as far as rick is concerned, his dolls are very good. i don't know a single person who has decent taste who dislikes his work.
and if you look at his numbers on BKP, yes, his dolls are extremely popular. most of the recent ones have votes above 80; i haven't gone back and looked at the others but that is a ton.
but i think what's happening is he's getting negative feedback sent to him directly, and that makes it feel like nobody likes his work. it doesn't matter how good your vote count number is, if you get people emailing you saying, "you work sucks because it isn't cute," then that can color your perception of how everyone else is receiving your work. i know that it's really nice when someone tells me they like one of my dolls, especially when it is a nice private note and unexpected, but it's very disappointing when someone emails me and says, "your work sucks," or "why can't you make cute dolls?" and i think part of why rick's response involves naming kimiki is that he's gotten letters that don't just say, "why can't you make cute dolls?" but "why can't you make cute dolls *like kimiki's*?" it has nothing to do with kimiki. it has to do with the fact that a lot of people use kimiki's name interchangeably with "cute."
there isn't a ton of difference between an 85% doll and a 90% doll, as far as numbers go. it's like two or three people voting. but if someone writes to you and says "i'm telling all my friends to vote no on your doll." and your doll has an 87% rating which then sinks over a couple of days to an 84% rating, the gap can seem huge, especially when someone has bothered to single you out by private email just to tell you that your work sucks and without offering constructive criticism.
and no matter how many times you shrug it off and say , "okay, that person is just stupid," there's always that feeling that if someone doesn't tell you what's wrong, well, then there's really nothing you can improve and they'll hate your work no matter what you do. & so you wind up feeling like *you're* not good enough, not like they're just bastards. when i've gotten nasty emails like that, i've written back and asked what they thought could be improved and what they didn't like, and i have never once gotten an email back.
but even the most popular artists get hate mail; maybe they do more than others. rick's dolls are a little strange, so they must stand out, and that in itself is enough to draw attention from people who are going to write nasty letters, especially from people who have been forced to conform in their own lives to the point that they look at rick's work and think, "nonconformity must be bad, therefore this is bad." there are kids who, if they were drawing the things you draw, rick, would be send to therapy twice a week and have to talk to their priest. or something. so they may just be jealous that you are allowed to express yourself and that you get a positive reaction when you do, at least in this community if not elsewhere. there are a lot of kids who would kill for that.
i love kimiki's dolls. they're not all my taste but she brings a sense of design to KiSS that most artists, even exceptional ones, ignore, and that are never carried over by her imitators. the problem, i think, is that while many people recognize that what kimiki does is good enough that they copy it, they don't really understand what part of it is good and they wind up copying the fashion, which has little to do with it.
tea
Posted on Feb 1, 2002, 8:35 PM from IP address 66.108.105.52