How DARE You Not Love My Work Unconditionally!

You're just insulting my work because you're jealous of my amazing talent!

...Sarcasm doesn't work well through text...

Honestly, I try not to come off as an emotionless, unpleasable old bastard, but when I have to deal with certain issues, especially on teh intarwebz, it just can't be helped. With very little introduction, I'll be talking about negative feedback via the 'net.

I was on a bit of a wiki-walk earlier today (albeit not on Wikipedia or TV Tropes, but still) when I found this little gem on a forum, which shall remain nameless, that set off my Rage Alarm:

Honestly... who gives a poop what people like that think? We love it, right? And that's all that matter's. Whenever someone insults my work I just think to myself, "I'll listen when you can prove you could do better"

This comment was in response to the website The Bad Webcomics Wiki, and you can guess what that site is for without clicking the link. The reviews are certainly not afraid to pull a few punches, and they are admittedly very poorly written in parts, but the reaction that the site seems to get sounds less like mature adults picking out legitimate flaws, and more like whining children. Most of the comments are something along the lines of 'Oh, they're so mean, they make fun of popular webcomics because they're jealous, how dare they point out when an artist is handling sensitive subject manner in a distasteful way, or flat-out refusing to improve their art, or completely disregarding the most basic concepts of plot and character! The meanies!'. I still think that it isn't too much to ask for people on the internet to acknowledge, accept, and then reasonably debate the opinions of others, and I will never stop expecting it of people.

Listen, I'm all for the 'water off a duck's back' thing, and budding artists, writers, or what have you, shouldn't take criticism too personally, but to just ignore it, stick your tongue out and say 'let's see you do better' is so juvenile it takes away whatever credibility you may have had. If you just ignore negative feedback, you're never going to improve, even if the feedback is difficult to hear. I've been there. What some call an 'insult', others call 'negative feedback' and others still call it 'constructive criticism'. True, a comment that merely says 'this is crap' isn't helping anyone, but you can't just close your eyes, stick your fingers in your ears and ignore any bad thing said about your work, dismissing them as just not understanding your genius. That is not helpful, it is not constructive and it is not mature. And as for the '...when you can prove you could do better' thing, consider this: I'm not a filmmaker. I don't know the first thing about making films, but when I think a film is bad, I'll say so. No, I couldn't possibly do better, but people still need to know when they are doing something badly, especially if they expect to get paid for it. It's the same with art; maybe I can't do better, but that has nothing to do with you. Suck it up, take the criticism, use it to your advantage and stop acting like a brat.

Now I've been sufficiently brutal, let's have a bit of a demonstration to prove my point and sufficiently embarrass me. Here's something I drew a few years ago:

I was really proud of it at the time (I know. Face, meet palm), so the negative feedback I got did hurt quite a bit. But some of the things I learned from that feedback helped me go from work like this...

To this:

I don't normally do fanart, but Shaun of the Dead demanded it.

Although now I mostly draw things like this:

Amazing art? No, but better than it was. If I had just said to the person giving feedback, 'hey, it's just my style, I'd like to see you do better!' not only would I have denied myself the chance to grow and improve artistically, I also would been lying, because I didn't really have a style to speak of at the time, and I would have embarrassed myself when the critic showed me something like this:

Unfortunately I couldn't find the actual artist who critiqued my work, but it was one of the many talents over at the PolyKarbon Forum*

So although I encourage new artists not to take negative feedback to heart, I whole-heartedly discourage people from just outright ignoring it. How will you grow if you go through life thinking your work is already perfect? Well, here is the truth: your art is never perfect, and your work is never done. Keep working, keep listening, keep improving.


*http://www.polykarbonbbs.com/index.php

The King's Speech: In Which I Overcome My Own Obstacle...

"I have a right to be heard. I have a voice!"

I have been putting off this review for a few weeks for one simple reason: I'm not very good at writing positive reviews, and I think it really shows. I've written maybe one positive review ever, and it's considerably shorter than my other reviews. As I've said before, I find it much easier to rant about something's bad points than to talk about its merits, and that includes my own work. But I decided that I would get nowhere just writing what I find easy, so without further delay, let's get on to the review at hand: The King's Speech.

When I went to the theatre, I had no idea I would be watching this film. In fact, having heard of it I expressed no real desire to watch it; I didn't even know what it was about (beyond, you know, the King making a speech...), but the friend I was with suggested it when we found that couldn't watch the film we wanted to see in 2D (neither of us like watching films in 3D, something which I will cover in due time). I went into the film blind, which I admit is not the best way to watch a film you will later be reviewing but, well, I hadn't planned on reviewing it when I first sat in that seat.

I will start with the first thing I noticed, in the very first scene; the film looks amazing. The cinematography was simple, but very pleasing to the eye and the use of lighting and colours was, if not striking, fairly attractive. I'm not especially knowledgeable in this area, so I won't go on too much, I just thought it was worth mentioning.

I suppose I should bring this up earlier rather than later because there isn't much point in delaying it; Colin Firth's performance in this film was amazing. From the very first line I was drawn in, and he made the character so sympathetic, so human, and so relatable, especially considering he is royalty. Obviously the script played an enormous role in the fleshing out of the character, but Firth put on the finishing touches and made Bertie's character so heart-breakingly real. There was one quiet, poignant scene towards the halfway point that just took my breath away; without wanting to give away too much, I'll just say this: I never would have thought hearing a man singing his hardships to the tune of 'Swanee River' could bring tears to my eyes, but I would honestly be surprised if I was the only one.

Here is another point I will go over quite briefly, as this is the embarrassing moment when I admit that my knowledge of history is frankly laughable. I won't go too far into my ignorance because again: embarrassing, but I will say that I accepted everything I saw in the film as being at least somewhat based on true historical events, and as far as I can understand, it was, if condensed so it would fit into a two hour film. I will also admit that I never usually watch what I would call 'historical films', mainly because history isn't something I'm hugely interested in, but The King's Speech has made me seriously consider giving more of them a try.

Now I'll go on to how the film managed to surprise me, not with the plot (for people who do know the history, the storyline could not have possibly surprised them) but with its use of humour. I honestly was not expecting to laugh when I saw the film's poster and when my friend gave me a very brief idea of the premise, but I did get not only a giggle or two, but there were a few moments when I genuinely laughed out loud. Geoffrey Rush's performance as Lionel Logue is delightfully quick, sarcastic and lively; the gall with which he speaks to the Prince, and later the King, was hilarious at times, and the fact that he didn't seem to care just made me enjoy the character more. Not to mention Helena Bonham Carter's Elizabeth is both tender and loving, and charmingly funny.

The only complaint I have is that I highly suspect the film of doing what's known as 'Oscar Baiting', that is, making a film about an important or sensitive subject, so that it has emotional appeal and will hopefully win a lot of awards. Despite this, I think the film, and its actors, earned all of the awards they got. Even if the film was written only to win awards (which I doubt), it was written in a way so that it didn't seem forced or obvious; I didn't ever think to myself; 'this scene is obviously just to get the actor an award'; every scene that tugged at the heartstrings had a reason to be there, and they never felt intrusive or contrived. It was a genuinely moving and inspirational film, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

There, I suppose that wasn't so hard after all. Only now I have to watch or read something truly terrible to fill my Reviewer's Rage quota. Maybe I should give that new Brighton Rock film a watch...

"Surely a prince's brain knows what its mouth is doing?"
"You're not well acquainted with princes, are you?"