Ignore or Correct a Critic?

[Dburkhead]

The late Isaac Asimov had a good method for dealing with bad reviews/criticism:

[paraphrase]
Write a letter where you, dripping vitriole throughout, where you completely demolsh the critic's arguments while simultaneously demonstrating your own superior (compared to the critic's) command of the English language.

Read the letter over to yourself, chortling over how it castigates the critic.

Read the letter to your spousal unit, so that he/she can applaud the way you verbally crush the critic beneath the weight of your words.

Put the letter in an envelope, addressed to the critic in big bold letters.

Put a stamp on it.

Tear up the envelope with the letter inside it, put it aside and forget all about it.

[/paraphrase]

After all, by the time you've gotten to the stamp stage, you've gotten all the benefit you're going to get from it. Actually dropping it in the mail just causes more problems.

[Joel Fagin]

That's what I do.

- Joel Fagin

[TheSuburbanLetdown]

If it's useful information regardless of whether it's negative or positive, I listen to it. I've fixed tons of things that people responded to negatively and made the comic better. The useless comments are ignored, usually the mean-spirited ones that are linked from forums.

[TellTaleHeart]

"Sometimes when I feel like killing someone I do a little trick to calm myself down. I'll go over to the person's house and ring the doorbell. When the person comes to answer the door, I'm gone, but you know what I've left on the porch? A jack-o'-lantern with a knife in the side of its head with a note that says 'you'.
After that, I usually feel a lot better, and no harm done." -Jack Handey

I'd go with the Isaac Asimov method.

[Dutch!]

Duff science? I'm not au fey with the term, but to my small understanding...wouldn't the science behind just about all superhero comics fall under duff science?

[Phact0rri]

duff science relates to just how fast an orange striped cat can steal a pair of panties. *nods*

[McDuffies]

It took two pages for someone to make that joke and I'm kinda dissapointed.

[Alschroeder]

I took the corrections of the criticism off the main page, but emailed the person privately. Actually, if it were just, "I dont like it" or "I hate the art" it would have just been shrug and say, well, that's their perrogative.

What annoyed me more was that their criticisms were simply wrong, factually wrong, and addressed ---corrrectly---in several places on the site.

But anyway, I took it off the index page.----Al

[KittyKatBlack]

Personally, I follow a couple rules when having a discussion with someone I don't agree with, or who doesn't agree with me.

1. Never make it personal. Even if the person directly insulted me, there's no reason to turn around and do the same to them. Too many times in arguments, it becomes nothing but two people trying to slander each other, without getting to the actual topic. This includes calling them names, insulting their parents, their intelligence, age, gender, sexual preference, etc.

2. Never state opinion as fact. If you're going to use personal opinion to explain your reasoning, always make sure they are aware that it just your opinion and you are no way trying to make them obligated to follow your view simply because of it.

But I guess it may not work for everyone. It's just what I do.

[Christwriter]

All the criticism I ever got was constructive, in terms of online criticism. The only time that I get upset about critics is when they ask or tell me dumb things.

For example:

Art Teacher: "That's an.....okay picture."
Me: "Um.....thanks, sir?" O_o
AT: "It's not realistic though, and blah blah"
Me: "It's not meant to be. I'm just doodling for fun."
AT: "You should try and be more realistic."
Me: "But I'm not going for that style of art, sir."
AT: "But realistic is better."
Me: "Fine, whatever ."

I've always been of the mind that the one place where you CAN'T ignore criticizm on your style is art classes. Because 85% of the time the teacher has done what you're trying to do better than you for a very, very long time. Even if the teacher won't/can't teach you what you'd LIKE to know, they will teach you what you NEED to know. An artistic style usually consists of selectively breaking artistic rules; you need to know what the rules are before you can selectively break them and only them. That way, when someone says "That wouldn't be that way in real life" you can say "I know. I did that on purpose."

If nothing else, it should shut them up.

CW

[Sly Eagle]

Because 85% of the time the teacher has done what you're trying to do better than you for a very, very long time.

Or they're pretentious jerks. I took a beginning art course my freshman year, and during some of my first projects she came over to look, like art teachers do, and said "Oh, you're an illustrator." She then proceeded to give me C's for everything I did, even though I often spent 2 or 3 times as much time on them than the A for Artist students. It was pretty humiliating at class critiques, as she never spent any time on my paintings, but would rave for 45 minutes on another student's (this is during a 2-hour class). There was one painting I did of a sunset, and had rendered the clouds to look kinda like a pegasus bringing the night in its wake. Her comment was "neigh." And she moved on.

Yep. At least there was Kit, a senior who did HUGE paintings of Greek goddesses with motifs. They were gorgeous. Apparently, he was a C for illustrator student too, so we got to bitch to each other a lot.

But yeah, it sounds like your teacher's not like that...

[RPin]

Al may pretend otherwise, but everybody knows he just itches for a good ol' drama.

[Dburkhead]

Because 85% of the time the teacher has done what you're trying to do better than you for a very, very long time.

Or they're pretentious jerks. I took a beginning art course my freshman year, and during some of my first projects she came over to look, like art teachers do, and said "Oh, you're an illustrator." She then proceeded to give me C's for everything I did, even though I often spent 2 or 3 times as much time on them than the A for Artist students. It was pretty humiliating at class critiques, as she never spent any time on my paintings, but would rave for 45 minutes on another student's (this is during a 2-hour class). There was one painting I did of a sunset, and had rendered the clouds to look kinda like a pegasus bringing the night in its wake. Her comment was "neigh." And she moved on.

Yep. At least there was Kit, a senior who did HUGE paintings of Greek goddesses with motifs. They were gorgeous. Apparently, he was a C for illustrator student too, so we got to bitch to each other a lot.

But yeah, it sounds like your teacher's not like that...

Art is one of those fields where you don't get A's for studying art. You get A's for studying professors.

[McDuffies]

Personally, I follow a couple rules when having a discussion with someone I don't agree with, or who doesn't agree with me.

1. Never make it personal. Even if the person directly insulted me, there's no reason to turn around and do the same to them. Too many times in arguments, it becomes nothing but two people trying to slander each other, without getting to the actual topic. This includes calling them names, insulting their parents, their intelligence, age, gender, sexual preference, etc.

2. Never state opinion as fact. If you're going to use personal opinion to explain your reasoning, always make sure they are aware that it just your opinion and you are no way trying to make them obligated to follow your view simply because of it.

But I guess it may not work for everyone. It's just what I do.

Good ones. I like to add a third one, which is: Always make discussion public.
The chances are, person who breaks those two rules usually doesn't realise that by that he's losing his arguement. If the discussion is led through E-mails or private messages, it always turns into him repeatedly attacking me and barely reading/understanding my part. Which doesn't atcually have a point if there's no third party to see what's going on from the distance.

Or they're pretentious jerks. I took a beginning art course my freshman year, and during some of my first projects she came over to look, like art teachers do, and said "Oh, you're an illustrator." She then proceeded to give me C's for everything I did, even though I often spent 2 or 3 times as much time on them than the A for Artist students. It was pretty humiliating at class critiques, as she never spent any time on my paintings, but would rave for 45 minutes on another student's (this is during a 2-hour class). There was one painting I did of a sunset, and had rendered the clouds to look kinda like a pegasus bringing the night in its wake. Her comment was "neigh." And she moved on.

I had a teacher like that in grade school. He was usually ignoring my art, giving me B's and C's, while favourizing other kids - because my art was cartoony. Then there were those stressful cases when I'd labour over a drawing, bring it to the teacher full of enthusiasm, and get ignored.

My opinion is, you can learn a lot from teachers on a technical level, but not on an ethical level. What you can learn from them can be useful, but it's not alpha and omega. Don't let art teachers fill your head with what art is, what it should be, what is the wrong way or right way of doing art; They are majorily too conservative and behind the time to give that kind of advices. But when they talk about anathomy, lightning, drawing from live model, etc, that's the knowledge you can use.

[Dburkhead]

2. Never state opinion as fact. If you're going to use personal opinion to explain your reasoning, always make sure they are aware that it just your opinion and you are no way trying to make them obligated to follow your view simply because of it.

Corallary: Don't try to pawn off errors in fact as "opinion." Somethings really are not matters of opinion. 2+2 does not equal 5 and Pi does not equal 3 no matter how much somebody calls it their "opinion."

[Alschroeder]

Al may pretend otherwise, but everybody knows he just itches for a good ol' drama.

Ain't it the truth!---Al

[Noise Monkey]

Art is one of those fields where you don't get A's for studying art. You get A's for studying professors.

My advisor hated my style of art up until my senior show. It was the BS that I put in my Artist's Statement that won him over.

[KittyKatBlack]

2. Never state opinion as fact. If you're going to use personal opinion to explain your reasoning, always make sure they are aware that it just your opinion and you are no way trying to make them obligated to follow your view simply because of it.

Corallary: Don't try to pawn off errors in fact as "opinion." Somethings really are not matters of opinion. 2+2 does not equal 5 and Pi does not equal 3 no matter how much somebody calls it their "opinion."

This is true. I didn't really mean to say that using opinion is a way to say, "Well I'm right, because it's my opinion." Things that are obviously wrong and have been proven wrong either mathmaticly, scientificly, or physicly are simply wrong, no matter how much you want to believe otherwise. The sky is not green. The grass is not blue. You can't have that as an opinion unless you re colorblind, in which case you wouldn't be able to tell anyway, so it would be nothing more than a guess. So yeah, I'm not saying using 'opinion' is an easy out of a discussion. It's just that if you say something, for example like, 'I don't like the color red." and they go, 'What's wrong with red? Is everything that's red bad or something? I like red, are you saying I suck?" because then they're just blowing it out of proportion. Simply inform them that YOU don't like red, but you don't have a problem with other people liking it. It sounds silly, but I've had people turn things like this on me repeatedly because they misunderstood what I was trying to say.

[Dburkhead]

2. Never state opinion as fact. If you're going to use personal opinion to explain your reasoning, always make sure they are aware that it just your opinion and you are no way trying to make them obligated to follow your view simply because of it.

Corallary: Don't try to pawn off errors in fact as "opinion." Somethings really are not matters of opinion. 2+2 does not equal 5 and Pi does not equal 3 no matter how much somebody calls it their "opinion."

This is true. I didn't really mean to say that using opinion is a way to say, "Well I'm right, because it's my opinion." Things that are obviously wrong and have been proven wrong either mathmaticly, scientificly, or physicly are simply wrong, no matter how much you want to believe otherwise. The sky is not green. The grass is not blue. You can't have that as an opinion unless you re colorblind, in which case you wouldn't be able to tell anyway, so it would be nothing more than a guess. So yeah, I'm not saying using 'opinion' is an easy out of a discussion. It's just that if you say something, for example like, 'I don't like the color red." and they go, 'What's wrong with red? Is everything that's red bad or something? I like red, are you saying I suck?" because then they're just blowing it out of proportion. Simply inform them that YOU don't like red, but you don't have a problem with other people liking it. It sounds silly, but I've had people turn things like this on me repeatedly because they misunderstood what I was trying to say.

I didn't really mean to say that you were implying that. Just pointing it out because I've encountered it so much.

[KittyKatBlack]

Oh. I know. I appreciated the clarification. I wasn't trying to make it sound like I was mad you corrected me. ^_^ Sorry about that.