marzipanapple wrote:In no way am I an avid supporter of Ramy's usual work (and even less a fan of Seki's work..regardless of it looking the 'same', you can tell Ramy at least has a better understanding of basic shapes/anatomy than she does), but I would like to try being the devil's advocate on this for a sec.
Imagine that he truly enjoys drawing that 'tired non-work' he submits every week. Now let's imagine that he makes lots of money with it (well..I guess 'accept' is a better word than imagine). Now let's all wonder why he's not thwarted by people who are against him.
The equation is pretty much: Draw what you love + get paid for it = WOOHOO!
I think everyone assumes he's pandering on purpose (and sometimes, that might be the case) but even when he *is* I'm pretty sure he loves what he's doing(unfortunately we don't).
Anyway, on the subject of this one I thought the anatomy naysayers might've been too nitpicky until I really looked at the design. Sorry Ramy, but I'm assuming since his talons are in the air that he's in flight. Instead though, it sort of looks like someone is either holding the bird up by his wing joints or threw him really hard at a perfectly horizontal angle (and he's just hit the wall). 'Lookit that, Earl! Bird's bleed'n neon ornge!'
Which is why knowing more about him is so important.
If I love selling cars, and it is my job, obviously I'm going to get paid for it and no one is going to like me, because car salesmen are high-pressure jerkoffs. But I might not be a jerkoff (lol at that) in real life. I might simply love the challenge and the interacting with people. You can certainly love what you do and make money off it even if it is scaffolding.
But Ramy's entire artistic career has been about sneaking and manipulating and greed and jealousy of anything that isn't him. If we even go so far as his responses at woot, every one from he and his girl are condescending, nose-thumbing, etc. They do not care, because it brings in money.
They also so rarely stay on theme. The last two weeks, it's been impossible to NOT be on theme, but most weeks they do the bare minimum to be juuuust on the edge where they can argue a theme that only they and woot seem to see. If this was something they truly loved, they would respect the contest. They would force themselves to be on theme, instead of just drawing the same trash every week and shoehorning it in. This is easy to show for anyone who has been here for over two months following things
And then, we go back to before woot. Sekiyoku's multi-account ban from deviantart, which Ramy even talks about and admits at his own DA blog. The Otakon incident, where their work was being sold at tables which were not theirs, working around the rules to oversaturate their own exposure potential and bring in more money, and they brought in a non-artist to be a decoy and sell more of their work and create enough doubt. Ramy's own constant defenses of other "controversies" pre-woot on his DA blog, and the frequent attacks there on any art other than his own style (any instance of DA narrowing the anime style from front-page exposure, such as disallowing it in certain catagories or allowing literature to be considered art, for example... god forbid he love doing his work enough to do it when exposure is lessened). And of course, this gif of Ramy's many facial shapes and expressions.
You can postulate all you want that he truly loves doing this style, but I believe that the reason he truly loves it is purely because it brings in the mindless praise and eventually the megabucks. He may like how it looks, or have fun doing it, too, but if that were the main thing, he'd do it while staying on theme, and do it while searching for creative ideas, and do it while altering his specifics to diversify within his style, and most importantly, he'd do it without a shady history as vast and multifaceted as his is.
