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soyouareandrewdobson · 3 years

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Dobbear! SYAC: The Master Review 6

I am so going to ruin someone’s childhood with that now, but...

guys, it had to be done!

Dashing and daring…

Courageous and caring!

Faithful and friendly…

With stories to share!

Doesn’t at all apply to this one artist…

Lesbian obsessed and each nerddom’s nightmare!

Dobby BEAR!

Whinning here and there and everywhere!

Making claims that are beyond compare…

This is our Dobby-Bear!

Yeah, if you can’t guess, around now is the time I am going to put down the kids gloves and will really dig into why SYAC is garbage. And a huge factor into this, is in part Dobson’s self insert past 2012.

The existence of the blue bear as Dobson officially calls it (or Dobbear as most people call it) is in my opinion rather baffling already in terms of design choices.

I get e.g. that Dobson wanted to distance himself of his past humanoid self inserts as much as possible. But why of all things a bear?

The fact I am focused on that may sound weird, but hear me out for a bit. For starters, I know that Dobson likes western animation. And seeing how western animation has for the longest time been dominated by anthropomorphic animals, I can understand why he would redesign himself as a funny cartoon animal.

But there are at least three things that feel weird about it. First, Dobson had made it clear in the past that he hates furries. So him actually redesigning himself as an anthropomorphic animal is kinda weird

In fact, Dobson himself acknowledges that realization in one of his strips shortly after his fursona took over.

Second, of all the animals to choose from, why a bear? This question is in so far valid, as that bears are not necessarily one of the first to go animals, furries or western animators tend to go for when designing an anthro. And before any furries or anthro enthusiasts are calling me a hater, let me make one thing clear: I like anthropomorphic cartoon and comic characters too, and am okay with most furries. As long as you don’t have a diaper fetish, are a pedophile or hurt actual animals, you can do and enjoy whatever you like.

But I am also aware enough of furry culture to know, that bear based anthros are most of the time hyper sexualized and muscular, connecting them to how the term “bear” is used in real life gay culture. Which is okay, I think it is just a funny coincidence that Dobson choose an animal, that most furries associate with a life style that Dobson is deeply afraid of, even if he claims to be an LGBT ally.

And as stated earlier, bears are not necessarily the go to animals for animators.

Don’t get me wrong, we all know some cartoon bears like Winnie the Pooh, Yogi Bear, Poh and the main cast of TaleSpin (btw, Kit Cloudkicker fan for life). But lets be honest here; ducks, mice, rabbits, canines, felines, equines and any other “easily to domesticate” animal in the real world tends to make better for easily recognizable cartoon characters than something that can reach a size of 3 meters tops and weigh over 500 pounds.

Truth be told, the pool of cartoon bears is so small, these are the first two things that came to my mind when thinking what may have inspired the Dobbear

And wouldn’t you know? According to Dobson, the Carebears were supposedly the main inspiration for his design.

Unfortunately, this is also more or less the most I could find of Dobson addressing what went into the creation of the character.

Which kinda brings me also to the third issue as why I think the bear redesign is weird; It is too sudden.

One day Dobson draws himself as a shaved 20 something, the next day he is a fedora wearing Carebear clone, likely created and then rejected by Care Bear villain No Heart, as part of a plot to create a mole when conquering Care-A-Lot.

… and now I need to reevaluate my choices in life, that I was able to make such an elaborate Carebear joke.

It is just a change of design that in my opinion should have been addressed either outside of the comic or in context of it. Which it kinda is, but isn’t.

See, this is the first strip with the blue bear

And then only 13 strips or so later in something called “Continuity” is Dobson more or less willing to address the change…

And he does so in a passive aggressive manner, with Persistent Pam as a stand in for those asking him what is going on, while Dobson just dismissively continues working.

On one hand, you can argue that this is just the joke. The change happened, don’t bother with it, just enjoy what is still to come. And you know, I don’t want to make a rope out of everything Dobson ever posted, including that comic.

But then you have also to account for the fact, that Dobson would eventually associate himself with the blue bear so much, he made him his avatar and icon for his comics and online accounts. In fact, that one comic I posted WAY BACK in the first Master post of Dobson reminiscing how he started SYAC?

For reasons that are a bit confusing to me, he redrew himself (badly I have to add) as the blue bear in one of his earliest strips ever. The one where he belittles the manga fangirl for drawing manga. So I have to ask, what is going on here? Has Dobson increasingly decided to reset his past? Does he want to destroy any traces of his “human” self in his work to create the illusion to any new readers, that he never was as controversial of a person as he was and that there never was a need for him to reimagine and reinvent himself? Is this 1984? And how many of you realize that this paragraph is just me going conspiracy nuts for the sake of entertainment?

But still, it is kinda weird that he went to the bother of redrawing his human self in that one background sketch as a bear. Plus, I honestly think Dobson never even attempting to “explain” the change in the pages of his comics is a wasted opportunity for some decent jokes. Like every time Dobson tries to explain why he is a bear now, something interrupts him or we only get fragments of a story that if we put them together would be as ridiculous as the entirety of “Trapped in the Closet”.

I mean, the dumbest joke idea I have in mind is that Dobson went to build a bear to get a present for a family member. Instead he was build into a bear and later on successfully sued the company, which explains why he can afford to live despite not really working on comics anymore but lecture people badly about the evils of nerd culture.

So yeah, three major things about the design choice that more or less confuse me.

But here is the thing: Confusion is nothing compared to feeling genuine disdain for the design at hand. And compared to Dobson’s earlier human designs, Dobbear is just utterly unlikable.

A lot of that boils down to the following three facts:

1. From a certain point in time on (which I will cover in more detail later on) Dobson uses his bearsona primarily as a soapboxing mouth piece to talk about “politics” in nerd culture. Or at least what Dobson perceives as politics, coming off like a condescending jackass who believes among other things that white people are inherently incapable to identify with black people…

… or that comic book shops have radicalized nerd culture, essentially calling them terror cells.

Which btw are so inherently offensive to me, I promise I will cover these two separately. One even sooner than the other.

2. If Dobbear is not talking about politics, he will tend to be a smug asshole to other people (most of the time strawmen) or their interests in one way or another. Being e.g. used by Dobson to express his disdain for criticism…

or to mock legit criticism he had gotten by exaggerating things.

All while also tending to make his critics look like inherent assholes.

These two facts, combined with Dobson’s average erratic behavior online on platforms such as dA, twitter and tumblr over the years, pretty much assured such a close association between the two, that a separation between artist and creation was not possible anymore, condemning them.

And for the record; Dobson was always a bit of a whinner who liked to act as if he was a better nerd than the average comic book fan. Otherwise, we would have not e.g. gotten Danny and Spot out of it.

But as the years went by in the last decade, Dobson turned from someone in his mid 20s, desperate to be seen as a “quirky” and likable internet persona (like certain internet reviewers), into a virtue signaling, lesbian obsessed asshole who likely regrets his life choices.

… Like certain internet reviewers.

But seriously, Dobson turned into someone who would flip the lid at something as ridiculous as Cheeto flavored chicken fries…

While also being just the worst type of condescending nerd….

All while losing his mind about politics. Especially after Donald Trump became president

And just as Dobson became a radicalized left winged jackass who saw politics in everything he consumed, so did by default Dobbear, because Dobbear was not a character with his own personality, but a mouth piece.

Something I am about to get into detail in the near future. But till then, I want to cover in the next post the following third and final fact about Dobbear that really makes him unlikable to me: The fact he can’t be happy.

#syac #Andrew Dobson #dobbear #tom preston #so...you are a cartoonist #review #master review #webcomic #comics

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essthemystic · 7 years

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My Persona/Art Progression Timeline

Felt like documenting this for myself because why not. It’s fun to see progression. From what I noticed going through hundreds of papers just now is that progression occurs with copying/tracing poses/artstyles of other artists until you are comfortable doing it yourself. I used to act high-and-mighty about not being one of those people with sketchbooks full of animu-tracings, but don’t let that stop you from doing it if that was what gets into into drawing. Everyone traces, everyone uses references, you won’t get much better without it.

October 1993-1997: A Susan was born. That’s me. I was a baby. I was apparently “sympathetic and calm” in the words of my mother in my baby diary.

1998-1999: Stick figures. Humble beginnings.... with uuh... Damsels in distress... And pikachus.

2002-2003: Pokemon and elementary school step-by-step drawing books.

I would trace and cut out various Pokemon, animals, dragons, and tape them together to make flat/3d paper figures to play with my friends. I couldn’t find any pictures or remnants of these paper figures as you could imagine that probably got lost or crumpled through the ages,

2002-2004: Super Sue

As creative as 9 year olds go, I named my personal hero after myself. Which was really just me, with magic, and a big sleeve fetish. Oh and she was a daughter of a Lugia cause I love Lugia. Don’t ask for details. I could not find what I know to be the FIRST FIRST drawings of her but these were the oldest I could find. Almost nothing has dates written on the hundred of papers I just went through, even until today. It was a bad habit that mom scolded me for not doing. The dated journal entry is a redraw and the only thing with dates I could find that refers to this character.

Fun Fact: 2004 was also when I first experienced the world of the interwebs more for prolonged periods of time, and no longer ever cared for live cable television.

2005 - 2007: Suzan

Years will start to mix together here.

Again, very creative naming process here. This was my Kingdom Hearts/Riku obsession phase, and like all other fangirls, I made my own fanfic (in my head, god forbid I ever write anything ever) and inserted my character into the story somehow. I really just took the basic Lugia story for Super Sue and turned her into this, but she was also the keyblade..? I actually redrew this character again and again through the years, as shown here, and surprisingly with no significant outfit changes.

2007 + 2011 Drawings of Suzan

2006 - Today : Ess is born and reborn

If you haven’t already GuESSed ;^}, Ess is just the letter “S” spelled out. I love my name, that’s pretty much it. I made her for my Neopets phase as the “mother” of my Neopets and have stuck with her since. Her design was based off my Neopets name (Kyogre635) and a gijinka Kyogre I made (shown below). I decided to make her into some other creature other than a Kyogre because obviously I did not want my persona to just be a straight up Pokemon. Just... a not-any-less-obviously-a-pokemon pokemon, with Suzan’s vest outfit.

Fun Fact: I started digital drawing around this time.

This is the very first design of Ess and the first time I redesigned the “beast” form of Ess. Because I made her “human” form in 2008 way before I made the final “beast” design in 2011. I’m pretty sure my previous “big sleeve” fetish just reincarnated into a “big hands” fetish. No, wait, there are still big sleeves here, who am I kidding?

Mohawk slowly grew as time went on.

2006 Honorable Mention: Attonazia original story + Suzin

I started and created my first official novel/chronicles/never-going-to-get-finished original story in 2006. Though not an official persona, one of the main characters was named “Suzin”, who was obviously supposed to be me. The real-big-bad antagonist that I made up in 2009 still hangs as a giant poster on my wall. Big. Hands.

2007-2008: Ezan

A spin-off of Ess’s name for my first Ragnarok Online persona. Around this point I didn’t really have a “main” persona, I just usually drew all three (Suzan, Ess, and Ezan) interchangeably as their own person(s), along with just myself drawn with the same or similar white/black hairdo and a pair of clothing I wore quite often in real life.

2008-2009 Honorable Mention: Perola the Mystic

I made her for an amazing RP narrative written by a good friend who asked me to make her as the main rival/lover to his character Both of whom were the leaders of the two main “factions” you could pick for the RP. I honestly loved it so much I tried making an “anime intro” in flash for it. This was also where I got “The Mystic” from as my title.

2009-2012: Cuno Hildebrand

I’m in cahoots about counting her as a persona just because she does not fit the same hairstyle and naming convention, but she was a big part of my life during some of my favorite years of my life. So she might not count as a persona, but she counted as my imaginary-mentors. I got the name Cuno as a nickname of my username Articuno635 on Gaia Online because who the hell is going to say all that to address me every time? Though the character itself was created in 2004 in-game (and I was playing mostly as Ezan as a Sin-X obviously), I did not come back to the server to play until the end of 2009, and will never play anything but Professor now.

Some of the first drawings of Cuno to when before they announce the Sorcerer third class design, I tried to imagine what it would look like.

Cuno as a Sorcerer finally, to when I first redesigned her for a semi-original “Apocalypse” story with the same characters. I tried to get off being Ragnarok related.

Various drawings of Cuno and frendz (and a redrawn Ezan in there).

A pic of myself and the girls on Destiny Island from KH. It was kind of a “happy place” for me when I was sad until I came up with my own floating island.

This is the most recent redesign for Cuno I did for some D&D fun just this year.

2013 - 2014: The years were kind of scattered at this point. After I started college and got a phone I didn’t use my random downtime like I did in high school to draw as much as I once did. I really slowed down, especially with the traditional sketches, which was how most of my drawing was done anyway. I obviously HAVE drawn as I have posted things on here and dA. Most if any drawings and sketches are scattered in hundreds of PSD files. Got my first job at Wendy’s during this time as well. Most importantly though, I met the love of my life. <3

2015: Concept Art Practice, Practice, Practice

To make up for how much I felt I did almost absolutely no art the two years before this point, even after graduating college in May of 2014, I dedicated myself to some official concept art courses to do at my own pace. (ConceptArt.org and CTRL Paint) If you want to follow a guided and free art course, I highly highly recommend CTRL Paint. Also learned how to use Blender for 3D modeling! Which was also when I changed Ess’s horn design. I felt it was a very productive year overall. Not to dump on Wendy’s but my I got my first real job at the end of this year at an amazing phone company with amazing people whom I admire dearly. <3

2016-Today: D&D, Dinosaurs, and werk.

I started D&D and will never go back to no D&D, start this young kids. You won’t regret it. My boyfriend and I would like to get a place together soon and are planning for that sometime next year. This isn’t really so much about art or personas anymore, though I know for sure that art is something I’ll never want to stop improving, and will always want to make more and more beautiful pieces to decorate my future home with. I’m definitely not at the skill level I imagined I could be at this age, but life and circumstances are my excuse, and I’m pretty happy with where I am enough that I know more practice and more time will get me to where I’d like to be. Don’t stop believing guys.

Have a Lizard Wizard.

#EssArtTag #original #Ess #Cuno #Ezan

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