Animation Source Forums

It sure seems like a race to me. A race that involves popularity, or something. Let's take Facebook for example. Some people can have 1,000 + friends or more, and they probably only communicate with only a handful of those friends. Unless you're a celebrity on Facebook, why so many friends? Seems pointless doesn't it?

I've seen members here where they have countless characters on their profiles, and sometimes that's all they have (not always, but sometimes I stumble across this here and there), a large list of characters. Not only do I have to wonder why someone needs THAT many characters, but why are they even here if they're just going to make characters left and right as if they're a factory?

1) Like I stated above, I think this may have to do with their "popularity" level. The more characters they make, the better, and that's downright ridiculous. I won't say who, but I just counted 64, 64 characters on their profile. That's outrageous, I bet they don't even use half of those characters. In my eyes, if someone has that many characters, and they only use a handful of them, that's pretty much spam to me. Especially if they're just creating them to up their ego.

2) Perhaps some kids view this site as a game. I've sadly seen some people say this site IS a game... Just my thought, but I think people are misusing the characters page, correct me if I'm wrong. But I tend to think kids use this site as a virtual pet site, like Chicken Smoothie for example. Something similar anyway. I could be totally wrong, but: They make the character, then they hold a contest to make a mate for the character, then they either makes the puppies themselves, or hold another contest for designs. Then they put the puppies up for adoption, and people turn them into characters, and the cycle starts all over again. -Sarcasm- I'm sorry, but the "circle of life" gets boring after the 2nd time around.

I realize this is more of a complaint than rant, but I do believe something needs to be done about this, which I doubt nothing ever will be. But I DO think it's a big waste of space if someone is going to make a character and never use it. I think there should be a limit to how many characters a person can have. I would say 25 or 30 would be a fair number. Or at least add an option to hide the long annoying list of characters someone may have.

Complaints qualify as rants, my dear Mighty.

Incidentally, welcome to the world of being frustrated at vacuous, shallow, inane teenagers and kids with seriously screwed-up priorities.

I hate it too, especially when people make buch of (often bad and pretty boring) characters just to create mate or pack contest... Like you said, the blind circle where characters do nothing than just... exist...

Pfff I can't always find a good use to my 6 characters. Good luck with 60 of them...

At least you TRY to do something with your character. There is a difference between making them and never using them, and making them and using them, but not all the time.

I'd say we could put in a word with Steet about possibly making a limit to how may characters a member can have, but he never does anything anymore, so it would be useless to ask.

But the issue is annoying. When the characters section first opened, I thought it was a good an bad idea. It didn't take long for me to regret having it. Either it needs to have more filters/organization, or needs to be removed completely. There are rarely any really ''good'' characters anymore anyway. And any good ones are pushed back as more 'spur of the moment' and useless ones flood the page.

That also makes it that much harder to pick any for the selection of the week. There are what, over 100 pages on BS alone of characters to go through to find 'must see's?

I basically said the same thing in my first post. But if Steet were to do that by chance, I have a feeling the members will get around this by making new accounts. That's the only problematic thing I can see coming out of it. If someone is that obsessed with making crappy characters that they made in 1hr, then I think they can take it to DA and annoy their watchers there. It certainty doesn't belong here. I swear, a good amount of members here have OCD with making characters.

I from time to wonder if the characters page is worth it myself. Some people use it correctly, but most people do not. What I really think needs to be done is the page needs to start over from the top. The characters page needs to be cleaned out completely, and only allow SERIOUS characters to be submitted. That means no sparkle dogs and game generated puppies from a DA flash game, or any other character generator game. A "good" character can never come from a game. It takes the effort of your own brain power. The characters should also have to be moderated like they used to be.

The way things are with the characters, I don't see a point in having a must-see for characters.

I totally agree. I deleted all of my characters when I wasn't using them anymore. Now I have three characters. My fursona, and the others are for a HUGE Fanfic I'm doing. I'm going to continue making a few more characters (because the are more than just 2 in my fic)

Anyway, the point is, I bet more than half of those 60+ characters aren't even going to be used for anyhing. There's no reward for having the most characters, only for how much time and effort you spent into making that character your own.

I bet half of those 60+ characters need to be deleted, they're a waste of space. More the merrier doesn't always mean better. Everything has its limits, and I think 60+ characters is far past that.

Hmm, I'd like to join this world also, is there an iniation of some sort? XD I digress, but I agree with this very much.

I myself only have 2- count em, 2 characters on this site, and one of them hasn't even been used yet! If people only do it to be popular, then it should probably stop. Perhaps some of the many new members see other member's profiles that are loaded with characters profiles filled with comments/favs and think "Oh, if I make a character and shamelessly promote it (not that there's anything so wrong with that since it's very hard to get one noticed), then maybe I'll be famous also!"

Also, I wouldn't care that there were so many characters, if they were quality also. 95% of them time (based on what I've seen) they're renders, weird colors, or something that just doesn't belong, whether it's in the nature of their bio or the creature itself -_-, but that's an entirely different animal right there.

That being said, I wanted the characters I made to be quality sooo I had one comissioned, and the other one I think had a lineart done (which I eventually will get another comission done for him..maybe haha).

And about the "circle of life" I reeeaallly could care less about (deep breath here), Balto's cousin's uncle's sister's brother's momma's husband's uncle's nephew's grandson twice removed okay? I think 1-2 generations should be enough for you to work with.

I mean I believe there used to be somewhat of standard for characters right? Perhaps if the standard was raised again. People would think a whole lot more before submitting, but again I forgot do the mods approve characters anymore or no?

Either way I definitely think something should be done.

There are certainly better ways to be popular, and the best way to achieve that is to just let it happen on its own time. It doesn't mean that everyone WILL be popular, only some. Take me for example. I'm not sure I'm what you would call popular, but I'm certainly well known among the members, and that's most likely because I was a mod and admin before. I surely didn't do that on purpose.

Another good example I can think of is Catwhohas14tails. She's popular for her artwork, and for her character Kiona. I can't speak for Cat, but sure she didn't make herself popular on purpose either.

So just because some person makes a boat load of junky characters doesn't make you instantly popular. Unless by chance one or more of your characters happen to be really good. To me it makes you look like an attention-seeking brat because no one ever pays attention to them. That's the kind of popular I don't like. They get so caught up in the fact that they made themselves popular that they think that they're the top dog and can do whatever they want. Often times having a bad attitude towards others. That's not a way to be.

I can agree with you there, as long as the characters are well thought out and not created over night, I have no problems. If Disney did that, they wouldn't be as good as they are. A character can take months to create. They often go through changes before the final product is ready. Slow and steady wins the race. But like you said, yes, it tends to be true. Taking a screenshot of Balto and using the paint bucket tool to change the color is not at all creative. Especially sparkle dogs. I'm sorry yo the those of you who like them, but I don't. Dogs are normally aren't pink, blue, green, red, purple, and all them other colors. Unless you happen to see a poodle, but even then it's not natural. You want a colorful character? Then pick an animal that happens to have all them colors.

I don't have anything against people making up their own version of Balto's family, there really isn't a way to stop anything like that. The only thing I can find annoying about it is that the characters most likely all are pictures of Balto with different colors and slightly different markings. Or worse, just a clone of Balto. Otherwise I don't see this to be a major problem.

Yes, sparkle dogs used to be against the rules, and the information had to be decent enough, and they used to have to be gone over by a mod. Now they don't. All a member has to do is send in the character and it's instantly up.

Something does need to be done, yes, but I highly doubt Steet ever will. Let me give you a visual. I'm sure everyone has been out in the country side where there is nothing but feilds. There is always bound to be a old barn slowly falling to pieces. The vegetation (being the members here) taking over the barn while the roof collapses(Being the past of this site). The whole structure becomes in-stable.

One of the people who has a lot of characters, in fact the one Mightybalto1925 mentioned, has a friend who posted on her profile after Jerseycaptain posted there, wondering why she had so many. This friend's response? "The more the merrier".

Um.. You know what annoys me here too? Than in 80% of characters in the site there is a comment like "Can I make him/her a mate?". :/

Ugh, yes, people seem to think EVERY freakn' character needs a mate. People are waaaaaaaay to obsessed with love.

Well if I was to rate my popularity based off of characters, I would give myself a 3/10, if I was to go by just being on here, I'd say it's a 2/10.

Yes cat's popular for her artwork (it's actually quite good from what I've seen), she's also a character herself Lol , but with her talent, I doubt that she would mindlessly create a character for no purpose other than said popularity.

You said it yourself, clones of Balto. Pfft I could color over Balto (rather horribly since I'm not the best digital artist) and name him Fred. I could choose to make it pink and purple because Fred swallowed a cotton candy machine and got mutated with Barney the dinosaur. And it would be accepted! Why? Because we're catering to the insignificant cries of young kids who sometimes I doubt have even watched the movie (there's a ton of different sources so don't quote me on this). And again, because we lowered the standard. A lot of times the majority happens to be wrong. Steet seems to have listened to the wrong people saying the wrong things.





And yes I feel you there, sometimes the term "lone wolf" is used to loosely. Just because a character is there doesn't mean it needs a mate! That just breeds (no pun intended) more pointless characters. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but heck this is a fansite, not a virtual date site for all your roleplaying needs. If they put some thought into it then sure go for it! JC had a competition I looked at where the entries were high quality (he had good standards so that probably helped but still).


Then there's still the problem of "what if we did revert and raise the bar?" Even though I'm sure most of the mods on staff are doing the best they can, there's no way that amount of people can go through the amount of characters that get submitted daily. Especially if they have to sort through the crappy ones.

Oh god as a character builder I haaaaaaated getting comments like that. I spend like a week building a character and you want to build a character in five minutes on a flash game as a partner to mine? Yeah no.

I remember when I made a character that was like "Blah has never been interested in love and romance and is more preoccupied with his own dreams." People STILL asked if they could make him mates (and for those who actually read his profile they asked to make him crushes, etc etc.) And they got so huffy if I said "no." Someone actually asked me why he doesn't want a mate. As someone who has never had a crush in her life and does not want to date, I find this question hilarious.

I don't get it.