KEI Style VS One's Own

You know, I love KEI's artwork. He is easily a god-tier artist with amazing technical skill. Understandably, because of those factors, people want to mimic him, especially when drawing their UTAU or VOCALOID fan character.

However, often I come across individuals who want their UTAU to stand out from the rest, and to be original. These same individuals then ask for their UTAU to be drawn in KEI style. Now I ask, how can one make their UTAU original if they want it drawn in someone else's style? This is not meant to be an insult to anyone, but rather, an observation.

I firmly believe UTAU artwork should be done in the original style of the artist, not KEI style. I'd also like to point out that blurring a bunch of colors together doesn't equal KEI. Don't get me wrong, it's very fun to draw in other people's style from time to time to expand your own art technique, but one should focus more on one's own.

Or perhaps drawing in KEI style is just as much as a tradition as putting headsets on your characters? Perhaps it's as defining of an UTAU as the character itself? You guys tell me.

AGREE or DISAGREE: Drawing one's UTAU should be done in one's original style as opposed to KEI style?

Please keep this clean, this is meant to encourage discussion.

EDIT: Please keep in mind I'm not doing this to bash anyone, so please don't feel insulted or threatened.

My opinion is that you have no right to patronize people for wanting to see how their UTAU would look in a popularized art style. The style shouldn't matter at all. I wouldn't mind having my Nunny in KEI style, but that doesn't mean I'm forsaking anything or stopping my own art.

KEI-style designs look so stupid though. I want to tell people to stop ripping off something so bland, but eeehhh.

*designs characters with "streetwear that wouldn't look out of place in a UTAUloid lineup"*

Crossfrown wrote:My opinion is that you have no right to patronize people for wanting to see how their UTAU would look in a popularized art style. The style shouldn't matter at all. I wouldn't mind having my Nunny in KEI style, but that doesn't mean I'm forsaking anything or stopping my own art.

KEI-style designs look so stupid though. I want to tell people to stop ripping off something so bland, but eeehhh.

*designs characters with "streetwear that wouldn't look out of place in a UTAUloid lineup"*

It's not so much that I'm patronizing anyone, it's more that I'm encouraging people to try making their UTAU design stand out by drawing from their unique styles.

I love original style. No offense but I don't really like KEI style anyhow >>

KEI's box art stuff is bleh, but when he draws with blooming colors I'm drooling.

He's got some better solid color drawings, like with the cellphone theme characters.

To be honest, I love KEI style.
If everyone was an honest to god perfect imitation of KEI, I would say, without a doubt, "Yippee! All of this art is so nifty-rific!"

However, people can't just wake up and copy KEI. They will mostly just draw overly anime-esque characters (with concise lineart!) and blend colors. That is by no means how KEI works.

Now, that just looks pretty cheesy to me half of the time. It's nice, but... still... Trying to find your unique style is always better. However, I can say from experience that your style comes greatly from the people you look up to artistically. If you look up to KEI, then your style will mimic his whether you mean for it to or not. If a person who idolizes KEI makes free art for everyone and it looks good, people will use those pictures and they will be more common.

That's why it's hard to say "You should have a unique style!"
There's only so many ways to draw without everything looking drug induced.
But, in all honesty, I have yet to find an overseas user who actually copied KEI awesomely on multiple occasions without tracing.

suthethird wrote:To be honest, I love KEI style.
If everyone was an honest to god perfect imitation of KEI, I would say, without a doubt, "Yippee! All of this art is so nifty-rific!"

However, people can't just wake up and copy KEI. They will mostly just draw overly anime-esque characters (with concise lineart!) and blend colors. That is by no means how KEI works.

Now, that just looks pretty cheesy to me half of the time. It's nice, but... still... Trying to find your unique style is always better. However, I can say from experience that your style comes greatly from the people you look up to artistically. If you look up to KEI, then your style will mimic his whether you mean for it to or not. If a person who idolizes KEI makes free art for everyone and it looks good, people will use those pictures and they will be more common.

That's why it's hard to say "You should have a unique style!"
There's only so many ways to draw without everything looking drug induced.
But, in all honesty, I have yet to find an overseas user who actually copied KEI awesomely on multiple occasions without tracing.

While it's true every artist has their influences, it's how one applies the influences that matters. In my opinion, over time, an artist should apply their influences subtly and blend it with their own mannerisms. This way, one doesn't have what I like to call a "derived style". A good example of someone with a "derived style" would be someone with good drawing skills, but all of their drawings look very close to their source (e.g. someone good at imitating Sonic The Hedgehog style and then only drawing in that style).

Often, people will be influenced by more than just one person. These people are often the type to make a more unique blend, as they have a lot to mix and match from. So while it's okay to idolize an artist and want to be like them, it's better to use what one has picked up from them and find ways to blend it in with one's own using experimentation. Don't get me wrong, I'm a firm believer in "Art starts with imitation", but imitation can only go so far.

I have no idea how KEI does colors, but copying his B&W style is disturbingly easy.

A lot of KEI-based stuff has something sliiiightly resembling his coloring and looks nothing like his style for everything else.

Crossfrown wrote:I have no idea how KEI does colors, but copying his B&W style is disturbingly easy.

A lot of KEI-based stuff has something sliiiightly resembling his coloring and looks nothing like his style for everything else.

I believe he uses the Grisaille method for his artwork. I could be wrong, but it seems to be the universal method a lot of painted style digital artists use.

I think every person that draws should have their own style...
But practising using someone else's style would never hurt, won't it? But seriously, I think that all these people that are like "OMG -insertnamehere-, plz draw my UTAU in KEI styyyyle!!!!" can maybe think again (no offence)... Hey, most of these people are very good artists!

But, I think that KEI style is pretty special, making the character look ... "flashy". It's just like a Windows98 user who just upgraded to Windows Vista: "wow'd", right? And I think the new people more want to know the UTAUs drawn in KEI style, right?

But still, an UTAU should be good by his/her voice, and not by the design. Who agrees?


But still, I'm really not at the right place to say this kind of thing, since my own icon is an (failed) attempt at KEI style...


....srry for my bad english...

KanashiiNoNeko wrote:
But still, an UTAU should be good by his/her voice, and not by the design. Who agrees?

I agree, but having an eye-catching design is something that attracts people to the voice bank, as it helps people imagine the character singing it.

While the voice IS the most important aspect, people will generally ignore UTAU with bad character designs, even if they have great banks.

The problem is, my drawing skills are absolutely FAIL - if you look at the first concept art of Hana, which I no longer distribute, the shading and the eyes and just everything about it is horrific. And every time I draw it, I know how horrible it is and that it will never do as boxart.

So then, I decide to commission someone else to do it for me - and at this point, my conclusion is that if I'm going to have someone else do it, might as well do it in a neat way that already goes with the more popular UTAU. (I mean, even Teto, Ruko, and Mako are KEI-style!)

Especially because I'm pissed how everyone has a really nice KEI-style picture and the very moment I get into UTAU, all of the commission artists for UTAU character art suddenly decide to not take requests/quit/etc.

Aster Selene wrote:my conclusion is that if I'm going to have someone else do it, might as well do it in a neat way that already goes with the more popular UTAU. (I mean, even Teto, Ruko, and Mako are KEI-style!)

Especially because I'm pissed how everyone has a really nice KEI-style picture and the very moment I get into UTAU, all of the commission artists for UTAU character art suddenly decide to not take requests/quit/etc.

You know, it's not because it's KEI style that it's popular.
Zanda prooves the inverse. He is almost as known as a Vocaloid!

Aster Selene wrote:The problem is, my drawing skills are absolutely FAIL - if you look at the first concept art of Hana, which I no longer distribute, the shading and the eyes and just everything about it is horrific. And every time I draw it, I know how horrible it is and that it will never do as boxart.

So then, I decide to commission someone else to do it for me - and at this point, my conclusion is that if I'm going to have someone else do it, might as well do it in a neat way that already goes with the more popular UTAU. (I mean, even Teto, Ruko, and Mako are KEI-style!)

Especially because I'm pissed how everyone has a really nice KEI-style picture and the very moment I get into UTAU, all of the commission artists for UTAU character art suddenly decide to not take requests/quit/etc.

The reason it works for Teto and Ruko so well is because they're meant to be parodies of the Crypton Vocaloids to begin with.

I'm not trying to promote Hana with art, I just want to match her up with the more famous ones...

Also, while using original artwork is creative (like in the cases of Gumi, Gakupo, miki, Kiyoteru, Yuki), it attracts much less attention. If you release the boxart alone without the boxart styling, people will think it's an OC at first glance and move on, while if they see KEI-style, first thought: "Oh, it's an UTAU."

Aster Selene wrote:I'm not trying to promote Hana with art, I just want to match her up with the more famous ones...

Also, while using original artwork is creative (like in the cases of Gumi, Gakupo, miki, Kiyoteru, Yuki), it attracts much less attention. If you release the boxart alone without the boxart styling, people will think it's an OC at first glance and move on, while if they see KEI-style, first thought: "Oh, it's an UTAU."

Not necessarily. People usually add microphones to their characters which should be a dead giveaway. And even then, people normally announce that their character is an UTAU while posting the image anyway. So I don't see how it's a problem otherwise.

The point of my post was "first glance", because most people don't stop to stare at the picture to check if it's UTAU in the captions.

A lot of regular OCs are singers...

Aster Selene wrote:The point of my post was "first glance", because most people don't stop to stare at the picture to check if it's UTAU in the captions.

A lot of regular OCs are singers...

The title usually gives it away though with the
[UTAU]brackets.

Zeny wrote:
While it's true every artist has their influences, it's how one applies the influences that matters. In my opinion, over time, an artist should apply their influences subtly and blend it with their own mannerisms. This way, one doesn't have what I like to call a "derived style". A good example of someone with a "derived style" would be someone with good drawing skills, but all of their drawings look very close to their source (e.g. someone good at imitating Sonic The Hedgehog style and then only drawing in that style).

Often, people will be influenced by more than just one person. These people are often the type to make a more unique blend, as they have a lot to mix and match from. So while it's okay to idolize an artist and want to be like them, it's better to use what one has picked up from them and find ways to blend it in with one's own using experimentation. Don't get me wrong, I'm a firm believer in "Art starts with imitation", but imitation can only go so far.

You have to realize that almost half of the people using UTAU overseas are under 16. It takes a long time to get to the point you're talking to, and a lot of 14 year olds are just starting to be serious about drawing.

...in videos.

I'm talking about pictures.

suthethird wrote:

You have to realize that almost half of the people using UTAU overseas are under 16. It takes a long time to get to the point you're talking to, and a lot of 14 year olds are just starting to be serious about drawing.

Which includes me - I started drawing last year and haven't improved much.

To me, art style isn't really important... I've seen some UTAUloids with terrible artworks, but awesome voices before...

For example, LOKE had a really weird artwork AND a Groucho Marx lookalike character design for his first song, but he became popular because his voice is made of manly and win, for example; Kenji's artorks didn't start out perfect or anything, and his character design, as LupinAKAFlashTH2 himself defines, is a jacket, sleeveless shirt, khakis, shoes (and cute wolf ears, but he didn't say that), but even with that simple design, his voice was what made him get a harem (the cute wolf ears also helped XD)... Bikuta Kanne's character design is also very simple, but most of his followers like him for his velvety voice. And heck I hate to admit that, but even Anaka got a fan following, despite her character design being pretty simple, and her drawing style being a bit far from what most people tend to love.

In the meanwhile, loads and loads of UTAUloids with really awesome character designs get ignored on a daily basis because their voices might not be as pleasant to people's ears than the ones listed above (I'm still hating to admit Anaka's case, though; Mae might get cocky if she reads it XD).

So, to me, character design, art style, or even art quality aren't really important. You can pull a Miura (ZOMG GAKUPO WANNABE), make a KEI imitation, or even make a cubist artwork; what defines if you'll be liked or not won't be exclusively artwork or character design, and sometimes not exclusively voice; it depends from UTAUloid to UTAUloid. Some of them just don't click on people's heads... Which is unfortunate, but happens.

suthethird wrote:

Zeny wrote:
While it's true every artist has their influences, it's how one applies the influences that matters. In my opinion, over time, an artist should apply their influences subtly and blend it with their own mannerisms. This way, one doesn't have what I like to call a "derived style". A good example of someone with a "derived style" would be someone with good drawing skills, but all of their drawings look very close to their source (e.g. someone good at imitating Sonic The Hedgehog style and then only drawing in that style).

Often, people will be influenced by more than just one person. These people are often the type to make a more unique blend, as they have a lot to mix and match from. So while it's okay to idolize an artist and want to be like them, it's better to use what one has picked up from them and find ways to blend it in with one's own using experimentation. Don't get me wrong, I'm a firm believer in "Art starts with imitation", but imitation can only go so far.

You have to realize that almost half of the people using UTAU overseas are under 16. It takes a long time to get to the point you're talking to, and a lot of 14 year olds are just starting to be serious about drawing.

Fair enough, you got me there.

@ Aster: Yeah, and the videos are what matter the most. And even then, on DA lots of people write it's an UTAU in the title. The name gives it away often too, usually ending in "ne".

Still, though, if I found a random image through image search on the net and saw that, I'd move on.

But I have to make do what I can. Most of the artists who draw UTAU character art (understanding the concept of UTAU and what it means) use KEI-style. (Note: MOST, not all.)

Aster Selene wrote:
But I have to make do what I can. Most of the artists who draw UTAU character art (understanding the concept of UTAU and what it means) use KEI-style. (Note: MOST, not all.)

Most, which is why many get lost in a sea of similarity. Hence why I'm encouraging using original art styles.