Should older pet lineart be updated?

[ACat]

Disclaimer: This thread is not intended to be hateful in any way, please be respectful of staff, artists, and other players!

The Easter event brought up an interesting discussion over a specific released litter. These rats:



Many spoke about how they preferred the tweaks made to the line art of them, like bigger eyes, ears, and more fluff, even going so far as saying it should be the new default rat line art. However there were also those that preferred the nostalgic OG line art of these little rodents.

The website has been around for many years now and the majority of pets have kept the same default line art throughout, with it being more heavily tweaked for event litters, stores, etc. It would be impossible to change the line art of every single existing pet, this is more for the future releases.

So I ask you this:
- Do you think there are species that'd benefit from a permanent line art alteration? Which?
- Should this be something to be considered going forward?
- What are some custom line arts you like?

[Darkcloud!]

Personally I understand that users would like the rats to be cuter, but I think it's more the same issue with horses etc: people just don't like them as much as a standard cat/dog, and they tend to get the short end of design stick with less times that the lines are played creatively with/given accessories etc. I also think people just prefer fluffy rats over the smooth ones. ( :( )

I think the current line arts are good, I would love to see the "hated two" (rats and horses/ponies) get more litters that play around with them as much as dogs and cats are- it doesn't even need to be big or splashy to make a difference. I barely found any rats with "accessories" in the monthly litters (not counting fins/changed tail shape as accessories- the bell on the pony below is what i looked for, as an example)

Some of the ones that have been released in the past that are good examples:
Christmas, 2020


January, 2017


Feburary, 2019 and November, 2009

[webheadXD]

even though there are many people who hate rats & horses, there’s probably just as many people who love them & are dedicated to collecting them! its just a personal preference thing, probably the same reason dog fursonas are more common than horse or rat fursonas, it’s hard to beat the popularity of cats & dogs

i dont think there should be any changes made to the defaults, since that’d just be trying to make something appealing to people who dont want them in the first place. the people who love rats love them BECAUSE they’re strange looking & not as cute, that’s sort a big part of rat symbology! they’re weird creatures that live in sewers and get up to mischief. Making them look like anything less will likely make rat fans sad, & even if people SAY they like those rats more, they might just go back to only paying attention to other species anyways lolz

[madeth]

i dont think there should be any changes made to the defaults, since that’d just be trying to make something appealing to people who dont want them in the first place. the people who love rats love them BECAUSE they’re strange looking & not as cute, that’s sort a big part of rat symbology! they’re weird creatures that live in sewers and get up to mischief. Making them look like anything less will likely make rat fans sad, & even if people SAY they like those rats more, they might just go back to only paying attention to other species anyways lolz

thank you for saying this! as a user who loves the normal rat lines and who is trying to collect all the rats, i love them because they look so dorky and silly. i don't hate the redone linework or anything, in fact i think they're pretty cute, but some of us prefer the original lines. if the dorky rats we know were changed, it would honestly hurt a lot of us rat lovers and collectors. sure, maybe people who don't like rats might collect more rats but.. isn't that up to user preference if they collect something or not? i don't go out of my way for certain pet species, i don't expect changes to be made so i would like them more. not everything is for everyone and by trying to make things more appealing to everyone, it actually ends up alienating those who originally liked them.
as a side note, i love when artists switch up the rat linearts, so i mean no criticism towards the artists who have done so on occasion. the fuzziness, better snout, big eyes, etc are adorable. however i don't want it to be the norm, and having it be the norm would take away how special those linearts really are compared to the normal rats.

[bulrush]

not really answering a question but providing one but what's the reason horses and ponies aren't super well liked? im actually kind of shocked considering the horse girl phenomenon and multiple pet sites dedicated solely to horses that exist, is it a problem with the lineart itself or are the people drawn to this website simply not horse fans? i heard the original lines were traced so is that part of it?

personally i don't have a problem with any of the species on the site, there's no degree of consistency among pets due to the large amount of staff so a janky looking lineart isn't going to bother me. i do think that even super light edits done to the rat lineart make them look genuinely better but if people are fans of the original there's not much of a point in changing it too drastically. a few lineart edits in a year is probably enough to satisfy everyone, keeps things fresh but you could say that about any type of pet *shrugs*

[Darkcloud!]

not really answering a question but providing one but what's the reason horses and ponies aren't super well liked? im actually kind of shocked considering the horse girl phenomenon and multiple pet sites dedicated solely to horses that exist, is it a problem with the lineart itself or are the people drawn to this website simply not horse fans? i heard the original lines were traced so is that part of it?

A big draw of the site was the cats/dogs- the main mascot is a dog, Warrior Cats was a thing. Most people into horses are on sites like Horse Eden Eventing. A main complaint I have seen is that the horses/ponies don't look as friendly/happy, or that the eyes look "dead". Pretty much any complaint about the rats is applied to the horses, and somewhere along the line, the trading community decided to treat horses and rats as second-hand fodder. The lines being traced didn't affect their popularity, but it was a big "scandal" at the time.

While it's pretty disappointing to see that kind of negativity about a species, it just means those of us who like them don't have to shell out the same big bucks that those dog/cat people do :LOL:

[illyria]

I don't think so! I myself am not fond of some of the lineart for the most popular pets, like dogs, actually... but not only is the dog lineart so iconic I don't think it should go, necessarily, I think the same applies for most of the lineart on this site. It has a certain nostalgia and charm for me that reminds me of the type of art and adoptable sites that were popular around when chicken smoothie launched, and many aren't around anymore. Maybe it's a bit of a shallow answer but keeping the old spirit alive is a big appeal to me.

Also, I think lineart "edits" are a nice middle ground here.... see the pets below! it breathes new life into old designs and lineart without it changing so much, or having to go back and recolor 15+ years of pets on this website.

[beautifulglitter]

not really answering a question but providing one but what's the reason horses and ponies aren't super well liked? im actually kind of shocked considering the horse girl phenomenon and multiple pet sites dedicated solely to horses that exist, is it a problem with the lineart itself or are the people drawn to this website simply not horse fans? i heard the original lines were traced so is that part of it?

I know someone else said it earlier, but I really think it's a combo of the face (eyes being a big one) and the pose for the horse in particular being so stiff, despite it clearly meaning to be a motion shot. For the best example of what I mean, compare a regular horse to the 2015 store pet edit:

Obviously the store pet has wings and a horn, but I imagine that even without those, that base pose would be much more popular. Regular horses just look dead and stiff so much of the time (which ironically is almost the exact opposite of their irl appeal). Ponies mainly suffer from the head+eyes problem imo, I've always felt their pose overall was fine. They just generally don't mesh into the same feel as the art for other species, which has a more “cartoon-y” vibe.
Sidenote: after thinking about it, one weird side effect of my feelings about the horse pose mean that all my favorite horse designs are ones that turn the horse into inanimate objects (ice, carousel, statues, etc).

Rat's default lineart is fine imo; it fits with the style of the site. I do love the edits though, and wouldn't mind seeing them more regular cycled in just like all the variations of dog lineart we get. I think the dislike of rats is more powered by external feelings about irl rats. They have to fight against that + smaller canvas + old demand scheme ingrained in the site culture. I think if the edited lines were used rats might see a slight boost in interest temporarily, but I don't think it would have deep or longterm effects.