I’ll start here since I consider myself the biggest offender of this currently. disagree if you want to
I’ve tried customing before. I’m sure if you’ve lurked around in the discord enough you’ve seen the small faces and general disarray.
I’ve done my best to learn how to make custom sprites, but it’s just hard. Nothing looks or feels right, and I try to make it better and it doesn’t do that. It’s easier for me to just splice some crap together (and it looks better too) than if I were to spend hours on a custom that eventually ends up in my trash bin because it’s unsalvageable.
Now you might be thinking: “why not use the mugging blitz stuff you dumb nerd.” Well believe me, I have used, edited, and recolored mugging blitz portraits a lot. But eventually, you run out of F2U stuff. If everybody is using the same things, then everybody’s projects look the same anyways.
And also, when you need something not readily available. There were no Effie mugs out there. So I spliced a good enough one. Now I’m sure people would argue and say “it doesn’t look anything like her sksksksk” But I’d rather spend half an hour on a good enough splice then spend hours and hours on a bad custom.
You can’t develop a proper understanding of anti-aliasing because so much of it is done for it, and as many know, I believe anti-aliasing is the most important fundamental in GBA portraiting.
This is a fair point. However, looking at splices is actually, in my opinion, a good learning tool. You can’t learn to do something without seeing how the original goes together. I’ve learned a lot a about anti-aliasing from just splicing.
I know I’m not the best example of persevering through learning something, but I put in hours on customs over the summer that ended up as just… bad.
And below, you can see a non splice vs. a splice of mine. With the non-splice, it was just wrong. So people suggested I splice on an existing face, so I did. And no matter what I tried, it just gets worse.
People said “why don’t you just use the F2U corrin” and while that’s fair to say, people want their projects to look nice and unique. If every project had, for example, the same exact Ike mug, nobody would find that cool anymore, even if it was a custom.
Splicing, to me, is a way to try to set apart a project from others that just use F2U assets. Does it look great always? No. That’s bound to happen. But can everybody just jump in and create these amazing customs? Fuck no. The best spriters here either have years of experience, are just artistically gifted, or both.
Splices shouldn’t be looked down on just because they’re not as good as customs. If I customed every sprite I ever made, sure I may have improved by now, or I’d just have spent hours on the garbage mugs people make fun of when the creator’s not around. Why show off your absolute garbage to the world when you can just splice and people will hate it anyways?
Splicing isn’t bad and shouldn’t be looked down on. Just because the most elite spriters don’t think it’s cool doesn’t mean it’s bad. It’s like when buildfile users shittalk Builder users. Builder is easier than buildfiles, and splicing is easier than customs. Some people just can’t do art like that, but still don’t want to use the same F2U stuff as meganerd420 or whatever.
TL;DR: go read my fucking post lol
