Why do people hate Tom Preston?

Andrew Dobson on /ic/ ⇢

I wake up to check the EDF and see that… Dobson actually goes to a critique thread? Of course, this was after his line art/colouring journal has attracted a number of people telling him to continue striving for critique.

NSFW just like some of my links posted here.

19 July

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From Dobson’s journal regarding line art and colouring. Here are links to the full version in case tumblr file limits screw them up or you can go ahead and read them on deviantART.

This, readers, is the attitude of a “professional” artist. To clarify, BallistaeHero is Kazerad, the author of Prequel Adventures and has also worked professionally. Actually, it’s interesting to see that a number of professionals, students, and hobbyists alike commented and stated that his methods were inefficient and outdated.

That’s not to say that it’s completely wrong to use. Someone messaged me about how there were other artists using this technique and it worked out well for them. Though the difference is that they spend time fixing things whereas Dobson would rather completely rely on shortcuts.

Judge him for yourselves.

18 July

141

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Tom Preston filter

You know what really bothers me about TomPreston's lineart? He could easily fix some of it's sloppiness by running it through Inkscape and have that create less wobbly vector lines over his normal work. His normal lineart and coloring isn't good, but the fact that he can't take 3 minutes to greatly improve the quality is just lazy. The method I describe isn't even that good, but it'd still be better than what he produces now.

Interesting thing about vector lines and - his coloring method in general.

Normally people would keep colours and line art as separate layers. And most of the time, people preferred anti-aliased lines because they simply look better. Dobson works by colouring directly into the lines which is why he prefers to have rastered lines since it’s pure black and white with no anti-alias to interfere with his colours.

This example provided is what he believes will happen if he used vectored lines since they add anti-alias. He believes that he has to directly colour on the same layer as the vectored lines. Because if he does it for one poorly executed technique then, logically, he has to do it for others.

I’m going to believe that he’s simply too lazy to deal with layers and just takes short cuts. Of course, some others would say that he’s… not smart enough to handle multiple layers… I won’t go as far to say that yet.

Oh and more beautiful comments from his journal. Let’s take a look shall we?

(Link to full version)

16 July

Anonymous

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The Virtues of Responsibility

So, after reading this recent tantrum on why Preston’s tutorials are totally right and everyone else is just being angry for no reason because, “HURRR HATERS GONNA HATE AMIRITE?!” and other non-answers to the legitimate criticisms weighed against his techniques and skills, I remembered specifically why I hate Tom Preston: It’s because he thinks that nothing is ever his fault. He’s a grown ass man and he acts like an angsty teenager who can’t comprehend how their own lousy behavior might negatively affect their own lives.

No! It’s not that you’re an obnoxious prick that no one likes to talk to.. It’s just that everyone else is a big dumb meat-head homo jock who bullies you because they don’t like smart people!

It’s not that your tutorials are lousy.. It’s just that people like to pick on popular artists because they are popular and they’re all trolls who are just jealous! That’s it!

People don’t argue with you because you’re wrong! No. Definitely no. THEY ARE WRONG. And here’s 50 ass-pained comics to back up just how wrong they are!

Were he a 14 year old fuckwit on deviant art, amongst all the other fuckwits, this behavior would be excusable, even laughable.. But he’s a grown ass man who’s been doing this “cartooning” thing for over a decade, and yet he’ll claim that he’s just doing what his college schoolin’ taught him, what he read in books, or what “industry professionals” do. Nevermind that the college he’s using as an excuse for the behavior he insists is correct is the same college he claimed had the worst animation program ever..

What I want to drive home is that even if you can’t hate Preston for being a lousy, miserable excuse for an artist, you should hate him for being a grown ass man who can’t accept responsibility and fault for his actions and will go to great lengths to try and displace or dodge that responsibility and fault so he can continue to live in his little dream world where he’s a misunderstood genius being held down be trolls and bullies.

15 July

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Tom Preston others submission filter

I’m pretty sure you guys know how much I hate Dobson’s awful line art and colouring. Well recently he made a journal about it and how professionals justify it. As of now, I don’t need to expand much on this. Credit goes to bobmalarky on EDF for screencapping these. Read the rest of the debates/comments in his latest journal.

15 July

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Tom Preston filter

Can you tag the asks as Tom Preston as well? Id like to see them in his tag so he can read them since he has a tumblr now, maybe he will pick up some tips.

Done. As a result I’ve added the filtered tag which allows people to browse through this blog’s content without the asks. Speaking of which, I have to organize this blogs tags.

15 July

Anonymous

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Copy print paper is very thin, and very cheaply made! It's not made to last long, or to take- you know. Pencils. The surface quality and thickness of paper changes how you can draw on or erase off of paper. Printer paper causes smudges, you cant erase it often, and tends to age very fast. It also has no 'tooth', or texture made to grab and hold the graphite. Printer paper works... as well as any *other* office supply does for drawing. It's just not a tool made for the job, and is very... cheap.

Thank you. This answers your question, rocmegamanx.

15 July

friendlytroll

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1.

I’ve stated this a number of times, it started off as me simply explaining certain screencaps. Actually, this is explained in the link in the sidebar.
Then you get to asking about me. If you want to see my art then you can simply google my handle since it’s only you asking and it isn’t really necessary to have links to my personal stuff.
Actually comparing myself to Dobson would just be silly. You don’t need have to be a skilled artist to criticize others. Of course, this blog goes beyond his art and dissects it deeper to the motivation and reasons behind them.
2. I’m an idiot when it comes to traditional art unfortunately. Their reasons for looking down at copy/print paper is unbeknownst to me. Perhaps the artists following this blog can provide the answer if they please.
3. Chris-chan.
4. Dobson has always been pretty bitter even when he was under the persona of CattyN. Even in the inflation community he has acted pretty sour towards other artists. Right now, it seems that he’s having trouble with separating trolls, critics and people telling others about his FAQ.

I’ve stated this a number of times, it started off as me simply explaining certain screencaps. Actually, this is explained in the link in the sidebar.

Then you get to asking about me. If you want to see my art then you can simply google my handle since it’s only you asking and it isn’t really necessary to have links to my personal stuff.

Actually comparing myself to Dobson would just be silly. You don’t need have to be a skilled artist to criticize others. Of course, this blog goes beyond his art and dissects it deeper to the motivation and reasons behind them.

2. I’m an idiot when it comes to traditional art unfortunately. Their reasons for looking down at copy/print paper is unbeknownst to me. Perhaps the artists following this blog can provide the answer if they please.

3. Chris-chan.

4. Dobson has always been pretty bitter even when he was under the persona of CattyN. Even in the inflation community he has acted pretty sour towards other artists. Right now, it seems that he’s having trouble with separating trolls, critics and people telling others about his FAQ.

15 July

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ask Tom Preston

Ahh forgive me for not properly formatting things. Then again it is just a… really late reply to asks I’ve received and that’s only a few of them.

1. Here’s a little something about me: when I first noticed Dobson’s artwork on the front page (of course, this was SYAC) I read it and thought “heh I know that feeling”. Then I see more of his stuff and noticed his usual flaws. It was only until I came across a discussion on EDF about him and followed through and realized his bullshit on the internet.

2. Let’s see about that.

Dobson… you’re supposed to use examples better than the ones you draw…

3. Ah typical Tom Preston snarking. Dobson is the same person that goes “I do nothing wrong and people still damn me”.

4. Now that you pointed it out… I just noticed that he thinks “blonde” as a single hue of yellow. Of course, I blame this on his poor colouring techniques as it involves using a horribly bright colour as a background when he’s using the bucket tool and filling in objects. Because of that brightness it leads to using certain values and saturations of colours to balance its high saturation. In reality, there’s dirty blond, strawberry blond, ash blond, etc.

… Then again, Dobson has a problem with variety. In the 100 Characters challenge there isn’t much variation among his designs at all. Only a few of them are remotely unique which people from the SA thread has pointed out. 91 and 92 are his worst attempts at characters I’ve seen by far.

15 July

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ask Tom Preston

Quick question, are you Thayora from the EDF forums? I've been reading the EDF thread related to Tom Preston, and I thought you might be her.

Yes I am.

9 July

Anonymous

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Can I tell the tale of how I came to dislike TomPreston? I seriously thought I was part of a minority until I got on Tumblr, and finding this blog actually made me remember the story.

It takes a bit of explaining, but basically, I used to half-follow him for a while (no point actually hitting the watch button because everything ends up on the front page anyway) Some of his work got a little laugh out of me, but you know, he was OK and bright colours attract me.

Anyway, a quite a while ago I got into looking at studies of left handed people, and found out that their brains are wired sort of in a mirror, backwards if you will, and a lot of left-handed children (and adults unless corrected) will try to write backwards, or work from the right side of the page to the left, and this really interested me because even before reading an unflipped manga comic, I’d always felt more comfortable working from right to left, in comic and just general drawings, and when I did discover manga I used it as an excuse to justify working right to left.

Around the same time I stumbled across his comic where he basically draws himself outsmarting a stereotypical weeaboo, and for the first time I left a comment. it was quite a while ago, so I don’t remember exactly what I wrote, but it was along the lines of “oh I’ve just been reading up on some related stuff, it’s really interesting, blah blah did you know I find it easier being left-handed, to do it this way, even though I’d rather work left-to-right?”

Well, he replied, and the reply was basically “I’m left-handed too, you’ve got no excuse so stop acting like you’re special” or words to that effect. Now, fine, fair enough he can disagree with me. He’s lefthanded, fine, lefties unite. But what got me was the tone of his reply. It really alienated me as a potential watcher, and I thought “wow, what a jerk.”

On dA I try to be polite as possible, I’ll be chatty with people who seem nice, and try to stay nice and polite when dealing with stupid people, and I’ll always respect another artist who does the same. I wasn’t disagreeing with him. I wasn’t saying he was wrong, I was just commenting “hey I found this interesting, maybe you will too” and he just acted like, well. A twat.

I lost a lot of respect for him at that point- and then when I visited his website, oh boy. Especially the longer stories he was doing at the time, the way he spoke to people. Just rude. Really rude. Not that I ever found anything he did rib-ticklingly funny, but I can’t read anything of his anymore without thinking “a horrible jerk wrote this, goddamn.”

Maybe I’m being a crybaby, and should let it go that a popular artist left a curt reply to a comment, but I think frankly there are a lot of other, genuinely nice artists out there who deserve my time and comments way more than he does, and I think he needs to take a look at the way he talks to people and answers them because he’s obviously alienating a lot of well-meaning folk.

9 July

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other submission filter Tom Preston

Today’s Achievement: Recognition

Just came back from the movies today and I realized that Dobson himself has reblogged the previous “Try bending your pinky like that”. Actually, all of the responses to that post are seriously putting a smile on my face. In case you guys are interested I can do that “gesture”.

The problem is that was that doing said gesture was uncomfortable. Even with my ability to do that I would rather have my thumb and pinky at a normal and more comfortable position when holding up three fingers. Instead of saying “thanks for pointing that out you guys, I’ll keep that in mind for the future”, Dobson had to respond with “well I can do it” despite it still looking awkward.

Now back to Dobson responding (indirectly) to this blog, ever since I started this blog simply deconstructing controversial comments he has made I’ve always wondered “how would he react if he saw this blog?” ~~Maybe get him into one of ED’s famous arbchats.~~ Of course I doubt that he’ll respond to this blog anymore beyond that. Shame.

However, despite that there’s another goal I want him to do. I want him to read this blog. I want him to read my writings and see how other people interpret his situations rather than him boiling everything down to “I’m damned if I do, I’m damned if I don’t”. I especially want him to see the comments made by a person who is affiliated with his room mate regarding Dobson’s observation of him creating with “no effort”.

If (emphasis on that) Dobson were to consider reading this blog, then maybe he will come to an understanding of why people view him in such a negative light. He’ll abandon the theory of “they hate me to cover their jealousy” when it’s more complex than that. As he said, it’s the internet, people can be very critical of the little things you do. But things are different in Dobson’s case. There are people critical of his art and actions and amongst them are those telling him how to improve on it. But Dobson chooses to turn their back on them, plugs his ears and imagines them only hating him based on jealousy.

And what’s there to gain by realizing how other people interprets his art and actions? Perhaps a slight attitude change? A little change is better than none. Maybe listening to other people’s advice starting with the basics: better lining and colouring. As he stated before: stepping out of the comfort zone led to better results.

What this means is that he can benefit from this. Actually, anybody can benefit from critique aimed at another person. Be it for their art or attitude. It’s like those posters you would see in high school: learn from other people’s mistakes before you make them.

8 July

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filter Tom Preston

Try bending your pinkey like that.

blizzilla:

whypeoplehatetompreston:

A while ago someone asked me about how people were annoyed with the way Dobson draws hands. Well thankfully someone else submitted the answer.

blizzilla:

Just do it.

My last thought on the subject.I fixed my anatomy with duct tape.

And there you have it. I’m seriously loving the responses to this post, guys!

Source: whypeoplehatetompreston

8 July

254

blizzilla

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others filter Tom Preston

Try bending your pinkey like that.

adobsonart:

blizzilla:

Thanks for using my pic, dude!

whypeoplehatetompreston:

A while ago someone asked me about how people were annoyed with the way Dobson draws hands. Well thankfully someone else submitted the answer.

blizzilla:

Just do it.

Maybe your fingers just aren’t as flexible. If that’s honestly the farthest you can bend your pinky, then I’m sorry but that’s kinda sad. I’m able to do it just fine, and looking through your comments it seems like quite a number of other people are too.

I’m not gonna say I’m an “expert” at drawing hands, far from it. Do I still need practice drawing them? Absolutely. But if your whole reason for hating me is based upon accusations and failed attempts like this, maybe you should be reconsidering the reasoning behind your hatred, come to terms with it, and finally move on with your life to more important things.

Just a thought…