So I’ve been known in the artist community for a while, going by several different names in several different subcommunities. In terms of expectations in precision, I’m not the most realistic, but I can visibly convey things well. My contributions are also communal, and the only expectations to those who want a piece of it all are that credit is given and that earnings made with the art by those with their needs fulfilled charitably give away those earnings.

Growing up, I’ve noticed a lot of people do their creative contributing in ways that one might say experimental. There was a popular cartoon that ended before my time but which I was able to watch the tail end of in the form of reruns, one called Home Movies. I’m sure several of you know it well. Most known for graphics that are very, erm, interesting. Like it looks like a first draft of Phineas and Ferb (and maybe it is). Nobody truly questioned it though. It was just there. It was looked back upon as being considered a “positive” thing. A lot of cartoons were like this (again, bringing up Phineas and Ferb here, along with Billy and Mandy, Regular Show, Chop Socky Chooks, The Simpsons, Ed Edd and Eddy, South Park, Angela Anaconda, Reboot, and Doug, all in their own ways).

Imagine, then, an independent, non-studio-affiliated hobbyist who, in a related manner, does not catch on to every factor.

Everyone suddenly goes into “roast mode” upon seeing it and hearing the context. “Leni” said an acquaintance of mine about my recent art project which is a part of a “life story” serial, “why did the person you commissioned to draw you and your same-age friends in your preteen years draw you wearing a ten gallon beret? It’s not that big, unless you’re all riding the subway from Paris, Texas.”

“But, but Home Movies–”

“But that’s Home Movies! My gal, people gotta learn. Sleep on it. Just not in the way you do there though, you’ll get knocked over by some thug.”

I get this a lot; the expectations are different in the two spheres. What, then, is a “good” deviation from normal creative precision, maybe versus a “bad” one?