Fanart. If 99% of everything is crap... well then, need I say more? It's not always that the artists lack talent, or ideas, or skills... but some of the pictures I see are downright boring! Like I'm looking through somone's page and it's the same f**king picture on each page, colored differently, altered somehow... but the underlying pic... They must trace their own work, I think to myself.

It's a hard thing not to do I guess... The idea's there, and you're already good at drawing that *one* pose... So you spit out the idea, it's a good idea.. would it be so hard to redo the picture now that the design is out? It is of course, that hard I mean. I've done it before (damn me!!! And screw all you that have noticed!! hehe, JK =P ). It is disgustingly easy to just slack off once a rough idea is out. After all, why bother redoing all of your hard work?

Ten Signs You're a Lazy, Repetative Artist:

1. Your faces always face the same direction, they seem to always be staring up, down, forwards, or backwards at the same angle.

2. Your characters always posses the same height/build.

3. Your characters always posses the same pose(s)/stance(s)

4. Your characters always look happy/sad/depressed/angry/etc. (pick one or two, if most of your characters wear this expression you could be a Lazy, Repetative Artist)

5. Your characters always face 'out of the page', or seem to be looking at the viewer (tip: give them something else to look at once in awhile).

6. You limit youself to one primary subject and no secondary subjects (or nothing/nobody for the main subject to interact with)

7. You do not use backgrounds

8. Your 'artwork' is a direct/exact copy of someone elses (This is not artwork, this is practice)

9. Your 'artwork' was done by carefully & precisely following a drawing tutorial (This is also called practice)

10. You trace(or rather, you trace and call it an original... this means tracing your own older work to get a new picture done, too!)

I've fallen prey to most of the above at one time or another(*sigh* still do occasionally... I hate doing backgrounds, damnit!), it's not unusual to start off and have all your work fall into one or more of these categories. Try and evolve though, it's good for you. Really. And it's not that hard... just try something different... different pose, style, technique, expression, character, layout... add a background, second subject...

That's it.

..........

Seriously.

-L