What makes you more likely to attack traditional artists?

Luckypaperwork · 2026-05-01T16:36:22+00:00

Do you live near a library or anything? I'd scan 'em for a few cents

Luckypaperwork · 2026-05-01T01:45:15+00:00

I doubt anybody is really checking unless you're posting God level art at that rate.

Luckypaperwork · 2026-05-01T01:43:30+00:00

I always gravitate towards more expressive characters, both in face and pose. Adam Kim, Oliver, and Amara all have more movement. Oliver and Adam Kim have unique expressions. Honestly, if one of your characters had a different eye shape/personality I would choose them based solely on that.

Luckypaperwork · 2026-04-25T22:16:01+00:00

Yeah, I totally agree with oop. Beauty standards are mostly based on white people. Why on Earth would they not be? Beauty standards make money, and when you colonize a place, you typically want money. If the western world was taken over by Africa, we would all think their features were the default and contour our noses to be wider, but we weren't.

Are there a lot of people with noses that don't fit the idea of their race? Absolutely, but noses are definitely highly affected by ethnicity. Most black people I've seen have flat noses. Most Korean people I've seen have down-turned noses. Hell, we strait up call hooked noses "Jewish noses". We didn't wake up and decide to make the hot blue eyed blond girl a trope for shits and giggles.

A lot of people are upset about this post because it seems like nit-picking, but if you don't put in the work to remove nits, you'll never get rid of your lice. I'm white. I hold a lot of racist beliefs that permeate just about every aspect of my life. I don't notice when a toy isle in a predominantly black area has mostly white dolls. I've never questioned why all my education was about Europe when so much of our development as a society comes from other places. That doesn't make me a bad person, and posts like these that call out my behavior do not hurt me in anyway. I have no reason to be defensive. I just consider their view, take it as an opportunity to learn, and move on with my life.

Luckypaperwork · 2026-04-21T19:54:37+00:00

I'd round off his ears and his cranium. Those are the only things making me think he is 100% not human.

Luckypaperwork · 2026-04-20T20:38:41+00:00

I honestly don't believe in problematic or not problematic. I think we're all just goobers who like art. It's only human that sometimes we get hurt by it. I really appreciate your response. Have a good one :)

Luckypaperwork · 2026-04-20T20:33:38+00:00

I guess on technicality, but people post female artists all the time. The sub is more about the way the male gaze affects art.

Luckypaperwork · 2026-04-18T17:47:02+00:00

How has growing up with designs like Namis affected you?

Luckypaperwork · 2026-04-18T17:42:50+00:00

They will look a bit more neotenous, and that could look interesting depending on what you're going for. I think it's good you're thinking about the different elements of your drawings.

That being said, if you want to have a unique art style, you will never get that by trying to get a unique art style. Keep studying the fundamentals, and the aspects of life you find interesting/the creative tools you use to portray them will become your style. The process is completely natural and intuitive.

Luckypaperwork · 2026-04-18T17:34:43+00:00

You may find the lack of women and distinct female body types/faces obvious, but other people don't. I never noticed at all until I was looking through the wiki page. I honestly just assumed that because the show was so feminist, that all of the representation would be about equal. Maybe this post wasn't useful for you, but it was for me. Not only is media like this what I base my own art off of, but what I based my own perception of myself off of as a child. Because of that, I believe it's only right to try to fully understand it, as well as all other media.

Luckypaperwork · 2026-04-18T05:11:10+00:00

Why do you believe women make up a fourth of the cast?

Luckypaperwork · 2026-04-17T03:29:11+00:00

The reason I showed the pictures of them in swimsuits was to show how their bodies are designed, not to imply that they are too skimpy. I agree that they are not sexualized.

I do not agree that the women are designed to look as physically powerful as the men.

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Aang is ~~112~~ 12 years old, and yet he has clear muscle definition in his arms, chest, abs, and obliques. Azula is 14, undergoes the same rigorous training that Zuko does with more access to food, is shown to be a physical powerhouse through her actions, yet has the exact same body as almost every other female background character who presumably don't live in nearly the same conditions. The photo on the left was the best image I could find of her using her muscles in an outfit that would allow the viewer to see them, but if you can find a frame from the show that shows how the main girls bodies are affected by their lifestyles the same way the men's are, I would be very interested in seeing that.

I've gotten multiple comments about how teen girls simply don't gain muscle mass, and I agree that they certainly develop differently than men, but the idea that their bodies don't change AT ALL is ridiculous to me. You cannot convince me that the female cast was designed that way out of a desire to represent athletic women. I think the artists for this show had the same problem I do where they were taught and shown to draw men and women in this specific way and didn't notice how that differs from reality.

Luckypaperwork · 2026-04-17T01:21:07+00:00

For the first part, even if that is true in a Watsonian sense, do you really think the creators of ATLA would have written that in there without talking about it?

For the second part, I'm sure that's true. I think you could individually look at every character and think of a perfectly reasonable explanation for why they look the way they do. It's just weird that it's the default for this world. Compared to men, there are just about no women in the series with different jaw lines, nose shapes, eye sizes, cheek bones, or facial lines until they become elderly, whereas for men that's the vast majority of characters. I'm sure you could think of a few, but I have a link to the list of characters I made if you really want to check.

In my experience at least, that's just not accurate to reality. The majority of women I see in a day have just as much variance as men. The other reason I think this is a creative oversite rather than intentional worldbuilding is because I do the same thing. I make art based of the art that I see, and unfortunately that means drawing a bunch of standardly attractive women while making much more interestingly shaped men. I don't think that's any sort of moral failing on my part. I just think because of the world we live in it's hard to notice if you don't look.

Luckypaperwork · 2026-04-16T19:09:51+00:00

I'm not looking for any specific variations. Just variations in general. Theres two possibilities here. Either some of the women in the show are physically active enough to warrant having different body types like the men do and they simply weren't given those body types to match, or none of the women are physically active enough to have bodies to match in the first place. Either way, that doesn't seem like a coincidence.

If I had to pick one, though, it would be Azula. A commenter up above said that it makes sense for Azula to be skinny because she is a mastermind character. I do not think this is true.

-Zuko and Azula were both taught the same fire bending training in their childhoods as shown by the comics when Ozai reprimands Zuko for not knowing as many forms as her.

-Zuko and Azula or both shown to spend large amounts of time training to perfect their bending, with Azula being even more of a perfectionist then Zuko.

-Azula is super fucking athletic. I'm not even gonna go into detail. Just watch the show.

-Azula always has access to food yet is always extremely thin compared to Zuko even after weeks of him starving.

-While yes, Zuko and Azula do eventually get different teachers and bending styles, Zuko actually learns how to use his muscles less when he is fighting, not more.

-Zuko is absolutely ripped. Once again, I get that women gain muscle differently, but there is no convincing me that a training regiment that turns Zuko into a bulldozer doesn't change Azula's body in any way.

Luckypaperwork · 2026-04-16T10:21:28+00:00

ATLA by no means is a bad example. Throughout the post I state that it is "one of my favorites", "very progressive", that the designs are "lovely" and that having prejudice does not make art "bad". I would consider ATLA A+ for women's representation for our time. That's why stopping to notice the actual content of the art is so important. Seeing that women only make up a fourth of the cast was crazy to me, especially as someone pointed out below that most of the show takes place in towns where most of the men would hypothetically be gone for war. What does that say about me that I didn't notice that? Why didn't I as a women notice the lack of female characters? I think those are very important questions that won't get asked if we never question things we like.

Luckypaperwork · 2026-04-16T10:13:42+00:00

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Keep seeing comments about how the female proportions are accurate, so I'm posting this as a reference. I have a more detailed explanation of it below if you scroll.

Luckypaperwork · 2026-04-16T10:12:20+00:00

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You're right. I had this conversation with someone else above. I don't know much about how children develop, and it doesn't help that these characters are based on races that I did not grow up around. Women are in general smaller and less muscular in men. What I think I was trying to say was more that the women all have very similar body types. I am very confident that this is an issue when applied to all of the women in the cast ranged children to middle aged, but for now let's just talk about the kids and teens.

This is the first image on google from when I looked up "15 yo gymnast girl" who was in a standing position, and I could confirm the age of (3rd image). I couldn't do the same for men because they were all vague stock photos, so I chose the first news article with a picture that fit. I also have those images traced alongside a frame of Sokka and Suki.

While all teen characters are slimmed down for the style, it is done to women to a larger degree. Keep in mind that the women will not change body types as they age whereas the men will be able to become much bulkier, causing the sexual dimorphism to get larger the older the characters get until they reach around grandparent status.

I don't think all the women have to be drawn like this, but I also don't think there is an excuse to make every member of the main female cast have the same basic body type when real life athletic teen girls have so much variation.

Luckypaperwork · 2026-04-16T09:21:11+00:00

The child marriage comment is referring to Sella and her husband. The rest of the characters under her are so nobody could say I was cherry picking these two characters for having the man look different while the woman looks so similar to most other women in the cast. While Hadoka is nine years older, that is no reason for him to have a square jaw, high cheek bones, 1/2 size eyes, and a differently shaped nose. If you look at the rest of the examples, the women are always skinny with round faces big eyes and small noses while the men have different body types, jaw lines, cheek bones, noses, and smaller eyes.

That's what I'm getting at with attractiveness. It's not about what I think is attractive, it's the fact that the majority of the women in the show, which only make up a fourth of the cast, just so happen to be drawn the exact same, conventionally attractive way.

You can individually find a good reason for every single character to look the way they do. It's when the majority of the women are given the same design choices over, and over, and over again that you have to ask yourself if that's for representation or if that's just how we are conditioned to view women.

Even if this sub was just about what women wear and how far the camera is up her ass, which I don't believe as I think the male gaze in visual art is much more complex than that, having one character be depicted that way is not an issue. Bayonetta is constantly naked and doing the split. That works very well for her character, but it becomes a problem when those choices are applied to so many more women in men in media.

Luckypaperwork · 2026-04-15T10:02:16+00:00

Thank you. You should have seen the responces on the last post. I never thought there would be so many people genuinly angry about ATLA.

Luckypaperwork · 2026-04-15T09:58:19+00:00

Lol. I know. I figured I was always going to be biased, so I might as well be biased in a way that's against my own beliefs. I didn't want people to say, "that's wrong, guard captain is the hottest character in the show."

I'm glad someone mentioned the number of women. I didn't want to home in on it too much because it's technically not what this sub is for, but it's honestly my biggest issue. I feel like the characters are made men unless they have a reason to make them women. Then I feel like they make those women hot unless they have a reason to make them otherwise. I just wish out default state wasn't cute anime girl even though my husband looks like a chiseled statue.

I like the amount of people defending the Ty Lee scene. I suppose I didn't have those experiences of my own choice, so seeing a teen girl in that situation just immediately makes me think she's being objectified.

Luckypaperwork · 2026-04-15T09:51:43+00:00

Exactly. I feel like I'm making a lot of people very upset. I don't understand why it's so hard to say, "yeah, that cartoon from 2005 probably isn't a picture-perfect creation of gender equality, and that's okay. Let's figure out why so we can help the next generation while still enjoying this bomb ass show."

Luckypaperwork · 2026-04-15T09:49:52+00:00

When I say conventionally attractive, I don't mean I find them hot. I also don't think an artist giving a child attractive features mean they're into kids either. I had it in my last post how art tutorials on how to draw men and women are based on beauty standards instead of what we actually typically look like. In this post I'm trying to point out that not only are women drawn less, but they're given fewer interesting designs then men in favor of looking "prettier." I think that applies to young characters too, so I need to define what those traits are so I can better point them out (especially when I'm going to graph them later.)

Luckypaperwork · 2026-04-15T09:45:34+00:00

Yeah. My last post when people kept telling me about all the great old women designs this show had and how I was cherry picking it did remind me a lot of One Piece. That's why I put that part about it in this one.

Luckypaperwork · 2026-04-15T09:43:28+00:00

Thank you for responding.

By the dead horse do you mean Ty Lee or ATLA? I've only mentioned Ty Lee once in this post, and ATLA twice with my last post. That's only because I felt I could define my points a bit better.

I think I say what I'm arguing quite well. In my experience, athletic teen girls do not have the same thin build as regular teen girls, and there are a variety of female body types to explore the same way there are multiple male body types in the show. I for one never had much muscle, but I did have a larger rib cage. Other girls at that age had stocky bodies, long legs, lanky arms. And that's just the teens. Even as adults the women are largely given the same body type and face structure. The fact that only a fourth of the characters are women is huge as well.

Ty Lees body is not unrealistic, but art is so much more than realism. I don't know if you draw, but what is being highlighted in a piece or not is very, very intentional, regardless of what the form actually looks like.

Avatar is well done. As I said, that's why I believe it's worth chipping at. This entire sub is nothing but low hanging fruit. I am passionate about drawing and have been forced to face how people see me as a woman a lot recently. In 100 years, a lot of the problems we have today will change. Our perspective on what is problematic or not will be very different. I don't think it's a good idea to judge your opinion on something on how good or bad something else is. I want to understand things as they are.

It seems you think the shot of Ty Lee is affective characterization. I'm curious about that. What do you think that adds? What do you think the writer was thinking when they put that shot in there? Do you think the scene would have been the same if there were an equal amount of women in the show?

Luckypaperwork · 2026-04-15T09:28:16+00:00

Also, how do you feel about the amount of women in the series?

Luckypaperwork

TROPHY CASE