Literally just sticking this here to vent ^^"

I would prefer the CW staff just tell me I suck at subeta style and how to fix my item rather than just telling him about their suspicion of it being unoriginal. At least that way I can start fixing the problem right away instead of waiting a week to hear back.

Actually the 'unoriginal' concern often comes from it being too realistic or something, can tell you how many times she's been accused of unoriginal work on her companions. It rarely means the work isn't /good/. If you need any help on identifying the problem both Bunny and I would be glad to help ^w^

yeah I've had it a few times, and poor had to suffer my stress! It wasn't because it wasn't good, but the first time because I accurately referenced (lesson learned record process when doing that) and another time cause if resizing issues. Don't panic. They normally just look into your references and process sketches. I've been cleared every time it's happened ^^'

Thanks soo much you guys :) This is the wear and this is the CI

I do have a few items onsite already but I think it's the tribute item CI's that mess me up. My other tribute item was "unoriginal" as well but that problem has been fixed ^^

Yeah the CI looks like it might (at least from the staff's pov) have been traced from a screen shot just because of the facial shape. Either way that CI won't get accepted because it's not a tangible item. You could change the human figure into a bust mannequin, but it has to bee 100% a self contained image. For example: I'm seeing a few other reasons I can imagine staff denying this item, I can give you a full critique if you'd like me to =3

Yes ^^ I'd appreciate that very much :) And what about ? Could I just trim the bottom of my CI into something like that?

Yes you could, I'll come back and give you a proper crit in a while, dinner time for me now though.

Okay ^^ Thanks so much for offering to help me :) I really appreciate it ^^

There are two main things that stand out to me, line thickness and shading. Nominally lines need to be as thick as the HA's lineart, this is... not entirely true. It's more 'around about the same thickness, or thinner, preferably varying, but not so thin it looks like it's from a different site', which is harder to follow so I can understand why that's not in the rules.

I (very quickly) drew up 'my version' of the item as an example.

Try to vary your line thicknesses, particularly towards points, inner lines should be thinner on the whole than outside lines (for example the upper side of the teeth), but be careful with this, if you do all the inside lines thin and all the outside lines thick you can get a sticker effect which you can also get denied for, and it doesn't look great either. There is some trial and error here and it gets easier with time, but as a rule of thumb: more important or closer to the viewer = a thicker line. So for example if you were drawing a skeletal eye socket the outside edge might be drawn with a thicker line, while the edges and details inside the socket would be drawn with a thinner line. This creates interest and helps break up the image making it easier for the eye to understand, and thus, more pleasing =3

Don't forget lighting has to come from the top left and shading must be hard and avoid very desaturated colours for the shading. Instead of going towards a grayer tone of the base colour, choose a bluer colour. Shadows don't just remove light, they also cause a shift along the spectrum (presuming there's nothing fancy going on with your colouring...) where natural light hits directly it's closer to the red end of the spectrum, in the shadows, closer to the blue end. I'm probably not describing that well OTL I'm still learning colour theory myself.

If you want to avoid the sharp edged shading of the HA (which is out of date, don't copy the number of shading layers on it) then you can lower the opacity of your brush and go back over the divide between the two colours and create a middle colour, this keeps the hard edges, but gives the impression of a gradient (newer items and CWs are often 'softer' like this than older items).

Try to avoid tangents, the stripes on the face join together and it appears cluttered and unstructured, try to keep the lines flowing around the shape of the skull and far enough away from each other that they don't interfere, they should have the same shading scheme as the background, presuming they're not embossed or similar.

Avoid solid black areas, they're usually denied, try a very dark desaturated blue/etc with shading.

Yellow is hard as hell to shade without it looking 'dirty', particularly bright saturated 'plastic' yellows. You may want to look at golds. Use redder yellows (and redder still for shading) and highlights to bring out a yellower look.

As you can see the 'shadows' on this are redder.

I hope that's of some use = if anything needs explaining, tell me, I've been drinking and my head might be a bit fuzzy.

Might be helpful: Colour Theory Video Colour harmony Visual Errors

This isn't the guide I was looking for... but there might be some useful stuff here too (in terms of what lines are used where, don't worry about tool choices etc...) Line Thickness

This is the one I wanted =3 Inking

Thank you so so soo much for all the help ^^ Those sites were so helpful ^^. I'm sorry I haven't been on, I don't have internet at home. I got the okay to fix my item today so if it's not too much trouble, could I show you my redone CI and wear?

Again thank you, I really can't appreciate you enough <3

No problem, glad to help ^^ Yeah go ahead, happy to take another look =3

The admins never helped me at all when I was attempting CW's. They would just keep declining it while giving no explanation as to why or offering to tell me what was wrong, even though I asked multiple times. Because of such bad experiences with the admins here, I'm not too fond of them any more. I probably won't attempt any more CW's either. =/

We're not supposed to post on boards more than three months old

Wow, that's the most retarded rule I've ever heard.

I think it's only because after three months we can guess the people who made the thread don't care for the topic anymore. It's 3 months after the last person comments no after the thread is made. You know, so the new threads can be higher up in the forums?