[littl3chocobo]

there is a distinct difference between emphasizing the face area and actually giving importance to faces themselves. in your bratz comparison the faces are intentionally given near identical faces. there is no importants given to making the faces distinct from each other because you use the colours to identify the characters not the faces. they need to have a 'like' face because the one face type they share is the distinction. you are not telling one doll from another you are telling a bratz doll from a different other brand of doll and that is not unlike how it is done in reductionist art(arguably avatar art is reductionist as everything must match at least a little bit to all other parts in style and execution)

what you are arguing is a different thing from what the conversation is about. you are not looking at this as an artist but as a consumer of said art. of course since my job is drawing characters and creating characters for others to draw so i will admit i am only looking at this from the artists' side and not the consumer side

[Coda]

No, I think I'm just being misunderstood. I'm saying that because we're wired to recognize faces, that means that faces make for a good place to do creative things.

[littl3chocobo]

well that was never contested X''D the conversation was about big heads, haha

[Coda]

Well, it follows: Because faces are a good place for creativity, big faces give more room, so there's a good solid reason to have big faces on an avatar site.

[littl3chocobo]

that is conjecture X''D justbecause it /could/ doesn't mean it /is/ and the numbers don't really pan out. look at avatar sites, at artoons, at non-realistic art in general and you will see a trend(over many decades, geographical locations and cultures) that reduces facial distinction and emphasizes unique(within the context of the current space) outlines. the shorthand for that recognition in human-shaped characters is generally art as we have very strong social attachments to hair in almost every culture and it is the one pert of the body that gives the most allowances for personal representation. it is socially encouraged that we mark ourselves by what our hair does and does not say about us as individuals and so is often provided as a means of making that distinction in artistic media. in fact it is one of the selling points of avatar websites that there are lots of types of hair for the users even when there is not much of anything else and hair is a widely-chosen item for recolours and set-breaking(it is also used in adoptables and cartoons to make distinctions between same-face/body characters)

[Kitalpha Hart]

Windlyn, Kingdom of Knuffel, Flight Rising, Marapets, Voltra, Pantheon, and here

on an unrelated note the crane game doesn't work on mobile

[littl3chocobo]

oh man, i haven't heard of knuffel in forever X''D

[bluebird]

wow same.

Also idk if I replied to this thread before but Neopets will forever hold a speshul place in my heart. Their events were...madness. Plot heavy and somewhat difficult puzzles every time. And on regular days, lenny mcducking conundrum. Site even had a bank and their own stock market.

[littl3chocobo]

not to mention the strange saturated designs XD

[Coda]

Yeah, I know about the crane game... it does work if you hook up a Bluetooth keyboard. XD

[Biomecha]

Trisphee spoiled me and now I can't go back to anything that doesn't use layering, so here and Pantheon are the only ones I use at the moment. I also prefer a more proportional head, but still want to have enough room for details. Even if they aren't noticeable.

[Kitalpha Hart]

Originally Posted by littl3chocobo

oh man, i haven't heard of knuffel in forever X''D

KofK is still rather active. More active than here but that be how it is

[littl3chocobo]

to be fair it is as much a pet site as anything and those tend to go on until the staff throttle them

[Kitalpha Hart]

I don't think Firn or Starkad have plans to throttle
At least, I hope not
A shame the person running Useffel decided they weren't able to keep up and shut it down tho, and that was with several offers from others to take over

[Stabbsworth]

windlyn looks pretty interesting. i'll take a look at both that and knuffel.

i do like trisphee's avatar layering system, though, as it's *really* fucking useful.

[Burnt Rice]

Subeta did layering on avatars too. But the site itself was too much of a mess for me to continue on. It turned into a Gaia very quickly, in the sense that you pay real life money for a lot of things on there. Also a lot of their cooler pieces are created by users who only release a limited amount of said items. So really, you can be dropping hundreds on that site. And the community seemed pretty ok with that. Anyone who complained was told they can buy things using in game currency, but that was a bit hard...

Anyway, that's part one of "why I left Subeta" rant.

Really enjoyed Sapherna as well. Though that community seemed to have slowed down a bit. Adorable avatars even if you can't really layer things as you'd like.