anonrerising | Happy Valentine's!

me when a website is consistent about what they want visually from user made content

DA

idk, as a skinmaker i think it's just. stupid. i get why walking back on it so late into the site's lifespan would be stupid but if they did it with gore rules and baby skins idk why they can't do it with shlines now

imo all it does is cause needless pains for artists and wastes more time for skinmods. just leave the shadows/lines in the psds but make them not required in case someone wants to put something directly on the dragon

ayrt

-idk why they can't do it with shlines now

because that's not what they want. i don't disagree that i wish the rule didn't exist, but at some point i think people just need to accept that it's as simple as that's not what they want on their site.

no, i don't think i will. i think it's absolutely stupid to keep around something so insanely useless and annoying to work with and i'm going to complain about it.

Agreed, the amount of times I've spent in UMA hell because of the damn shadows and lines rule is absurd, it's delayed orders by MONTHS before, not to mention it's so arbitrary most of the time where some skins you can't see the lines at all get through, while ones you can clearly see them don't.

I suppose I begrudgingly respect the fact that they stick to their guns on this one but I'm also in the boat of thinking that it's incredibly dumb.

Okay so they don't want it. But why? The downside to allowing us to ignore shlines, especially in a potentially limited capacity, is... what exactly?

Pros: more versatility means more interest in custom content means more people will make and use it, which means more money for the site from gem purchases. There'd be more resources for the FR team to work on things like adventure

Cons: ...idk, they'd be worried about the site losing its unique style if people were allowed to create custom apparel... (I highly doubt there would be a significant impact)? Worried about players trying to push limits (which they already do, they have mods for this reason)?

This is why I cannot wait for Pawborough to go public. You can draw on the entire canvas and they don't require lines/shadows at all. FR better figure something out because I will never be going back when I can finally be creative to my fullest extent instead of worrying about keeping to some stupid ~same style~ BS. People act like removing shlines would ruin everything- people will still use them but making them optional would help so much and feel less like a job where you keep getting rejected for the stupidest thing in the world.

Tbf I used to play Howrse and I thought it was dumb that they let you redraw the whole horse and scene to look entirely different. I think FR's system could use improvement but I do actually prefer it to that. I know I'm in the minority though.

Kind of veering into a very different type of game but Furvilla also had a situation where the custom avatars varying wildly from the bases was a bit... meh??? Like, more power to the people who liked completely redrawing everything but a lack of cohesion can make people lose a lot of interest in a site. PawBorough has already decided it doesn't really care so much about making people adhere to a site style (at least as far as I remember on the topic of pelts), but it is something to keep in mind. I wouldn't be surprised if FR staff are similar in opinion to that.

Speaking as another UMA artist, who loves buying and using UMAs, I agree with you and the person who mentioned Furvilla. I've completely quit or not even bothered playing games where the customizability goes so far that there's no coherent site style. I don't play Wajas anymore and I don't think they have user-made art, but they do have staffed artists with a wide range of styles and not a specific site one, which is also jarring to me when I go back to look at it from time to time.

One thing I love about FR is their commitment to style consistency. Lines and shadows, to me, are what let us get really creative, while still preserving that. I think it's pretty neat, tbh! And I love when those lines and shadows are used as a part of the UMA art. I try doing that in my own work.

I like what someone else said earlier about lines and shadows making it clearer what is site art and what is user-made art. I make that distinction in my own head, too. It makes a lot of sense to me because it allows the staff to maintain the vision for their game while also giving users the freedom to contribute :)

Anon who brought up the site art vs usermade distinction here.

I ultimately am neutral on keeping the shlines rule. I am an accent artist, but I've never had too much issue with it. I find enjoyment in figuring out ways to have fun with the shadow colors, but I also tend to make my skins morph to the dragon and don't draw over them with complete disregard for the form underneath. Not that the latter is a bad thing! Some of the most creative skins I've seen fall under that category. But I do understand why artists who do the latter are more frustrated than I am.

I've had skins rejected for shlines before but all of them got through after a single round of tweaks. I've emulated bounce lights and reflections by making some parts of the shadows darker or a different hue than others. Staff doesn't care if the shadows are rainbow hued or vary somewhat in darkness in the same area. As long as they stay visible on first glance at the 350x350 png.

This is just a long winded way of saying I do personally enjoy working with the limitations that shlines give us, and I appreciate being able to tell site art from usermade art apart. But I also wouldn't mind it if the rules got overhauled. I just personally haven't that many frustrating experiences with the way things currently are.

This is where I'm at as well. Part of the appeal of FR to me is the art, so I'd dislike it if that consistency went away.

+1
I already hate all those avatar skins where the avatar box is made to look like a human face or whatever - they are fucking creepy and literally not what I am on FR for - and they are allowed by current rules.

They creep me out more than any gore skin I hate those.

Re: Skin & Accent Rules

(Anonymous) - 2025-02-06 01:14 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Skin & Accent Rules

(Anonymous) - 2025-02-06 07:58 (UTC) - Expand

Nah, Howrse back in the wild west days before there was any real limit to how "good" the GA coats were was the best. Anyone remember that godawful brightly striped one, clearly done in Paint with a mouse?

terrible howrse gold apple coats are everything to me look at this one i drew when i was 10 https://imgur.com/a/fCNTMMe

Re: Skin & Accent Rules

(Anonymous) - 2025-02-23 05:17 (UTC) - Expand

I recognize this is a hugely unpopular opinion but I actually like that shadows and lines make it clear what is site art and what is usermade content.

+1

i am also in this boat. i feel like the shadows and lines being visible keeps everything in the same style.

what do you mean in "the same style", exactly? bc with some more egregious examples of shlines (some festival skins have pretty bad shlines fixes by mods) imo they only clash more with site apparel

ayrt

imo, without the shadows and lines, umas look like stickers on top of dragons. i feel like they "mesh" the dragon with the uma, and it's much less jarring.

NAYRT
I've always liked interpreting skins and accents as body art and I've always thought it's more interesting to see how creative people can be with the limitations. There's plenty of skins and accents that use the shadows and lines in ways to serve the art instead of being hindered by it.

tbh I agree as well to an extent that the current limitations do some work in keeping the site "style" recognizable but I also don't think that allowing us to bypass shadows and lines in some capacity would destroy that. It's not an all or nothing situation

I think that with the correct limitations, removing the shlines restriction could work without issues. Prohibiting certain liberties, such as giving the dragon a png background or replacing the entire dragon silhouette entirely with just your own drawing, would make sense. Additional restrictions such as letting you cover (for example) up to 50% of the 350x350 space with shlines-ignoring art would further prevent identity crisis and keep bolder content creators in line. Not to mention we can only put one piece of custom content on a dragon at a time anyway and I doubt that will ever change.

Sure, that kind of thing would take some work to iron out, but I highly doubt it would be any kind of moderation nightmare (at least not any more so than it already is) and would end up being worth it from a community perspective

DA

+2 I have played games that allow custom content (and I mean, everything from apparel to actual creatures) and I no longer play them because it always starts feeling like it is a 'create your own petsite' site rather than playing a true petsite.

Plus, in those sites, often anything site made was pretty much trash and the only way to make money was to be an artist that could make apparel/creatures.

The two sites I play now that have a form of custom content, I play because one, FR, has rules to try to keep the custom content in line with the developers' vision for the site, and the other, the custom content is still created by the site artist (but based upon what you tell him).

It makes the sites more cohesive and visually appealing to me to not have 50+ different art styles trying to compete with each other, AND non-artists aren't completely left out in the cold because they can't make the same amount of money artists can (FR, yeah, artists can make more money, but there are still plenty of site made items that are still worth it.)

they help me with being able to perceive the shape of the dragon inside of the silhouette. it can give me some real bad dizziness and headaches to look at skins that get far too good at obscuring the shadows and lines within the design to be unnoticeable, which sucks because a lot of those skins are ones i REALLY LIKE, but i avoid them for my own health and tend to find other skins that do what they do without the adverse effect.

i'm sure there's people who are the inverse, where the site shadows and lines inside cause them negative stimulation, too. it's lose/lose if you approach it from an accessibility standpoint, but i guess you lose less to maintain those lines and shadows as everyone has different art styles that could do worse to folks.

i'm a skinmaker and tbh i think it helps cover up some of the sloppiness in my art lol. but i'm probably in the minority for thinking that way