Where do you think appeal comes from in art?

[akitsukino]

A few days ago I uploaded a post mentioning how I was starting to feel downtrodden from focusing to much on fundamentals. You can see the post here.

You ever feel like fundamentals got you down?

I'll stop myself from doing the comics, character designs, and storyboards I want to do because I feel like there's no point if my fundamental aren't rock solid first. But then I look at other people's art and I feel a little different. I'll let my judgmental side seep out and I'll internally criticize their stuff too; "the head looks kind of flat, the clothes aren't following the form of the torso, the perspective and proportions of characters are all out of sync". I see these things and they might bug me a little, but in the end I can still see that it looks "good". It's not completely distracting, its competently done, and, more importantly, its carrying the story along just fine. It might not be a soaring example of anatomy and color studies, but it at least has enough of those elements to look appealing.

I wonder if this has something to do with "style" and the way each artist executes these things, but even then I'm hesitant to bring up styles because feel like a lot of artists use them as crutches from time to time (especially younger ones). What do you guys think? What do you think makes a comic art appealing. Does it matter if hard, fast art skills aren't always being applied as long as the ideas come through clearly? And what about story? Can some lackluster art be saved by an intriguing story? Let me know what you think below.

[Mari]

To me it's different things. Honestly I could care rats ass about anatomy as long as it follows the particular style of the artist (in a non-crutch way) and there's something I like about the style.

for example, I adore Ayami Kojima's art (art designer for old school castlevanias & a self-thaught artist) but if you were to start analyzing the anatomy oh boi would you have a field day. But it works within her style, and even though her colours are always very de-saturated, which is something I usually hate, they fit well within her style. I think the appeal is the strong dramatic shadows, and the amazing detail she has.

Another artist who I absolutely love is Nakamura Asumiko, and their anatomy usually is so, so off.

but the appeal to their style is very much the lineart. It's so groovy
The characters are also very expressive, and because of the bendy nature of their artstyle very over-exaggarated faces don't look out of place.

Another one of my favourites is Sahara Mizu / Sumomo Yumeka

Her art is one of the most anatomically sound ones in my favourites, but even so she suffers from slight shoujo-ism from time to time. However what appeals in her art style is the motherfricking watercolour I mean look at this bullshit

So yeah. I'm not saying that you're wasting your time learning anatomy, on the contrary, it's amazing you've been so devoted to your studies, but I think limiting yourself because you don't think your fundamentals are perfect is too harsh. Yeah learn anatomy, but also do webcomics, and the things you want to do. There are so many things that can appeal to people about your style, that anatomy ends up usually not being terribly high on anyone's list. If you don't enjoy doing what you're doing, people are not going to enjoy looking at it either.

[thekinginthesun]

I have some thoughts about that.

First thing: If there's some evident effort, I can get around a not so great artstyle if the story is strong enough. Not every person that wants to tell a story can draw it flawlessly so there's that.

Now, about the appeal: I've read somewhere that it's easier to like simple artstyles because that's how our brain perceives ourselves - we kinda know we have black hair, fair skin, brown eyes and stuff, but don't actually know our exact face. So we feel more empathetic towards simple faces. More accurate, realistic faces are seen as other people by our brain, and it's harder to feel empathy for it.

[shazzbaa]

You know how sometimes a cartoon of a person can look more like the person than an actual photo of them? It's exaggerated, but it ends up capturing the things about them that you notice when you interact with them, and so in that way it seems more accurate than just "what they technically look like."

I think appeal, to speak very broadly, comes from that sort of concept? I wouldn't call it "style" just because that word gets thrown around a lot and means twenty different things, but that idea of capturing the important parts of a figure or character or scene or mood -- we'll forgive the unimportant parts being inaccurate if you've successfully portrayed the parts we want to see, and that's what gives art its appeal. And "what we want to see" is going to be different from person to person, which is why some art is appealing to one person and not to another.

[akitsukino]

Yeah, I think "harsh" is the perfect word to describe how I've been treating myself about this... sigh.. But thanks for the examples! It really does put a little bit of perspective on this.