I'm not sure how to describe it, but it's this charming early internet webcomic artstyle.
Either nonexistant or simplistic coloring and shading, hard scratchy black lines, simlple shapes, sometimes looks like its been scanned off of paper and colored digitally. It varies from artist to artist but I've seen it all over the place and if you know what I mean, please let me know, and post other comics with the style if you have it.
Unfortunately despite seeing it many times before, I can't put my finger on any names except pic rel, so I'm using it as the best example I have. This is NOT a general Dobson/Alex Ze Pirate/e-celeb thread.
Thanks bros.
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I call it pseudo manga or manga cartoon.
No that doesn't sound right. The manga resemblance is common but it doesn't define it, it's moreso to do with the technique.
The "Inked freehand, without stabilizer, in photoshop with a mid-to-low end tablet at a mid-to-low resolution" style.
Ah yes. And the bamboo tablet with 500 pressure points, at most.
+ Anything could be 'pseudo-manga', some people say the modern Webtoon comics and Koreaslop comics are manga like, but this is clearly very different and specific to the early internet era.
Different types of manga
Ever since Disney shifted to 3d, every cartoon semi realistic style is manga style. It makes no sense but that's what casuals and even some American artists call it (the new superman for example). In asian countries like Korea and France I se it much more integrated to the new mainstream style, it I could be wrong.
I mean, look at Gargoyles. That was the last series that had big eyes and weren't considered anime. At least the first episodes that were drawn in a tight style. Nowadays perceptions would be different probably.
Atlantis and Treasure planet where the last efforts for a wetern 2d style, then Toy story changed the game and people's perceptions of 2d.
Piss off weeb
It looks a bit like the style in many of the "How to draw manga" books that were everywhere when the manga started making its way into the mainstream in the 90s/00s (at least in the country I live in). I think the shading in the OP pic also really dates the image with that very digital blurry look.
Ugly
that doesn't have a particular name but it was pretty common in early mid 00's Franco Belgian comics which aimed at kids and teens.
Yeah I see some Euro comic influences in the way he constructs for lack of a better word the face, he nose and big eyes are quite anime but he adds extra details to make the face more round.
Reminds me of the rice krispy elves or lucky charms mixed with manga
Pardon me for bringing up something so awful, but I noticed a similar style in pic rel
I hope this shows what I mean, these two comics look very different but if you can pinpoint the similarities, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about
I know what you mean but don't have a phrase for it. Richard Morris (YAFGC) and John Joseco (Salamanstra, Ask Molestia) have a similar style
My guess is there was some art guide floating around in the 80's
it's 2000's American manga style
This feels right to me. It's from a period before anime hit the mainstream, where American artists wanted to make things that looked like anime but didn't really hit the mark. So it's like an combo of western art with some things copied from popular anime/manga of the time.
I honestly never thought Dobson was a bad artist. The character in OP is appealing to the eye and I never thought his style was ugly. He just had an ugly personality.
His art actually got worse overtime, in my opinion, but let's not discuss that here
Dobson almost had the charming half anime half cartoon early 2000's style that Eric W. Schwartz had, but he never really improved
If he was a more humble man he couldve become a Cinemaphile darling, his old work really showed great potential, they couldve ignored his past as a fetish artist, it would just become one of those funny little things "can you believe the guy who makes these great comics used to draw inflation porn? heh... yeah..."
It's a shame he let his art skills go and began focusing on petty nonsense
I think doing digital art hindered him a bit. I remember seeing an image showing his comic-making process, and the initial traditionally done sketches had way more charm than the finished product.
can you post some? I'm interested
Tom Preston (Dobson) is a fascinating man-child. I don't mean that in the sense that he's a grown man with childish interests (although he is, no one on this board has any room to throw stones). Any attempt to give him constructive criticism results in him doubling down and insisting that his way is right. He seems incapable of considering that other people might have reasons to have other opinions and talks down to anyone that disagrees with him via strawmen comics.
>pic related
>Not only does he admit to shortcuts, but gloats at how much less effort it takes
>Not once considering they might be trying to achieve different results or standards
This isn't speculation. He's drawn a comic series where his public school art class had a substitute. The substitute criticized him and held him to higher standards because his poses weren't right. Of course, this resulted in a response of
>muh style
Further his regular series of "Things I don't get"/"Things I like" display the fedora smugness that permeates his soul. Tom Preston is a child who can't bear (pun intended) any notion that he might not be right or the cleverest boy in the room. And since others don't recognize that, he must be the victim. I'm not sure if anyone remembers the drama where he had to go to his GF's family's Hanukkah party, but he was miserable that they weren't doing it his (Christmas) way.
He is among the most pitiable of men. The only reason I don't feel worse for his punishment of being Dobson is that it was also his crime.
>He seems incapable of considering that other people might have reasons to have other opinions
He mentions in many of his comics that he was bullied thruout his school years, I can see how something like that can make a man think that everyone who offers him advice is either patronizing him or purposefully trying to fail him
The first thing that happens with abused kids is that they lose their sense of trust, and the longer they're abused, the further it continues into adulthood
Idk how much he was bullied and how much of it is just lies and a result of his personality, but as someone who's been heavily bullied myself I'm keen on believing it happened
While I have little to no doubt that he was bullied, it's my firm belief that part of being an artist is self-reflection and dedication to improvement. In Dobson's case you can look back to his early work and see how little he's improved or even experimented.
In many ways, he's the exact person Neon Genesis Evangelion was made for. Its message of "living for the approval of others is a fruitless goal because they all have their own stuff going on" would have done him a lot of good.
Part of the reason I'm so fascinated by him and other crazies is how much of myself I see in them. While I was also bullied (due largely to how little I was socialized by my mentally ill family), people like Dobson IRL helped me change by showing me, Dickens-style, what I would end up like if I didn't get my act together and do the hard growing up and confronting what I didn't like about myself.
>pic unrelated
This comic is funny
but the guy himself wasn't trying to be. It just appears that way. When i see guys like him i don't even want to make fun of him. It feels like hurting a child's feelings and would just remind him of the shit he got in the past. Most of the people doing so online probably lack the social/emotional intelligence to do that.
>never got over high school
Sad!
>Tom Preston (Dobson) is a fascinating
No.
>Not only does he admit to shortcuts, but gloats at how much less effort it takes
He's also oddly protective of those shortcuts. I recall one year he got irrationally mad at the guy who started Inktober. Basically the guy posted that you should stick to ink and paper for the challenge for a "true experience". Dobson made a reply saying something like "frick you I'll do what I want", and not in a joking manner. It's like he was genuinely angry.
iirc he also cheated Inktober by posting art he made BEFORE october began?
Every artist does that you fricking imbecile
How many act like it's a huge flex?
No, not every artist does, and the ones that do are buttholes. What's the point of joining an event or challenge if you're gonna break the one defining rule. Things like ''stick to real ink'' aren't really rules they're just preferences, but the whole point of having a challenge where you draw something once a day for a month.... is to challenge yourself to draw something.... once a day... for a month....
Coming in with old art shows you're lazy and unwilling to stick to anything, which is fine if you don't wanna do the challenge, I don't do em much either, but then why say you'll do it? Because it's le trendy and the hashtag will get you attention? That's it, that's all he wants, to participate in something popular but not actually do it.
>I'm not sure if anyone remembers the drama where he had to go to his GF's family's Hanukkah party, but he was miserable that they weren't doing it his (Christmas) way.
First time hearing this and I'm surprised he got a GF, he doesn't seem like the kind of guy that gets past the third date.
>almost 20 years ago
Just end me
>He's drawn a comic series where his public school art class had a substitute. The substitute criticized him and held him to higher standards because his poses weren't right. Of course, this resulted in a response of
>>muh style
I don't remember this one, can you post it?
Apologies, I had to go looking for it and I remembered it wrong. This is a story, not (explicitly) autobiographical.
In my defense, it was a storytime of pain three years ago.
You can find it on tbharchive Cinemaphilethread/116513296/#116513608
He looks like he paints his younger self in the wrong in this page with the teacher being quite nice and him throwing a fit.
>I'm not sure if anyone remembers the drama where he had to go to his GF's family's Hanukkah party, but he was miserable that they weren't doing it his (Christmas) way.
And then the hypocritical piece of shit makes this.
>That time Dobson ruined Hanukkah for his wives family because he was butthurt he didn't get to celebrate Christmas
It's funny, because generally somebody would see that comic without any other context and assume the artist is being playfully self-deprecating.
Dobson wishes his art had the appeal of Schwartz. Dobson will never even be a tenth of the disaster Schwartz was, because Schwartz had real talent he wasted on shit like drawing fur homosexualry of his own dead dog. Dobson didn't even have talent to waste in the first place.
Seriously, why was he so obsessed with that site?
Site? It's a computer brand. At the time it was very artist friendly. Think of how Millenials will still use MS Pant for memes and shit. He's not actually stuck using it 40 years later, he just thinks it's neat.
I also think Dobson is a very competent artist, some of the stuff he pulls out is actually really good and he does put a lot of effort on a lot of his work. Last time I checked on him he was posting this comic on facebook and is was actually some really cool shots and scenes you could tell he was really trying and he even improved from his DA era.
My problem with lolcowgays can kinda be summerazed by this sort of behavior. Of nitpicking shit to try to get at their target to the point it becomes irrational and only being done because it is a easy target anyone can take a shot at. My only real problem with Dobson works is a few stylistic choices and a lot of times he not thinking about contrast or the layout of a lot of his panels on his comic, but I also understand is hard for him to listen to criticism when he probably has no idea what is real criticism to help him improve and what is just random people trolling him.
Do you have any pics of his current stuff
You might not like his style, but I agree. He's definitely good at drawing and could probably make a career out of it if he put his mind to it.
>Of nitpicking shit to try to get at their target to the point it becomes irrational and only being done because it is a easy target anyone can take a shot at.
yeah lolcowgays can be nearly as moronic as lolcows themselves
remember they doxxed the smurf guy 10 fricking years later
i go on the kiwifarms for the occasion gits n shingles and the amount of weirdly moralgayging articles on there trying to find any excuse to hate a guy
>this person RAPED THEIR SICK DOG! and also THEY BURNT THEIR PIZZA!
its such a juxtaposition between actual degenerate behavior and... fricking nothing... like a kid trying to get just oooone more jab in
>remember they doxxed the smurf guy 10 fricking years later
And said guy turned out to be a happily married lawyier with kids of his own.
Is there anything "shitty" about him other than the fact that he's liberal? Genuine question. I've never heard anyone outside of Cinemaphile talk about him sooooo
I kind of wonder this too. He liked lesbians, was openly liberal, had plenty of milquetoast feminist takes. Is that all it takes to be a Cinemaphile comic artist cow? His critics always told to take "criticism" when it was more like blatant hate and only some criticism about his art on the side. His art wasn't even that bad, just kind of simple and generic western comic strip/2000s anime style. None of it was in good faith.
It's kind of funny how much hate he got for liking the DiC versions of nintendo characters because they weren't "canon", then the movie goes and references Super Show.
But really it was his stubbornness that most people hated. But I hated how all the discussion around him made it impossible to hold similar opinions as him
I prefer the Link design with the brown hair he had in NES LoZ/ LTTP SNES art...
Shut up, Dobson.
His fetish kinda spilled into stuff, and he was extremely combative to the point even the tumblr gang couldnt stand him either
Why is it that people who make the content that least appeals to SJWs, the ones who think they can get their favor? Tumblr kiddies aren't exactly fond of fetish porn, what made him think they're gonna forgive and forget? It's like when RT thought they could suddenly appeal to progressives and sensitive e-children, after spending years getting famous over crude offensive humor.
Tumblr is a lot hornier than youd expect (also the site's average age is like mid to late 20s nowadays, the kiddies left a long time ago) but they tend to be vanilla, dipping into monsterfricking and pretty mild furhomosexualry but thats it.
Inflation is just too offputting for them (among all his other shit), and as I mentioned his temper and argumentative personality made him too toxic for tumblr. He'd get in fights with people who held his exact point of view just because a single term or word wasnt just right.
>Tumblr is a lot hornier than youd expect
Yeah, but it's not the same Tumblr he's appealing to when he opposes horny stuff nowadays
what's with all the Dobson posting lately
I know. Dobson hasn't been relevant for years and people still can't shut up about him.
it's called being fascinated with the past, look it up some time, old man.
Besides the coloring, you can trace it back to 80s I die comics. The burgeoning JP influence that is largely superficial and mainly means big eyes, and anime influences over manga. Phil foglio is a good example, even early Matt Wagner with Grendel has that look
Neither of them have the look I'm referring to, like I said I'm not talking about the way faces or bodies are drawn, I'm talking about this very particular crunchy web look it has
It might just be the limitations of scanning in the early 2000s and lack of standardization/easier access to tech education. The crunchy look probably comes from scanning bitmaps or converting to bitmap to color
It's basically a blend of cartoons from the late 80s and early 90s mixed with some anime/manga styles that were popular at the time. I tend to think of it as "cartoonime" in my mind. Pretty much died out in the early 2010s.
Cartoonime sounds the jist right to me. You really only saw it in the early 00's
Sometimes people try to emulate it for fun.
Like this one pic.
The actual comic is done in a different style.
See this image perfectly illustrates what I mean, I'm not talking about the pseudo-anime faces, I'm talking about the way the lineart, the shading, the color and general motion is used
Kinda charming. I know it's cliche but god I miss being 16
it's oddly charming, even if apart from the early works of Jon Gray I can't divorce it from weird porn/fetish art.
I think part of the appeal is that it looks like something you or your middle school friend could make. obviously its more complex than that but that's why newgrounds took off, it was different, cool, and looked like something you could achieve with enough work.
man, early digital art really like abusing the hell out of the airbrush tool
It's a malformed fusion of Jim Davis and Rumiko Takahashi
Learn to draw before making images like this
Shut up, Dobson.
Would you say the art from W.I.T.C.H is an example of this? Because the art from some of the older issues somewhat remind me of what youre describing. You can find some of it from the W.I.T.C.H storytime threads
Yes, I can see it in the very early comics.
ive always defined it as mock-anime, or the how-to-draw-manga look, mainly cause it deliberately tries to replicate the eastern look
i believe it's called amerimanga
I’m glad this trend is dead or dying.
It's more alive than ever though, it's just now more closer to modern JP digital art. Pretty much all modern artists are more JP inspired than anything
that image is over 20 years old so you're safe
I have this itch there was an 80s cartoon about a troll/elf I think that had a very similar style, can't remember the name though is one of those half remembered stuff you see as a young kid.
In the 2000s it was the result of children who learned how to draw from those "How to Draw Anime" books.
Fred Perry-esque
I respect Fred a whole lot for his achievements, but godamn I do not like the way he draws.
Why? I enjoy it
Nah, Fred's better than this. Ben Dunn. Hell, OP's pic looks like Ninja High School's main character, Jeremy Feeple, with longer hair and a bandanna.
I call it "American Ranma." Like it has the vibe of Takahashi's artstyle but filtered through the lens of American newspaper comics and their scratchier linework.
I mean you literally just summarized Dobson's artstyle which is basically:
>Rumiko Takahashi meets Garfield
It's the exact reason why anons will occasionally make MLP threads. One word: N O S T A L G I A.
As crazy as this sounds, its been so long since Dobson was relevant, that people are now nostalgic of him.
I always thought of it as "Neo Comic Strip", since it vaguely reminded me of Lynn Johnston's and similar artists' style.
Is late 90's/early 00's weeb art by dumbass kids who grew up watching gundam wing, Inuyasha and Evangelion the worst comic style to have?
Yes or YES?
Western Anime/Manga slop.
Looks like they're trying to copy Ben Dunn's style.
Soulful
>I'm not sure how to describe it, but it's this charming early internet webcomic artstyle.
>Is there a name for this artstyle?
Yes, 1980s Anime.
Ranma 1/2 was a mistake.
To say Ranma 1/2 is a mistake is to say girl Ranma is a mistake. I diagnose you with gay.
>To say Ranma 1/2 is a mistake is to say girl Ranma is a mistake. I diagnose you with gay.
Ranma 1/2 spawned all the transformation webcomics of the early 2000s like The Wotch where suddenly someone is a girl and their best friend lusts after then or suddenly everyone is lesbians
You are projecting your own closeted homosexuality and are definitely under 30 years old to not remember any of that
Again, Ranma 1/2 was a mistake
So every standout work has to bear the cringe of their shallow imitators?
>So every standout work has to bear the cringe of their shallow imitators?
You've never heard that anime is the pipeline to trans, huh?
Ranma 1/2 is where that all started for what should be pretty obvious reasons even to a moron like you.
So just Karen your way to total censorship. Thank God that ancient Karen decades ago ruined cartoon violence for years after her dumbass kid broke a window playing ninja turtles. Now go forth and cancel anime by mutilating yourself.
it probably did plant in the heads of thousands of teens that being able to change genders would be neat.
Bruh most modern day teens, aka Zoomers and Alphas, have never even heard of Ranma or Rumiko Takahashi, they are all into fricking Demon Slayer.
Same goes for us Millenials. Most millennials when k was growing up were only into Inuyasha when it came to Rumiko Takahashi shows
You can add early digital Toriyama to that.
>Ranma 1/2 was a mistake.
Really any manga with a distinctive art style in the early days of the internet would have done that. Your only two options were "be generic" or "be copied"
Well back then, more than today, there was a lot of young artist trying to copy their favorite anime/manga like how in the DeviantArt days plenty of kids were mimicking Akira Toriyama.
Early chalo (Las Lindas) also looked like a ranma ripoff
>Ranma
>Girl from YouTube music video
>???
ITS LUM YOU FRICKING PLEBEIAN SECONDARY Black person
YOU FRICKING TROGLODYTE
I EXPECT PEOPLE TO NOT KNOW OR CARE ABOUT MAISON IKKOKU, BUT LUM??!?!!
bitch
Touch grass
dobson was literally copying from rumiko takahashi for a very long time
Which would be fine if he moved on and developed an appealing individual style from that beginning
photoshop-brush anime
Tokyopop 2003-2008
Christian Manga Style.
proto-weeb style
>How to draw manga book by author who never did manga-style
>megatokyo
Back in my day we called it "animu". Any wannabe-mangaka western artist using a bastardized low quality anime art style was dismissed as "animu".
latino i suppose? in hispanic communities "animu" was rigfully mocked, no one ever got popular making shit in this style around here.
Nope, typical US Midwestern 90s kid. I'm positive I was using the term by high school in the late 2000s, can't remember if I used it earlier. Nice to see it was international.
Why exactly were Americans such bad imitators of anime? I feel like none of the how to draw books were any serious, like they make the art ugly nonsense because they actually think anime is just ugly nonsense.
>they actually think anime is just ugly nonsense.
anon i...
Those how-to books were unserious cash grabs.
The "Learn how to draw manga book" style
mangtoon
>OP mentions several times ITT that he's referring to the technical aspects like lineart and coloring, and not the anime influence
>people still call it "anime"
Tom Preston's Quiet Country Cafe doujin?
How the frick are people still posting about Dobson shit? guy haven't been online in years
https://www.tumblr.com/hypocrisyofandrewdobson
https://www.tumblr.com/basedouareandrewdobson
memes, that's literally it
I know we all shit on Dobson but this picture is actually pretty appealing to look at.
I don't have it, but there was a yearly progress thing that showed that he started out decent, improved for a few years, and then got lazier and lazier.
He’s just a dull guy. All his stories are just conversation, his most far out their idea is that a vampire who’s just a regular citizen goes to college. Alex Ze Pirate could have had more, but he spent all his pages doing one offs about being emasculated. Where’s the giant cannon seige? Where’s the gothic orphan realizing she’s the reincarnation of a God and destroying the religion that killed and oppressed her? Where’s a guy breaking a glass bottle on another dude’s face and then stealing lottery tickets and driving off from the cops? He has a very dull idea of what a story is or what you can do with comics
Western artist learned on a "how to draw anime" book.
In all honesty, I prefer this type of western-anime hybrid to the modern Sangled cum CalArts style we seem to be getting in every "anime-inspired" cartoon nowadays.
why tf did the other thread get yeeted for
so does anyone know any other comics with a similar style?
SPECIFICALLY THE ILLUSTRATION TECHNIQUES, not the foux-animu aspect.
what other thread?
That's a Dobson rage thread
This isn't
Although I'll bite just for a moment and say, you probably read the text in pic rel in a very particular way, even when the emphasis is only on half a word.... There's service to emphasis which I don't think he understands
>Zeus, Poseidon
emphasis on these as proper nouns, but drawing attention to these godly names/comparisons
>Thunderbolts
The only thing I'd say is superfluous, but emphasizing the power of them
>Laughter
Emphasizing the image of loud, boisterous laughter
>Both
drawing attention at the mutual feeling and attraction they have
>World, Seems
emphasizing that the power felt here is global, but only in what it evokes, not that it's a real expelling of power
>Room
Emphasizing Plas' sarcastic tone
>That, Me, Rules, Hell, You, All
Basically just Diana's terse way of speaking. They're mostly on word breaks, and is meant to nail a point home.
>Reality, Tremble
Emphasizing the concerning nature of this argument.
>Bonds, Legends, Dreams
Flowery words means to add to the legendary feel they're meant to have
>Accident, Destiny, Way
Contrasting something going wrong with how it should be. This is a JLA that's not what we expect to be.
>Truth, Justice
Flowery words again
>Only One
Makes the reader instantly recognize that they're referring to Batman, and making it a stronger image by avoiding saying his name directly.
>Way
Once more using this word to make it seem like something less direct and enigmatic, as well as a terse, firm way to end the sentence.
This is the most exciting and action driven panel he’s drawn and I wish he would just do an action story with all these effects he hates. They’re good techniques, it does really feel like he is telling and asserting different words
He actually got really cartoony at the end when he was getting angrier.
Demimanga