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