everyone will have a slightly different feeling when they regard a piece of art. Even the best art can be mediocre to some people.

Any picture is shit. The Blotch team probably gets closest to these standards and I'm still not sure they always satisfy them all. Zaush too, maybe. Most artists, even if they're capable of reaching high levels of drawing, tend to specialize only on some aspects.

The difference is that some artists, some pictures have a higher 'success rate' than others. Blotch and Zaush have put in a lot of time into learning the tricks of the trade. BUt any one of their pictures has downvotes, if you go and have a look.

I've just learned to appreciate the good sides of art as long as it isn't complete failure in some aspect.

The problem is that your 'good side' isn't necessarily my 'good side'. Your 'failure' isn't always my 'failure'. I have a friend who's incredibly and painfully critical about anatomy flaws. as a result, she hates some things I love. She loves some things I hate. This is the nature of art.

Art is a subjective experience.

In a similar way, I tend to play lots of indie games. It's not like I like cheap art in indie games more, I choose them because AAA developers don't create games in the genres I want. One AAA side-scroll platformer in a decade, several good games from medium studios, and everything else is indie.

Will that make me play first-person shooters? Nope.

Hey, indie games can be great. AAA devs don't make my favorite genre either--but a lot of those indie games are not really.... good, even if they're in my genre.

Actually, it's especially frustrating, personally, as the genre--roguelike games-- has taken on a new meaning in recent decades, and there are many 'roguelike' games that do not have the features I want out of roguelike games. Many of them are not enjoyable to me. Many of them don't even have the traits I'm looking for. That doesn't mean the games are unenjoyable or that people are wrong for enjoying them. Just I don't enjoy them.

Please draw analogies to art as you like. ;)

regsmutt said:
There aren't exemptions for a subject's rareness. I know it's tough to find stuff that's really niche or simply unpopular, but that's just how it be sometimes. I like really weird niche stuff myself that I really couldn't find very much of. My solution was to draw it myself. Some people choose to commission stuff they see little of but want more of. Good artists aren't that rare and quite a few take commissions or requests.

Budgets tend to be limited though. 🙄

SnowWolf said:
Well, no. it does say "All submissions need to display a solid grasp of artistic principles" which is basically a specifically vague statement that means 'decent-to-good art'.

Oh, my memory failed me. I meant the explanation of requirements by NotMeNotYou above.

cub feral rating:e has over 5300 posts.

Over half of which is MLP. 🙃 Then pocket monsters. Then grandfathered art which no longer satisfies quality requirements (Mike's art alone is a couple of hundreds posts). In the end, we have 2000 relevant posts over 10 years of e621's existence, which means 1 post in 2 days on average, or about 0.15% of e621 daily posts.

I'm so salty about e621's quality standards not because I want to force others to share my interests and priorities, but because e621 has the best tagging system, so it's perfect for organizing archives, finding rare art with obscure content and discovering new artists. However, the increase in quality standards out of nowhere makes all this impossible.

That said, above all else: the point of art is to provoke emotions. A sketch can be evocative. full color detail and shading can be dull and stiff. Actually it's pretty common among artists to be frustrated about how our sketches look and feel 100% better than the works we pour hours more work into. Everyone will have a slightly different feeling when they regard a piece of art. Even the best art can be mediocre to some people.

Asthexiancal has been drawing only sketches the whole time. Some people tried coloring his sketches, but I don't think it was ever successful as his lines were rarely perfect and all tiny glitches became much easier to notice after coloring. However, I still regard Asthexiancal as one of the best artists when it comes to light-hearted humorous porn. I know no other artist that can match him. Sadly, he's virtually dead. Only Zootopia managed to raise him from his grave for a bit.

Actually, it's especially frustrating, personally, as the genre--roguelike games-- has taken on a new meaning in recent decades, and there are many 'roguelike' games that do not have the features I want out of roguelike games. Many of them are not enjoyable to me. Many of them don't even have the traits I'm looking for. That doesn't mean the games are unenjoyable or that people are wrong for enjoying them. Just I don't enjoy them.

I was pretty sad about the direction games took in 2000s in general. Crappy 3D which took over perfect pixel art, FPS dominating all other genres... It took many years for 3D to not look like crap and actualy supersede the quality of old 2D. We also finally have widely available good game engines which make advanced indie games a reality and hardware powerful enough to stop caring about optimization in simpler games. I enjoy the games again.

The same thing with animation, both feature films and series. Competition in parodies, sarcasm and idiotic styles in series, crappy 3D in feature animations... I thought this is the end. Thankfully, something changed both in scripts and technologies.

KinkyGlutamate said:
Over half of which is MLP.  Then pocket monsters. Then grandfathered art which no longer satisfies quality requirements (Mike's art alone is a couple of hundreds posts). In the end, we have 2000 relevant posts over 10 years of e621's existence, which means 1 post in 2 days on average, or about 0.15% of e621 daily posts.

I'm so salty about e621's quality standards not because I want to force others to share my interests and priorities, but because e621 has the best tagging system, so it's perfect for organizing archives, finding rare art with obscure content and discovering new artists. However, the increase in quality standards out of nowhere makes all this impossible.

Do remember that MLP kinda exploded into its own fandom, so it would be dum to think that there wouldn't be as many MLP posts as there are. Altough MLP fans also like to do a looooot of things which are also againts our guidelines so also amount of deleted posts are pretty high and they have derpibooru where stuff is more accepted no matter quality.

I can kinda relate to this as I do remember seeing some really horribly made artwork years ago, but that's because I simply remember them, they are still horrible. Of course there are some level of tolerance to older artwork, resolutions were lower and softwares weren't so advanced, etc. but if it's horrible, it's horrible.

Now consider that there are users who do not have nostalgia for these pieces as they have never seen them and we are getting thousand brand new posts a day. Now there's suddenly post which should've clearly not have been approved, but somehow because uploader has nostalgia, fetish or other personal interest towards it makes it more acceptable?

Quality standards weren't increased out of nowhere, they are increased as there's more content being uploaded and the overall quality with tools, computers and internet has improved. It's raising the bar when everyone can just jump over it and there's more jumping over it. I really don't want to sound elitist when talking about this, but even when crowdsourced, there's still only so much users and time, so in long run it's simply better to focus that effort on things that deserve it more. It's similar reason to why human only artwork isn't allowed, it's simply far better to focus user efforts and user experience to something. Guidelines have also been tried to made more consistant and fair to avoid situation where staff just posts meme gifs while someone with clear art knowledge is denied because "lol I don't like it".

There are some things I think are wrong with the Nala image in question. The image overall is not that bad. If it was centered and the eyes on the coons didn't look weird, it would be much better. Character design, colors (except maybe some strange shading), and theme is fine.

I'm sure the more artistically inclined will be able to nitpick out (and have done so) other inconsistencies that the typical art viewer wouldn't immediately notice. Those who study art or are artists may cringe a bit at these less notable things, but most anyone else wouldn't care. Art doesn't need to be perfect to be pleasing to look at and worthy of appreciation.

That being said I think the two things I mentioned are not minor issues and are perhaps why it got deleted. Although if we just ignore those things, the rest of the image is of a decent quality and I feel many would still appreciate what it is trying to do even with the flaws.

Mario69 said:
Now consider that there are users who do not have nostalgia for these pieces as they have never seen them and we are getting thousand brand new posts a day. Now there's suddenly post which should've clearly not have been approved, but somehow because uploader has nostalgia, fetish or other personal interest towards it makes it more acceptable?

I'd rather have a "low_quality" tag which means "pre-2015 quality standards" and can easily be blacklisted by users who want to view and tag only top quality art. Yeah, that would mean more work for mods and could cause endless tag wars and shitstorms in comments but I can judge only what I want. 😜

Still interested in reading discussions about the increase in quality. Couldn't find anything (well, found this 😆). I wonder whether it was something genuinely requested by the community, or a sort of undiscussable decision by administration like that with paid content. (The decision on paid content is something I expected the moment e621 switched owner to a "serious company doing serious business", I'm actually surprised paid content survived that long, but whatever.)

KinkyGlutamate said:
I'd rather have a "low_quality" tag which means "pre-2015 quality standards" and can easily be blacklisted by users who want to view and tag only top quality art. Yeah, that would mean more work for mods and could cause endless tag wars and shitstorms in comments but I can judge only what I want.

no

KinkyGlutamate said:
Still interested in reading discussions about the increase in quality. Couldn't find anything (well, found this ). I wonder whether it was something genuinely requested by the community, or a sort of undiscussable decision by administration like that with paid content. (The decision on paid content is something I expected the moment e621 switched owner to a "serious company doing serious business", I'm actually surprised paid content survived that long, but whatever.)

It was staff decision. We don't need to take in visual shovelware just because some people have bottom-of-the-barrel standards. That is what other boorus and gallery sites are for. We don't need to be yet another one of them.

KinkyGlutamate said:
Still interested in reading discussions about the increase in quality. Couldn't find anything (well, found this ). I wonder whether it was something genuinely requested by the community, or a sort of undiscussable decision by administration like that with paid content.

We got quite a few complaints about low quality art over the years, and that it's quite nice that we actually enforce quality standards unlike paheal or similar.

KinkyGlutamate said:
I'd rather have a "low_quality" tag which means "pre-2015 quality standards" and can easily be blacklisted by users who want to view and tag only top quality art. Yeah, that would mean more work for mods and could cause endless tag wars and shitstorms in comments but I can judge only what I want

DENIED

Woah, that's a lot of admins. 😲

NotMeNotYou said:
We got quite a few complaints about low quality art over the years, and that it's quite nice that we actually enforce quality standards unlike paheal or similar.

Pretty sure you got quite a few complaints about gore, cub porn, 9/11 porn, scat, rape, nazis, castration, grotesque art, nightmare fuel and lots of other things and you'll surely receive thanks if you ban all that stuff. Should we expect changes in that area too, eventually? Serious question really. I've seen what happenned to FurryNetwork.

Paheal's lack of quality enforcement is actually good, by the way. People just don't understand the purpose of the site — collection and preservation above porn. Paheal even has an exception in rules specifically for titles with rare Rule 34 art. Their tagging is garbage, but even lack of tags serves the purpose — you're not expected to fap to the characters you don't know just because they happen to perform something you're interested in. Featured images are never fappable too.

KinkyGlutamate said:
Woah, that's a lot of admins. 

Pretty sure you got quite a few complaints about gore, cub porn, 9/11 porn, scat, rape, nazis, castration, grotesque art, nightmare fuel and lots of other things and you'll surely receive thanks if you ban all that stuff. Should we expect changes in that area too, eventually? Serious question really. I've seen what happenned to FurryNetwork.

Dispite the fact that I'm disgusted by a lot of these, I really hope not. If we're gonna start banning things based on peoples preferences we might as well ban the site for people being opposed to furry art.

KinkyGlutamate said:
Paheal's lack of quality enforcement is actually good, by the way. People just don't understand the purpose of the site — collection and preservation above porn. Paheal even has an exception in rules specifically for titles with rare Rule 34 art. Their tagging is garbage, but even lack of tags serves the purpose — you're not expected to fap to the characters you don't know just because they happen to perform something you're interested in. Featured images are never fappable too.

I think it's good that both sites exist, one for collecting good art and the other for preservation of art no matter quality. Both are needed depending on what you want.

KinkyGlutamate said:
Still interested in reading discussions about the increase in quality. Couldn't find anything (well, found this ). I wonder whether it was something genuinely requested by the community, or a sort of undiscussable decision by administration like that with paid content. (The decision on paid content is something I expected the moment e621 switched owner to a "serious company doing serious business", I'm actually surprised paid content survived that long, but whatever.)

If this bothers you so much, you can also try digging the news https://e621.net/news

Guidelines are revised and updated sometimes without much bigger notice. Of course larger changes like skin color not mattering when determining character to be human are discussed and notified in news, but something like particularizing that second life stuff does indeed count as screencaps like it always has, aren't that noteworthy to notify all everyone.

KinkyGlutamate said:
Pretty sure you got quite a few complaints about gore, cub porn, 9/11 porn, scat, rape, nazis, castration, grotesque art, nightmare fuel and lots of other things and you'll surely receive thanks if you ban all that stuff. Should we expect changes in that area too, eventually? Serious question really. I've seen what happenned to FurryNetwork.

Paheal's lack of quality enforcement is actually good, by the way. People just don't understand the purpose of the site — collection and preservation above porn. Paheal even has an exception in rules specifically for titles with rare Rule 34 art. Their tagging is garbage, but even lack of tags serves the purpose — you're not expected to fap to the characters you don't know just because they happen to perform something you're interested in. Featured images are never fappable too.

Please don't bundle fetish artwork with low quality submissions.

This is the reason why we have blacklist which can be used even without registering onto the site, so you can blacklist content you do not wish to see. I have been thinking why there aren't 18+ warning and suggested blacklist tags like some other sites do, but that's another topic. Low quality submissions are really hard to blacklist, only way would be to tag them but we are already trying to get rid of subjective and insulting tags. Also because they are harder to blacklist, this would most likely result users just trying to search for most popular or most favorited stuff which then in return will hurt even mediocore and safe artwork a lot. So the situation would get worse to both artists and users.

Paheal doesn't need curation, because their only purpose is to have SEO website with as much pornographic content of copyrighted material as possible so that they can collect as much ad revenue as possible. Are you seriously saying that they care about collection and preserving there? No, all they care is porn and money it generates to them. Get out with your original characters and it doesn't matter if mike sherman made it if it doesn't have anything sexual in it.

If you tag anything else than character and artist, you are breaking their rules. More tags would mean more work, which would mean less money. If your upload isn't pornographic content of established (aka popular) character or thing, it's getting deleted, because nobody searches that with google. Only reason why they have exception is that they would have some sort of material if someone is searching it, so that their site would be first search engine result instead of competitors - and they still have low quality guidelines as well.

Then we come back to this again - we have much more work here to be done to posts, which includes proper sourcing, tagging, translating, pooling, etc. which Paheal have even rules againts and technical limitations set in place to prevent them. Where they can just have the image and never do anything for it, every single post at e621 will always have more tags that can be added if nothing else.

I also do not understand the appeal of seeing characters acting differendly from their established personality, so I only visit paheal in case they might've someone sourcing something one of every thousand post they have and as they are indexed by google (because the SEO money). You know, preserving origins of artwork?

MyNameIsOver20charac said:
Dispite the fact that I'm disgusted by a lot of these, I really hope not. If we're gonna start banning things based on peoples preferences we might as well ban the site for people being opposed to furry art.

I think it's good that both sites exist, one for collecting good art and the other for preservation of art no matter quality. Both are needed depending on what you want.

"Preservation of art"

I mean, if your definition of art is specifically focused on explicit content including genitals, then sure.

Paheal Rules: 8. If there are under 60 images of "real" porn of a character, then "soft" porn is allowed until there is enough "real" porn. By "soft", we mean ecchi, topless men, lots of cleavage, sex juices, fetish wear, bulges, camel toe, bare ass, and generally less explicit erotica. Otherwise, obvious penetration of orifices or visible genitals, anuses, or female nipples is required.

Also only if it includes "real characters", whatever that means.

18. Do not post images with original / fan characters only. If they are paired with real characters, that's okay. In either case, do not tag such characters.

Random said:
"Preservation of art"

I mean, if your definition of art is specifically focused on explicit content including genitals, then sure.

Paheal Rules: 8. If there are under 60 images of "real" porn of a character, then "soft" porn is allowed until there is enough "real" porn. By "soft", we mean ecchi, topless men, lots of cleavage, sex juices, fetish wear, bulges, camel toe, bare ass, and generally less explicit erotica. Otherwise, obvious penetration of orifices or visible genitals, anuses, or female nipples is required.

Also only if it includes "real characters", whatever that means.

18. Do not post images with original / fan characters only. If they are paired with real characters, that's okay. In either case, do not tag such characters.

Yeah,haven't actually been on paheal, I just based it on glutamate's post before seeing mario69's. Jokes on me :p

Mario69 said:
Please don't bundle fetish artwork with low quality submissions.

I mentioned it because an admin specifically mentioned users complaining about something as a factor in the decision to change the rules, unless I misread it.

The owner company's motivation to own something less shady and more legal is also a major factor. While cub porn being illegal has been proven to be bullshit after years of nobody getting into jail for owning or drawing it (well, in the US), and only random companies submitting to public hysteria and witch hunting, the public perception of the topic hasn't changed much, so one day I expect to read in the header of e621, "Our big dildo company decided to break up with shady controversial art. Characters must be clearly 18+, fan art is forbidden. All posts not adhering to the new rules has been purged. Please contact us if your upload limit became negative."

Oh, by the way, yes, pretty much all fan-art is illegal, unless proven otherwise. Especially if done for profit. And pretty much forever, because Mickey Mouse Protection Act.

Paheal doesn't need curation, because their only purpose is to have SEO website with as much pornographic content of copyrighted material as possible so that they can collect as much ad revenue as possible.

You see greed. I see commercial needs of a company and collectionist needs of users aligning. 😉

Paheal isn't perfect (is far from perfect, actually), but it works, satisfies the needs of visitors and uploaders and remains the best site in the niche. No amount of SEO can make a site popular if it doesn't satisfy needs of users.

Where they can just have the image and never do anything for it, every single post at e621 will always have more tags that can be added if nothing else.

You're praising e621's users too much. 😁 Unless it's porn, or drawn by a popular primarily porn artist, nobody will go crazy over tagging everything they see in the picture.

I also do not understand the appeal of seeing characters acting differendly from their established personality

It's a complicated matter. I always go to Paheal after watching something animated, because I'm searching for original funny porn which utilizes uniqueness of the original, not just pairing random characters. Like Rayman with a detached flying dick, or Maud Pie fucking a rock with pocker face, you get the idea.

If I'm actually attached to the characters, I often search for sensible believable porn where characters remain IC. However, if I become a fan for years, this deteriorates over time to the desire to see any art with the characters, and the original world separates into multiple worlds, each with it's own rules.

I should probably talk to a psychiatrist, but I kinda like my current state. 😎

Random said:
I mean, if your definition of art is specifically focused on explicit content including genitals, then sure.

Paheal Rules: 8. If there are under 60 images of "real" porn of a character, then "soft" porn is allowed until there is enough "real" porn. By "soft", we mean ecchi, topless men, lots of cleavage, sex juices, fetish wear, bulges, camel toe, bare ass, and generally less explicit erotica. Otherwise, obvious penetration of orifices or visible genitals, anuses, or female nipples is required.

Funny that you mention it. Fetish porn often has a problem of not portraying the necessary pornographic organs. I think I have one post deleted from there for not being porn, after some idiot decided that my fetish porn is hate art (like, WTF) and reported it for not being porn. Pft. (The artist later added himself to all DNP lists imaginable, so it didn't change the eventual result.)

And yeah, the fact that Paheal is so specialized sucks. Every booru sucks at archiving. For the actual preservation of everything, there's only ExHentai, I think.

KinkyGlutamate said:
I mentioned it because an admin specifically mentioned users complaining about something as a factor in the decision to change the rules, unless I misread it.

The difference is mostly that the level of art quality affects every single post: From anime fox girl to meticulously detailed scat aliens. From character sheet to lavishly detailed lush detailed backgrounds where you can see little puffs of dust rising from the first drops of rain. Every picture is affected. Every user is affected.

Whereas, scat, cub, gore, etc.... the acceptance or denial of those things only affects a small subsection of users and posts.

The choice to raise the quality of accepted posts affects everyone.

Over all, though, even the advent of a 'low quality' tag won't 'fix it' ... no one uploads an image that they think is 'low quality'. they only upload art that they, personally, like and want to see on the site. someone browsing recent posts? still gonna see that artwork. and then other people get pissy because Oh, someone tagged their uploads with low quality, more artists refuse to allow us to host their artwork because some random person decided that they don't like how they draw dicks and tagged it 'low quality'.

It's just over all a really bad idea.

You're praising e621's users too much.  Unless it's porn, or drawn by a popular primarily porn artist, nobody will go crazy over tagging everything they see in the picture.

Hi. My name is SnowWolf. I have 82,744 tag edits to my name. I have had an account on e621 for 8 years and 5 days. I took a 6 year vacation in the middle there. Some of us are really big fans of tagging things. Please speak for yourself, and not all users.

Most users are not interested in tagging, and that's okay. But some of us like tagging under tagged and underloved pictures. Have a nice day.

And yeah, the fact that Paheal is so specialized sucks. Every booru sucks at archiving. For the actual preservation of everything, there's only ExHentai, I think.

Y'know, it sounds to me like your solution may well be to start your own website. There are plenty of different types of booru software out there.

"Why does this website have to be this website and not all the others on the internet? You should make it more like all the other websites and do a lot more work because I have low standards."

If you want a garbage museum then go make your own. It will not happen here, I guarantee you. If something looks like shit, it gets deleted. Something being uncommon does not inherently make it good or worth keeping.

SnowWolf said:
But some of us like tagging under tagged and underloved pictures.

I never meant it applies to all users. I'm just describing the general pattern. Several exceptions aren't enough to reverse it.

Y'know, it sounds to me like your solution may well be to start your own website. There are plenty of different types of booru software out there.

Wouldn't work even if I had the massive investments needed for this.

There won't be "better FA" until FA dies. There won't be "better e621" until e621 dies. And neither is happening anytime soon.

If I think smaller and just create an archive, clone e621's tags and upload whatever I want, then maybe some random users will join and help a bit, but it's pointless because the site won't grow much and will disappear the moment I disappear, and I eventually will.

(Not even considering booru.org and the like as it's shit quality and low control by definition.)

KinkyGlutamate said:
I never meant it applies to all users. I'm just describing the general pattern. Several exceptions aren't enough to reverse it.

Wouldn't work even if I had the massive investments needed for this.

There won't be "better FA" until FA dies. There won't be "better e621" until e621 dies. And neither is happening anytime soon.

If I think smaller and just create an archive, clone e621's tags and upload whatever I want, then maybe some random users will join and help a bit, but it's pointless because the site won't grow much and will disappear the moment I disappear, and I eventually will.

(Not even considering booru.org and the like as it's shit quality and low control by definition.)

OR you could automate it to grab whatever is put on e6 and add what you like manually.

But yeah, you will still need people that use it.
Because without users, there is no point in it.

KinkyGlutamate said:
You're praising e621's users too much.  Unless it's porn, or drawn by a popular primarily porn artist, nobody will go crazy over tagging everything they see in the picture.

People are lazy and don't tag everything they see in general. Most of the tags you see on an image were added by the one who uploaded it. Random others will add a tag or two now and then. The special exceptions like me and certain others will go through and fill in a lot of the missing tags. I don't care if it is SFW or not. I will even go back years to tag a random image rather than only tagging the newest uploads. :)

I'm not sure if good art and good porn actually overlap much.

For example: I'm not into vore. So no matter how well it is drawn, I don't find it appealing. Conversely, if the subject is something that's relevant to my interests, then I find it easy to overlook poor art quality.

I mean, just look at all the terrible animations on this site that have nonetheless managed to net hundreds of favs. No background, no lighting, stock models, low-effort animation with clipping and broken joints everywhere? Those get overlooked if it's good porn.

Some of my favorite porn wouldn't make the cut for this site. So I'm glad that sites such as paheal exist.