acorn-treess:

Alright so I’m gonna give my two cents on this whole designs debate. Disagree with me if you like, you’re allowed to have your opinions and I’m not gonna stop you from having them. But let me just say this before I say anything more, I don’t hate anyone because of this drama and I’m not calling anyone out. I also personally am fine with people making their own designs cause it’s their art not mine. So don’t flood my inbox with “Why are you so mean to (insertperson)??” or crap like that.

I’ve been seeing some bigger blogs talking about this topic. They say they don’t like when people make their designs so far off from canon that they’re unrecognizable and it’s bad character design. Tbh I can agree with this when it comes to FANART. If you’re drawing a character from a show or book series, sure you can have fun with it, but you NEED to make the designs recognizable because you’re drawing a character that has a set design or a set design description. What I mean by “you can have fun with it” is you can give Squirrelflight freckles, give Firestar a white heart on his chest, give Tawnypelt amber eyes, or give Dovewing any colored eyes. When you give them slight changes like that they can be unique and recognizable, and tbh I love when people do that! But you can’t just make Bluestar ginger or Cloudtail ginger and call it a normal design and expect people to know who they are, because that’s not a normal design. Especially if your goal is to make the character’s designs super recognizable. No one’s gonna recognize Thistleclaw if you make him completely black, or Firestar if you make him brown. 

On to the topic of whether or not these are good designs or bad designs. By themselves the noncanon designs can be good designs. The colors can be very pretty and complementary. They’re good because they aren’t made to be recognizable, they’re made to be drawn differently. They’re not canon. But when you want people to recognize the characters and then proceed draw them completely different from their canon description, then that’s a bad design choice cause no one can recognize them. Sure it can look nice by itself but since it’s made to be recognized and no one can guess who it is then logically it’s a bad designs choice.

Instead of labeling these more unique designs as “normal wc designs”, tag them as “my take” or “my version” or “character redesign”. Let people know that you’re drawing them with designs that aren’t canon but your own version. I’m not mad at people who do their own noncanon versions of designs and I quite enjoy them. However I do have a problem with people calling these “normal designs” and getting mad when people don’t recognize them.

 

In conclusion, just properly label your designs. At the end of the day I don’t give a crap if you make unique designs, just make sure to let people know you aren’t drawing their canon design and don’t get butthurt when people have no clue who you’re drawing after not telling them it’s a noncanon design.