Been meaning to post a thread about this for a while, I just tend to avoid posting wherever possible due to the rampant flaming that goes on here.

Anyways, I think it deserves a conversation - do you think that furry porn, on the whole, is degrading as time goes on?

Perhaps nostalgia plays a part, but lately I seem to find a far higher ratio of poor images to good images than I used to. It seems like the artwork quality is going down in favor of generating more quantity - so many pieces nowdays are nothing more than hastily colored rough sketches, still showing the basic character forms and no signs of proper refinement. Even the uploads that dont look like sketches seem to be done in relative haste, without the quality I'm used to seeing.

Perhaps the community is just growing and more 'new' artists are springing up? A possibility I've considered, but looking back 2-3 years we should've had new artists almost as frequently, yet the art quality was generally higher back then.

It seems like the days of great artists like jay naylor, morticus, and others whose names just arent springing to mind at the moment are fading in favor of a generation that has little care for quality control. Or maybe I'm just an old fart and these young whippersnappers dont know how porn was back in my day, I dunno.

I think it's Sturgeon's Law in action, and/or confirmation bias - 90% of everything is crud. There is more 'everything', so there's correspondingly that much more crud. At the same time, maybe you're just noticing it more?

Unless by '2-3 years' ago, you mean ponies, but then what about pokemon, starfox, et-R34-cetera?

When I used to troll furries in my hate campaign, I used to find all this excellent art from several arts. But back then I didn't give a shit. I used to spam gore and such whenever I saw it so I never really took any interest.

As I got older, I found now that the decent art that used to be the awe of the furry community is just.. it's gone. It's been taken over by ponies, pokemon, etc. I rarely see the originality that used to be everywhere in the furry fandom

It's going downhill. And we're not helping it.

Lynx7386 said:
Perhaps nostalgia plays a part, but lately I seem to find a far higher ratio of poor images to good images than I used to. It seems like the artwork quality is going down in favor of generating more quantity - so many pieces nowdays are nothing more than hastily colored rough sketches, still showing the basic character forms and no signs of proper refinement. Even the uploads that dont look like sketches seem to be done in relative haste, without the quality I'm used to seeing.

Perhaps the community is just growing and more 'new' artists are springing up? A possibility I've considered, but looking back 2-3 years we should've had new artists almost as frequently, yet the art quality was generally higher back then.

I've introduced the new artist nut-bar to the site and her stuff doesn't seem crappy at all :I

Lynx7386 said:
Anyways, I think it deserves a conversation - do you think that furry porn, on the whole, is degrading as time goes on?

Nah, Rule 34 always keeps it afloat and new artists and characters are always coming up out of nowhere. Although I have to admit, it is rare to find a good new artist

All furry porn should be about melons

titaniachkt said:
All furry porn should be about melons

And bread.

It's about as bad as it ever was.

All furry porn should be about epidermis produced keratin

Nostalgia, ever growing DNP, more noise because easier sharing of art by all people, less time to art because many people rather have a warm meal and a job, even if it requires to invest more time.
Not to mention paysites who hog art of great artists.

corgi_bread said:
And bread.

And salt

OP ruined furry.

Eh. MLP happened and the furry community seems to be going through "a phase" as a result of it. I don't really see the MLP phase as all that different from the Sonic phase: simple to draw characters from a popular franchise will always attract emulators who want to share in the franchise.

Getting into more general subjects, I'd guess the ratio of good art to bad art is about the same, but there are more good artists out there now than there used to be, and we haven't lost many great artists, all things considered. If anything, the community has become better at retaining good artists than it used to be (oh, furry drama...).

Munkelzahn said:
And salt

Yay salt!

Munkelzahn said:
And salt

Did you mean... Sea salt?

Maybe MLP is the culprit. Personally I could never stand any of it, it's the one thing I have blacklisted out of everything on the site. I could even stand some of the pokemon spam we had years ago, but at least that had the occasional piece of art that was worth downloading - havent ever seen a single MLP picture that was worth the memory it took up.

I've introduced the new artist nut-bar to the site and her stuff doesn't seem crappy at all :I

Quality on nut-bar's art is good, but looks too much like a wolfy nail copyist. Wolfy nail was good, too, but I was never overly fond of that style, too glossy.

I knew it! It's bronies who forbids other artists to upload good art! It makes perfect sense!

it's the one thing I have blacklisted out of everything on the site

havent ever seen a single MLP picture that was worth the memory it took up.

I have unclear hunch that first sentence might be connected in some way with second.

I still see plenty of good furry art.

Munkelzahn said:
And salt

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXWT2qQ9Huk

Or you could just be harder to impress now that you've seen it all, as compared to earlier on when every artist was new to you. Just a thought. I really wouldn't know because I have the almost opposite perception. I've been peeking in the corners of furrydom for years. Interesting and fantastic stuff happens here and I just kept falling in. I'd never linger for very long until recently. But while I'd notice a few really fantastic pieces of art every time, the quality of art I've found has improved every time I've stumbled into a pocket of furry art over the years. Which would be a neat trick if it was degrading in quality as a whole each year.

I mean, you could be right. But it also could just be what happens when you've seen an awful lot of great stuff already. Which, consequently, makes you a lot harder to impress now because everything is compared to something else you've already seen, which now has to top that in your mind to get the same reaction. Just a thought.

keeping in mind the expansion rate of artposting, as well as sheer number of furry artists popping up in the fandom, I think the ratio is likely the same as it used to be. We didnt notice as many poor quality works because youre right, there wasnt as many... But in the same sense there wasnt as many masterpieces posted on a regular basis either. If the ratio was 75% of all posts were poor, and two years ago it was an average of 100 posts a day that leaves far less poor images than if the number of posts were 1000 like todays onslaught

post #347715

post #355629

post #327832

Yep. "Ruining"

post #358963

post #358952

Yep. "Downhill"

But man, I do wish that furry art could TRULY return to the golden days of originality and quality artwork.

Yeah, inability to find the good artists doesn't mean they aren't out there.
Here's a few of the artists I'm a fan of, quality-wise.

post #323986
post #358555
post #343603
post #315650
post #339806
post #354314 (even though he screwed me on a commission a couple years back, still a good artist)
post #317534
post #356589
post #191888

I noticed that most pony art is a lot better than most Sonic art, which is sad because as crappy as the Sonic fandom is, it deserves better.

Munkelzahn said:
And salt

So... salty melon sandwich? Eaaugh

KaylaTheIncredible said:
So... salty melon sandwich? Eaaugh

My grandmother puts salt on her watermelon, and swears it makes it taste better. I tried it once.

Once.

It could just be that your standards are higher now that you've had more time to soak in what's available, although the fact that the community is growing is certainly one reason. I've looked back at art that I used to like before and wonder how the heck I used to think it was good. Still happens when I go through my favorites.

I don't think its going downhill, I think we're just getting older and having higher quality standards or something. Think of it like movie goers today, how much you have to woo them versus like.. Pre-Matrix time.

There was always crappy art.

corgi_bread said:
My grandmother puts salt on her watermelon, and swears it makes it taste better. I tried it once.

Once.

I put salt on my cantaloupe, it does make it taste better.

It's the same reason they pair prosciutto with melon, the sweet/salty pairing is wonderful.

I wouldn't do it with watermelon tho.

Halite said:
I put salt on my cantaloupe, it does make it taste better.

It's the same reason they pair prosciutto with melon, the sweet/salty pairing is wonderful.

I wouldn't do it with watermelon tho.

All I have to say is: orange with salt.

Xch3l said:
All I have to say is: orange with salt.

.... I like ice cream with fries...

IvoryWolf said:
But in the same sense there wasnt as many masterpieces posted on a regular basis either. If the ratio was 75% of all posts were poor, and two years ago it was an average of 100 posts a day that leaves far less poor images than if the number of posts were 1000 like todays onslaught

And the great thing about boorus is that we can see scores to sort the wheat from the chaff. On the other hand, I often forget about image voting, but I always try to remember to click if there's some stunning work someone obviously slaved over for dozens of hours that's languishing with a score in the less-than-20s because it's not sexy. So if you see good art being overlooked, vote it up so others recognize it, too!

tfkcex said:
.... I like ice cream with fries...

Me too

It's definitely not looking good here. My understanding is that the upvote and downvote system ought to be based on the skill of the art rendered, rather than the content, so GOOD art makes it to the top. Unfortunately, you're not going to find that here; ponies are drowning e621 in a steaming pile of pony poo. Sonic crap did the same thing. Personally, I've found that you can actually commission artists outside the furdom with a ton of skill and MUCH lower prices without the drama.

Foxy_ramirez said:
My understanding is that the upvote and downvote system ought to be based on whether I like the pic or not, rather than something else, so art that I like makes it to the top. Unfortunately, you're not going to find that here;

Fixed it for you.

Lynx7386 said:
Been meaning to post a thread about this for a while, I just tend to avoid posting wherever possible due to the rampant flaming that goes on here.

Anyways, I think it deserves a conversation - do you think that furry porn, on the whole, is degrading as time goes on?

Perhaps nostalgia plays a part, but lately I seem to find a far higher ratio of poor images to good images than I used to. It seems like the artwork quality is going down in favor of generating more quantity - so many pieces nowdays are nothing more than hastily colored rough sketches, still showing the basic character forms and no signs of proper refinement. Even the uploads that dont look like sketches seem to be done in relative haste, without the quality I'm used to seeing.

Perhaps the community is just growing and more 'new' artists are springing up? A possibility I've considered, but looking back 2-3 years we should've had new artists almost as frequently, yet the art quality was generally higher back then.

It seems like the days of great artists like jay naylor, morticus, and others whose names just arent springing to mind at the moment are fading in favor of a generation that has little care for quality control. Or maybe I'm just an old fart and these young whippersnappers dont know how porn was back in my day, I dunno.

If you're referring to furry porn as a whole in terms of art then yes, yes it has degraded considerably in the past /ten/ years. There are fewer and fewer new artists that have a style entirely their own, by which I mean not overly influenced by existing furry artists, or any other art style.

Am I saying that there are none that do not have their own style, or that they're of great minority? No, and not quite. I'm saying that there are less and less for every years worth of new artists.

If you still don't understand, take video games for example. For every year of new games there is less and less originality. Originality doesn't imply quality, we all know that, but it opens the doors to a whole new experience, and porn is 100% experience.
So, there you go.

It would be better if the more popular artists would at least try new styles out every so often. I miss you Ayame Emaya, where ever you may be.

Study your tastes and implement better blacklisting based on what appeals to you. This will increase the perceived quality of the site's archive. The site isn't really getting better, of course, you're just refining your skills in using it. Remember that new images come onto the site all the time. A great blacklist means NEVER needing to deal with images you'll hate. They're blocked preemptively thanks to witchery of tags.

If there is ANYTHING that you can say is always bad, blacklist it. Don't whine about it. Don't even mention it. Nobody wants to hear about what you hate - and honestly, no action needs to be taken by anyone but you. Just blacklist it and you'll never have to deal with it again. Remember, only YOU can prevent drama fires.

My blacklist is 2275 characters long (out of a maximum 3900). It even includes 18 single-image blocks (such as id:172141). The single-image block is a great technique. If something is repulsive but it can't be blocked by its tags without collateral damage, the single-image block prevents it from showing up as an artmine in an otherwise good search.

31h253 said:
Study your tastes and implement better blacklisting based on what appeals to you. This will increase the perceived quality of the site's archive. The site isn't really getting better, of course, you're just refining your skills in using it. Remember that new images come onto the site all the time. A great blacklist means NEVER needing to deal with images you'll hate. They're blocked preemptively thanks to witchery of tags.

If there is ANYTHING that you can say is always bad, blacklist it. Don't whine about it. Don't even mention it. Nobody wants to hear about what you hate - and honestly, no action needs to be taken by anyone but you. Just blacklist it and you'll never have to deal with it again. Remember, only YOU can prevent drama fires.

My blacklist is 2275 characters long (out of a maximum 3900). It even includes 18 single-image blocks (such as id:172141). The single-image block is a great technique. If something is repulsive but it can't be blocked by its tags without collateral damage, the single-image block prevents it from showing up as an artmine in an otherwise good search.

I hate everything about you.
Godai. Take your blacklist and begone!
Damned racist list.

31h253 said:
Study your tastes and implement better blacklisting based on what appeals to you. This will increase the perceived quality of the site's archive. The site isn't really getting better, of course, you're just refining your skills in using it. Remember that new images come onto the site all the time. A great blacklist means NEVER needing to deal with images you'll hate. They're blocked preemptively thanks to witchery of tags.

If there is ANYTHING that you can say is always bad, blacklist it. Don't whine about it. Don't even mention it. Nobody wants to hear about what you hate - and honestly, no action needs to be taken by anyone but you. Just blacklist it and you'll never have to deal with it again. Remember, only YOU can prevent drama fires.

My blacklist is 2275 characters long (out of a maximum 3900). It even includes 18 single-image blocks (such as id:172141). The single-image block is a great technique. If something is repulsive but it can't be blocked by its tags without collateral damage, the single-image block prevents it from showing up as an artmine in an otherwise good search.

Tastes are one thing, quality is another. The blacklist does not filter good quality from bad.

I can filter dickgirl or herm if I dont like it (or ponies), but there can be two feline images that I do like, and one will be of excellent quality and the other will be a crayon scribble.

This is a situation where the blacklist really doesnt help us.

Gilda_The_Gryphon said:
Fixed it for you.

Actually, as far as I read in the rules, you can vote up/down whatever you want for any reason you feel like.
The only thing that isn't allowed voting-wise is abuse of the system i.e. creating new accounts to vote down more than once.

Lynx7386 said:
Tastes are one thing, quality is another. The blacklist does not filter good quality from bad.

I can filter dickgirl or herm if I dont like it (or ponies), but there can be two feline images that I do like, and one will be of excellent quality and the other will be a crayon scribble.

This is a situation where the blacklist really doesnt help us.

That's because you already use and understand the blacklist. But there are people who insist that the site is going downhill because of ponies (hell, there's one on this page) who can be helped by being reminded of the blacklist.

I think it's an issue both of perception and increased accessibility and popular-use of the internet in recent years.

If you're talking 10 years ago, the only people who would be uploading were people who were both tech-savvy (rarer than now), and also know about a relatively obscure culture. The internet was just not something the layman was willing to put a whole lot of effort into just yet. The barrier-to-entry was high enough to where, for the most part, only truly dedicated artists would be uploading.

Now that the internet has become a massive conduit of social and cultural spread, stuff like the furry fandom that primarily exists online has spread exponentially. With the increase in accessibility, spread of awareness, and pop-culture stuff like MLP, you see more and more casual people entering the art community, people who perhaps are not totally dedicated to their art or not as skilled. Since its incredibly easy to get online and upload stuff, it isn't really a big deal for an average-joe to throw a couple quick drawings or sketches up.

So while there is a very real change in average artist quality, the idea that there is less "good art" is likely just your perception. So while you see a lot more worse art, you will also see a far greater quantity of good art than you saw previously.

Halite said:
Actually, as far as I read in the rules, you can vote up/down whatever you want for any reason you feel like.
The only thing that isn't allowed voting-wise is abuse of the system i.e. creating new accounts to vote down more than once.

I didn't suggest otherwise. I was making fun of people who thinks that there is such thing as fully objective quality as opposed to subjective views. There isn't. Every time I see text like "we need vote system based on quality" I read it as "I WANT IT TO PROMOTE PICS THAT I LIKE!!!"

The only rating system that could actually improve things would be with rates with weight. Vote from people who liked art that you also liked would be more important than from others. And still it won't be even close to be objective quality based system.

Lynx7386 said:
Tastes are one thing, quality is another. The blacklist does not filter good quality from bad.

I can filter dickgirl or herm if I dont like it (or ponies), but there can be two feline images that I do like, and one will be of excellent quality and the other will be a crayon scribble.

This is a situation where the blacklist really doesnt help us.

If you particularly hate a single image, put a single-image block on it. It'll never come up in your searches again. Exploring the site under order:Score tends to help, too. Content that appeals to people's tastes may get its score inflated beyond its value, but two images depicting similar content with radically varying quality levels will not be near each other in score.

Remember artist blocks, too. If everything an artist produces is crayon scribbles, blacklist the artist.

31h253 said:
If you particularly hate a single image, put a single-image block on it. It'll never come up in your searches again. Exploring the site under order:Score tends to help, too. Content that appeals to people's tastes may get its score inflated beyond its value, but two images depicting similar content with radically varying quality levels will not be near each other in score.

Remember artist blocks, too. If everything an artist produces is crayon scribbles, blacklist the artist.

I tend to not do 'searches' very often - I've been around long enough that most of the older images I like are already saved on my hard drive.
What I do is come here around once a day, usually after work, and look at the most recent uploads until I see something that I saw the day before (meaning that's all the new uploads for the day), and I pick things out of that which appeal to me enough to download and save.

Single image blocks, in my case, dont really do much. Other than MLP and Futa (both of which are on my blacklist), nothing posted here is so terrible or offensive that I cant stand it enough to click the little X at the top of the tab, and since I just view daily uploads I'll likely never come across such an image again.

Lynx7386 said:
Single image blocks, in my case, dont really do much. Other than MLP and Futa (both of which are on my blacklist), nothing posted here is so terrible or offensive that I cant stand it enough to click the little X at the top of the tab, and since I just view daily uploads I'll likely never come across such an image again.

Yeah, when I find something I don't like, I'll usually just switch modes from "find new fappable art" to "fap" and go digging through the furry porn vault on my computer.

Dester said:
With the increase in accessibility, spread of awareness, and pop-culture stuff like MLP, you see more and more casual people entering the art community, people who perhaps are not totally dedicated to their art or not as skilled. Since its incredibly easy to get online and upload stuff, it isn't really a big deal for an average-joe to throw a couple quick drawings or sketches up.

Although this is true, I think anyone who believes furry art used to be wonderful and now is terrible should take a peek into the depths of VCL and see all the Sonic OCs, notebook liner sketches, and crayon coloring jobs some people were uploading 10+ years ago.

But you can also see that many of them grew as artists after a few years, which is why an influx of newer, less skilled artists doesn't worry me. They'll probably get better!

I don't think so. There was always tons of crap though. I simply ignore those I don't like.

What's going downhill is e621. Only recently has it begun to flood with garbage posts, 'amateur' (pronounced: bad) art, and pony nerds.

Valeyard said:
Although this is true, I think anyone who believes furry art used to be wonderful and now is terrible should take a peek into the depths of VCL and see all the Sonic OCs, notebook liner sketches, and crayon coloring jobs some people were uploading 10+ years ago.

But you can also see that many of them grew as artists after a few years, which is why an influx of newer, less skilled artists doesn't worry me. They'll probably get better!

This. I think it's easy to forget that behind every artist you like, there is a huge mountain of crappy art they did before they got so good. They had to get that skill refined somehow, and it probably wasn't quick or pretty to watch. lol

Also I think it's worth pointing out that art evaluation is primarily a subjective exercise.

Over half the stuff considered to be "good art" is stuff that just doesn't move me at all. I mean it's technically polished and proficient, but to me it may seem too "typical", or a style of proportions I dislike, or too flat/not enough emotion evoked (like I'm seeing it but not feeling anything from it), or to me all the characters look nearly identical to each other no personality, or it lacks a distinct style so it looks like everything else I've seen (sort of like an artistic clone), or something else just bugs me about it, etc etc. It can be well made but not touch me in any way. I've also seen some sketches or impressionistic work that clearly move me and I enjoy it just as much as some of the "great art" that's more polished. It gets a bit apples to oranges to compare art styles which are so different though. Great art has a sort of je ne sais quoi to it. You just know what affects you and what doesn't. Great art does; crappy art doesn't. But there's no objective definition for that at all.

TL;DR - I just think there's a verbal disagreement between "good art" and "good art" and that we're not all talking about the same pieces. And maybe the answer is there's just a much broader selection now so everyone is running into more that isn't their preference in ratio to the few that they love. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing for the fandom as a whole.

I don't think furry porn itself is going downhill, but that can also depend on your perspective.

The way I see it, it's simply a matter of numbers. As the furry fandom continues to grow in popularity, it will undoubtedly bring in more artists, and encourage some non-artists to start drawing. It's just a matter of fact that there will be far more "mediocre" artists than "great" artists.

However, on e621.net, this problem (in the past) has been sort of mitigated for the most part, because the people usually uploading artwork have not been the artists themselves, but rather their fans. So if you don't have very many fans (as most sub-par artists tend not to), then there's LESS chance that your artwork will appear on e621. However, e621 has HUGELY increased in popularity over the past few years. This means that you're likely going to start seeing more sub-par artists uploading their work directly to e621.net themselves, because it's so much easier to really get noticed on e621 than it is on FA and other furry art sites.

Think about it, if e621.net ever somehow became the "go-to" website for uploading your new artwork like FA has been for a while now, then e621 will end up inheriting that same issue of sub-par artists that FA has. Not saying that people on FA are bad artists or anything, I'm just saying that they currently have a much higher ratio of mediocre-to-great artwork than e621.net does, for reasons I explained above.