💤 Inactive Andrew Dobson / Tom Preston / CattyN - STOP DOING SEXIST CRAP

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UtopiaGuy said:
I think one of Dobson's fatal flaws (outside of his whole personality and broken brain), was that he proceeded from a false assumption. He would approach comics like they were keyframes in animation, which is why a lot of his stuff didn't work. But illustration is not animation and animation is not illustration. In spite of the similarities, comics and animated cartoons are two very different things when you think about it. He didn't really understand that, and wouldn't be told otherwise. In his mind they were the same thing.
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Pretty much he didn't understand why key frames in animation looked the way they did and weren't used in other projects. Years ago, Plebcomics said it was like he learned to draw by pausing old cartoons and using them as references for his art, and then later he did a comic where he admitted that's exactly what he did as a kid, and then never grew out of it.

His false assumption wasn't just there, it was in his writing as well. He had no notions of set up and payoff, he just wanted the payoff to happen right away. Like when he stole the "breath in, boi" meme for one of his Ladybug comics, it was just the second part of the meme with no set up. Can't find the comic, or else I'd post it, but it was this meme.

sponge.jpg
 
Marzipan Apple said:
Dobson was definitely a flawed dude. He was angry, bitter, belligerent, arrogant, and sanctimonious among many other things. But I think that his ego was the ultimate root of his failure.

He was more in love with the idea of being an artist than actually creating art. He had no desire to learn his chosen craft and entertain his audience. He would only draw things that interested him (i.e. lesbians, inflation, and Nintendo games). He'd constantly boast about his art school education, and give advice like he was some 40 year industry veteran despite his own meager artistic skills. He would reject anything that didn't conform to his self image of being an amazing artist (like constructive criticism). He had no interest in anything that didn't boost his ego or give him instant gratification. He just wanted to reach the Emerald City now, yellow brick road be damned.

There are plenty of successful artists who are angry curmudgeonly assholes, and there are many animators who successfully transition to comic art, but those successful artists all have a strong motivation to create art, unlike Dobson. There are some drawfags on this forum that have never stepped foot into an art class and they draw infinitely better than Dobson simply because they want to draw, not because they want others to validate their "skill" with online asspats.

I agree that he had some genuine talent that he could have developed, but that was never his goal. He just wanted adoration and praise without doing the work required to earn them.
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It’s my firm belief that art college/art school in the Information Age is nothing but a sham. Money could be more well spent on smaller local or even online-based art classes. You can refute my statements and all, but the fact is we live in the age of the internet.

A bit of a reach (I know), I think Dobson may have felt a bit cheated or even regretted a bit. When you have all these artists online who didn’t even get a formal education in art and yet, they excel at the Craft while Dobson is sidelined.
 
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Cedric_Eff said:
A bit of a reach (I know), I think Dobson may have felt a bit cheated or even regretting a bit. When you have all these artists online who didn’t even get an formal education in art and yet, they excel at the Craft while Dobson is sidelined.
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Dobbles wanted maximum result for minimum effort. The online artists who succeeded despite not going to art school probably caused him to seethe: "Why are people paying attention to them? I went to art school, they should be paying attention to me!"
 
Sexy Senior Citizen said:
Dobbles wanted maximum result for minimum effort. The online artists who succeeded despite not going to art school probably caused him to seethe: "Why are people paying attention to them? I went to art school, they should be paying attention to me!"
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That’s the reality of doing business. Dobson failed at the whole business of doing art online.

You know there’s an issue when somehow Shmorky and Shadman somehow has better networking and even business acumen. Acumen that Dobson could’ve learned from.
 
Cedric_Eff said:
It’s my firm belief that art college/art school in the Information Age is nothing but a sham.
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In the information age, for just gaining knowledge nearly all college is redundant. Insert Good Will Hunting "an education you coulda got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library.”
What college should be doing is one part teaching students ways to think and educators helping students identify and overcome common failings, and the other part is just professional networking.
Its also usually the first time kids are out of the nest and its a decent way to learn & apply some life skills.

That said, most art schools fail in every part of the above. So I agree.
 
Ghostse said:
In the information age, for just gaining knowledge nearly all college is redundant. Insert Good Will Hunting "an education you coulda got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library.”
What college should be doing is one part teaching students ways to think and educators helping students identify and overcome common failings, and the other part is just professional networking.
Its also usually the first time kids are out of the nest and its a decent way to learn & apply some life skills.

That said, most art schools fail in every part of the above. So I agree.
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What’s even funnier is that in the Information Age, networking is easier than ever.

Social Media has replaced some elements of college. I get Dobbo has been around the block since the Web 2.0 days, but damn.
 
Cedric_Eff said:
It’s my firm belief that art college/art school in the Information Age is nothing but a sham. Money could be more well spent on smaller local or even online-based art classes. You can refute my statements and all, but the fact is we live in the age of the internet.
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Yes and no. Art school really does help some artists because they need to learn the fundamentals. It's like music: can you be a successful musician without knowing music theory? Yes. Can you know music theory really well and be an unsuccessful musician? Also yes. Does knowing music theory make it a lot easier to be a successful musician? Yes.

Going to school also exposes you to industry veterans who can help you - not just as referrals or networking, but as legitimate mentors. John R. Dilworth (creator of Courage the Cowardly Dog) credits Howard Beckerman for helping his career as a budding animator.
 
Arthur Morgan said:
Pretty much he didn't understand why key frames in animation looked the way they did and weren't used in other projects. Years ago, Plebcomics said it was like he learned to draw by pausing old cartoons and using them as references for his art, and then later he did a comic where he admitted that's exactly what he did as a kid, and then never grew out of it.

His false assumption wasn't just there, it was in his writing as well. He had no notions of set up and payoff, he just wanted the payoff to happen right away. Like when he stole the "breath in, boi" meme for one of his Ladybug comics, it was just the second part of the meme with no set up. Can't find the comic, or else I'd post it, but it was this meme.

View attachment 6263040
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Found that comic.

1722699307670.png

Gods she looks ugly.
 
Hey Johnny Bravo said:
Yes and no. Art school really does help some artists because they need to learn the fundamentals. It's like music: can you be a successful musician without knowing music theory? Yes. Can you know music theory really well and be an unsuccessful musician? Also yes. Does knowing music theory make it a lot easier to be a successful musician? Yes.

Going to school also exposes you to industry veterans who can help you - not just as referrals or networking, but as legitimate mentors. John R. Dilworth (creator of Courage the Cowardly Dog) credits Howard Beckerman for helping his career as a budding animator.
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I'm sorry if I sound like a broken record for people who've heard me say this before, but, here goes.

My Brother is a professional animator/VFX artist.

It's his sole source of income, not a hobby, not a side-hustle, it's his JOB.

He went to art school in the early 00's, a time when, by the maturation of the internet, everything you needed to "know" to animate was out there, for free.

He also felt a lot of his class time was a waste due to sub-par instructors who felt a bit highly of themselves despite having very limited, if any, credited work.

But, it was still needed.

He wouldn't be where he is today if not for it.

Why?

The one thing art school does that no amount of at-home self-educating does? Is teach you how to do, well, two very important things, really:

1. Work to a schedule (it must be done to THIS standard by THIS time or you lose, no excuses about how you couldn't adult that week accepted)

2. Work to the request of others (You don't find a place that you just plug in your "style" , you create the "style" your client wants)

These are things that break 90% of aspiring animators/artists, because they can't do it.

They either aren't good enough (or too lazy) to produce work fast enough to meet a deadline.

Or (and harder to detect/correct outside of a classroom) they couldn't break down animation/art to a fundamental level so that they could draw what a given client was looking for, not what they "wanted".

That's the real thing that separates amateurs from pros - can you, if handed a model sheet, draw character "X" in "Y" situation? No "well, I don't LIKE that design". No "well, as long as I don't have to do his hands like that". No "Well, I have issues with his shirt, it's problematic" Just "Can you do it?" and "Can it be finished by the end of the week?"

If yes? You're in.

If not? You are a hobbyist and need another line of work to pay your actual bills.

In essence, art school is needed to prepare you for the reality of what the professional art world will be - It won't be taking commissions of only what you want to do and only on your terms, you'll be competing for work with dozens of others and if you win that contract, you'll be spending a lot of late nights in dark bedrooms binging on coffee and streaming loud music to stay awake and get it done and emailed off before time runs out.

The washout rate in his class was astounding, the graduating class, including him, was THREE people.

THREE.

Over 50 had started...

That's why schooling is still more or less required - if you haven't been exposed to tough standards with final drop-dead dates to meet them? Then you haven't really been taught as a for-hire artist should, and all you'd be getting was a useless piece of paper for the wall that says "Yes, you can trace anime characters better than the average person" .
 
@TowinKarz, there’s another element to it as well. Discipline. While I am a proponent for using the information superhighway for what its intended for, I still feel one thing about traditional schooling that the internet is unable to offer.

A form of discipline that is taught.

But I still stand firm that unless you’re going to do some specific niche in the market, online will suffice for most. But that would require self-discipline.
 
I'll say there's one other positive to any college, and that's being exposed to new ideas, and in the case of art, new concepts, styles, and techniques. You can learn a lot on the interwebs, sure, but sometimes it just takes an instructor to show you something so you get it, someone with a lot more mileage on them and a boatload more life experience than a twenty-year old making Instagram chibis.
 
UtopiaGuy said:
I'll say there's one other positive to any college, and that's being exposed to new ideas, and in the case of art, new concepts, styles, and techniques. You can learn a lot on the interwebs, sure, but sometimes it just takes an instructor to show you something so you get it, someone with a lot more mileage on them and a boatload more life experience than a twenty-year old making Instagram chibis.
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I’d say only go to college when you have the resources. Live within your means and all. Because I sure as hell wont perpetuate the status quo of predatory student loans.

That‘s what baffles me regarding Dobson, he had all the resources in the world to excel and yet he stalled.
Another Random said:
Found that comic.

View attachment 6267192
Gods she looks ugly.
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The punchline in this doesn’t feel like an genuine attempt, it feels like the “RAWR RANDOM XDDDDDDDDD” humor from like the late 2000’s early 2010’s.
 
Ive caught up on Dobson, sad that I wasn't there during the lolcow goldenage from 2014-20 but I think the main problem with Dobson is that he was an American. American webcomics wanted to be manga, were inspired by manga but ended up being a sucessor to underground comics and newspaper strips. Instead of embracing that fact a lot of webcomic artists in the past and even now lash out violently because their audiences don't share their self perception. Manga was not and is almost never propaganda is always open to interpretation, American comics and newspaper strips have almost always been some sort of propaganda forcing a pattern of thought onto the reader even if they had no signs of being like Calvin and hobbes. Dobson could've been akin to Scott Adams, bill waterson or Robert crumb instead he wanted to be leiji Matsumoto and go nagai which will never work out (go nagai did some weird fucked up porn the likes of which Dobson would never condone). There's too big a cultural difference between actual Japanese and Americans, even the internment camp pozzed japamerican generation, that one cannot be the other unless they're completely open minded and malleable.
 
Georgio Cocklord said:
Ive caught up on Dobson, sad that I wasn't there during the lolcow goldenage from 2014-20 but I think the main problem with Dobson is that he was an American. American webcomics wanted to be manga, were inspired by manga but ended up being a sucessor to underground comics and newspaper strips. Instead of embracing that fact a lot of webcomic artists in the past and even now lash out violently because their audiences don't share their self perception. Manga was not and is almost never propaganda is always open to interpretation, American comics and newspaper strips have almost always been some sort of propaganda forcing a pattern of thought onto the reader even if they had no signs of being like Calvin and hobbes. Dobson could've been akin to Scott Adams, bill waterson or Robert crumb instead he wanted to be leiji Matsumoto and go nagai which will never work out (go nagai did some weird fucked up porn the likes of which Dobson would never condone). There's too big a cultural difference between actual Japanese and Americans, even the internment camp pozzed japamerican generation, that one cannot be the other unless they're completely open minded and malleable.
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To me, Dobson’s golden age was from like 2018 to 2019.

I still remember how much of a shitshow Dobson was. Like arguing with teenagers on tumblr and all.
 
Cedric_Eff said:
To me, Dobson’s golden age was from like 2018 to 2019.

I still remember how much of a shitshow Dobson was. Like arguing with teenagers on tumblr and all.
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I meant lolcow goldenage, when everything was fairly innocent and not full of politics troons grooming sexual degeneracy and the like. 2020 to present is the lolcow darkages with the death of the classical lolcow.
 
Georgio Cocklord said:
I meant lolcow goldenage, when everything was fairly innocent and not full of politics troons grooming sexual degeneracy and the like. 2020 to present is the lolcow darkages with the death of the classical lolcow.
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Oh yeah. People say 2020, but really it was early as 2019. That was when things were turning for the worse.
 
Georgio Cocklord said:
Dobson could've been akin to Scott Adams, bill waterson or Robert crumb instead he wanted to be leiji Matsumoto and go nagai
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Nah, Dobson knows nothing about any of those authors.

His knowledge of manga is almost restricted to Rumiko Takahashi and Rumiko Takahashi-adjacent works. He absolutely was not into old manga like those you mention or high brow manga like Mamoru Oshii (who, funnily enough, worked in an Urusei Yatsura movie)

He also seemed almost exclusively into Ranma 1/2 and only paid occasional lip service to Urusei Yatsura, but he didn't care about Inu Yasha, let alone Maison Ikkoku (which might have teach him how to actually write character relationship, vitriolic "aww they really do love each other" and the sorta shit he liked but couldn't pull off)

Notoriously, he alienated people from the Anime AV Club he founded because he'd insist on screening Ranma and only Ranma, and he chimped out when some of the members didn't even like Ranma at all or just wanted to watch other stuff.

For a weeb his age, you'd expect him to fawn over SamuraiX/Rurouni Kenshin, Evangelion, Princess Mononoke or even DragonBall. He was silent to any and all of the era's classics but Ranma. His Pirate shit was basically gender-swapped, poor man's Ranma.

He notoriously and stupidly brought up the Arséne Lupin novels and said "So much better than the anime".

The idea of Dobson watching something by the likes of Satoshi Kon is hilarious.

Also, he never really care about american shit. He vocally disliked capeshit, he never cared about Star Wars until it was a matter of culture wars involving his newfound Disney worship and I cannot remember any comic strip he mentioned as an inspiration apart from a brief reference to Peanuts, and that one I suspect was more of a case of pop-cultural osmosis than him having been an avid Peanuts reader.

Overall, Dobson's poor style can easily be explained by an astonishing lack of cultural baggage. I cannot legit pinpoint what things he likes, what things (apart from Ranma) inspired him and his work. All of the things he stated he liked seemed phony and poser-ish. Even his professed love of 90s Disney seemed like a later development acquired out of spite.

I can only have an idea about what he hates, and even that seems insincere in what regards to pop culture.

His entire cultural makeup seemed entirely informed by Ranma, Nintendo Videogames, Disney shows from the 80s-90s and generally shit aimed at children no older than 12.
 
Ewan McGregor said:
His knowledge of manga is almost restricted to Rumiko Takahashi and Rumiko Takahashi-adjacent works. He absolutely was not into old manga like those you mention or high brow manga like Mamoru Oshii (who, funnily enough, worked in an Urusei Yatsura movie)
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Now that this is said I have a weird feeling that Dobson might be a closet troon. A lot of men who obsessively gravitate towards Rumiko Takahashi tend to be closet troons cause Takahashi is often perceived as the Ursula Ke Leguin of Japan, tough feminist icon who laid down transgressive foundations, and the men who are obsessed with her work tend to view her characters/body of work fetishistically even if they never admit it ("LadyEmily" is a good example). Also Mamoru Oshii never made high brow manga in general, Kerberos Panzer cop is not high brow pretentious gripe, most stuff from Japan isnt like that and the rare times they are like that (Shigeru Mizukis body of work, Hayao Miyazaki sometimes) they dont come across as an ego trip cumshot.
Ewan McGregor said:
Also, he never really care about american shit. He vocally disliked capeshit, he never cared about Star Wars until it was a matter of culture wars involving his newfound Disney worship and I cannot remember any comic strip he mentioned as an inspiration apart from a brief reference to Peanuts, and that one I suspect was more of a case of pop-cultural osmosis than him having been an avid Peanuts reader.
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Which is a shame cause he does not realize that he cannot be a Japanese creator. He is inevitably an american comic artist, not even comics for fun like with 90s Marvel and DC but comics as disposable propaganda like with MacGruder and Boondocks, Watterson and Calvin and Hobbes, Robert Crumb and his weird fetish shit. Its not hardline blatant propaganda like Stonetoss, Haus of Decline, Pink Wug, Garrison or Horsey but I see him in the same vein as somebody like Tatsuya Ishida, they desperately want to be taken seriously but their work lacks self awareness or nuance or cohesion or anything else used to make a good comic.
 
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