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Description
Artist’s Description
In light of Lopoddity’s latest journal I decided to upload my humanized interpretation of the Mane 6 as well as Spike. I have SO many humanized drafts sitting around that I never uploaded. It’s been something I’ve wanted to do for a while, but also something I’ve been scared to do.
I LOVE seeing how other people interpret these characters, but usually when they’re portrayed as people of color, there are ignorant comments, questions demanding justification for why they are the color they are and sometimes just straight up racist comments. In the past I’ve only drawn the characters as white just to avoid the drama, which worked, but isn’t right. I shouldn’t have to be scared to draw the characters how I see them and how I enjoy drawing them. And if people can make all of them white without any justification, then I should be able to give them some color without justification also.
The lack of representation of colored people in the media (particularly children’s media) is sad. It’s getting much, much better, but before, it felt like it was the norm to just not have them there. Growing up only seeing white people in movies and animated films was normal and it was okay. I’d make all the characters I drew white too and that was fine. But I remember seeing Princess Tiana in the previews for Princess and the Frog and being SO excited that there was a princess who had the same skin color as me, wore their hair like me (and even had a similar name to me lol). It just felt so amazing! And because I live in Hawaii, when Moana was announced, I got to see just how excited all the Pacific Islanders who live around me were to see someone like them being the hero of a Disney movie (it was especially great to see little Hawaiian girls cheering when seeing the Moana trailer for the first time in theaters). It’s rare that you get to see black main protagonists but it’s even more rare to see Asians or Latinos or any minority for that matter. But it shouldn’t be like that. It should be normal. There are so many people of color around the world. It’s not like we don’t exist.
SO, with that, these are my Humanized Mane 6 and Spike~
Aj is Caucasian
Rainbow is Filipino
Rarity is European/Afro-Caribbean
Spike is Japanese
Twilight is Indian
Pinkie is African American
Fluttershy is Middle Eastern
These are my interpretations. Not all of you will agree with it, and that’s fine~ There are plenty other people with different interpretations that might fit your idea of what they look like. Either way, I hope you enjoy the art
In light of Lopoddity’s latest journal I decided to upload my humanized interpretation of the Mane 6 as well as Spike. I have SO many humanized drafts sitting around that I never uploaded. It’s been something I’ve wanted to do for a while, but also something I’ve been scared to do.
I LOVE seeing how other people interpret these characters, but usually when they’re portrayed as people of color, there are ignorant comments, questions demanding justification for why they are the color they are and sometimes just straight up racist comments. In the past I’ve only drawn the characters as white just to avoid the drama, which worked, but isn’t right. I shouldn’t have to be scared to draw the characters how I see them and how I enjoy drawing them. And if people can make all of them white without any justification, then I should be able to give them some color without justification also.
The lack of representation of colored people in the media (particularly children’s media) is sad. It’s getting much, much better, but before, it felt like it was the norm to just not have them there. Growing up only seeing white people in movies and animated films was normal and it was okay. I’d make all the characters I drew white too and that was fine. But I remember seeing Princess Tiana in the previews for Princess and the Frog and being SO excited that there was a princess who had the same skin color as me, wore their hair like me (and even had a similar name to me lol). It just felt so amazing! And because I live in Hawaii, when Moana was announced, I got to see just how excited all the Pacific Islanders who live around me were to see someone like them being the hero of a Disney movie (it was especially great to see little Hawaiian girls cheering when seeing the Moana trailer for the first time in theaters). It’s rare that you get to see black main protagonists but it’s even more rare to see Asians or Latinos or any minority for that matter. But it shouldn’t be like that. It should be normal. There are so many people of color around the world. It’s not like we don’t exist.
SO, with that, these are my Humanized Mane 6 and Spike~
Aj is Caucasian
Rainbow is Filipino
Rarity is European/Afro-Caribbean
Spike is Japanese
Twilight is Indian
Pinkie is African American
Fluttershy is Middle Eastern
These are my interpretations. Not all of you will agree with it, and that’s fine~ There are plenty other people with different interpretations that might fit your idea of what they look like. Either way, I hope you enjoy the art
Let me help you with that.
Can’t hold it back any more.
Imagine if Zecora was drawn white, it just doesn’t fit. Maybe it isn’t the case for everyone, but generally, different races sound different.
Not hating on the artist btw, looks drawn well enough.
Have you ever heard the usual urban dialect of an average black person?
I have, and I can tell you, as someone who got told he sounds like a white person in that same dialect alot, there’s a clear difference.
Edited
Cool, I just think they would all be white.
@Background Pony #ED4C
They all have white voice actors as far as I remember, they all sound white. Zecora sounds like she would be from Africa, it would make sense to draw her with dark skin, not the mane six. It looks weird.
Whoa, guess black people never speak Standard American English! Shit, guess I was really white all along!
…You realize this is a dumb argument, right? There’s no such thing as “sounding white.” I don’t sound “white,” I sound like me.
Does Spike “sound” like a dog?
It’s fan art, the characters are whatever the artist wants them to be.
So far, just humanized stuff from this day forward. All previously posted stuff stay. And I believe her pony stuff are in the clear.
I don’t blame her for that. However, she doesn’t hate us as a whole.
her offspring universe must be at the DNP list
Unfortunately, some people just don’t know how to express their criticism in a politer manner.
I’m just curious about the sudden art style change.
I’m mean this is drastically wayy different from her old humanizations. As if it’s somebody else’s art.
The old one looked more anime.
Well at least I hold nothing against Kilala for simply expressing her artistic freedom, which she explicitly says she believes in. Doesn’t have any problem with other people whitewashing their own art whatever. She is well within her rights to express her opinions, opinions which she stated as such.
So I don’t see the reason for all this drama. As a person who likes her older style.
She’s DNP? That was never my intention. I was actually going to drop over to the comments on >>1205252 and mention that while some of the design flaws remain, her art style has greatly improved since this picture. Apparently the comments are locked now, though, so it’s a bit late.
I wish the internet wasn’t so violently opposed to the concept of criticism. Sometimes people will have a problem with a picture you drew, it’s not the end of the world and there’s no need to put a stop to them saying it. Yeah, a lot of critics go too far or present their complaints in an unproductive way- just drop by /mlp/ for an example- but that doesn’t mean that any generally negative response is unjustified.
The old.one looked more anime-like.
Yeah, I may not always agree with certain portrayals. But, u less you count EqG, mlp has no official himanizatiins. Artists can do whatever they want. Regardless.
Nice job getting Kilala onto the DNP list… I loved her humanizations.
Apparently she’s still okay with pony art being posted on here.
If I’d just said the picture looked bad, I’m sure it would have taken under a minute for accusations of racism to start up. This way’s lengthier and requires some nitpicking, true, but at least it’s not as easy to dismiss without consideration.
Because body positivity and diversity is a bad thing. It’s not like the the show talks about love and acceptance of those across cultures/species. And I’m sure all the clop images around the internet stay very true to the show.
Some minor alterations wouldn’t have done any harm. Skin a few shades darker, adjust the height, weight, and build, add some details to the faces- you could still get the same general idea. Some of the OC pictures before this one, like >>1130084, were leaning in that direction and it looked fine, but this is far too drastic. Kilala had a good thing going and she basically threw it out to follow other people’s lead. I’ve glanced through the descriptions of her humanized pics since this change was made and they aren’t even pony related anymore, they’re just speeches about diversity and body positivity.
She’s lost focus. I don’t think there are a lot of things fanart has to do but it should at least be more about the show and characters it’s based on than about the artist’s politics, and this isn’t anymore. The lack of resemblance to the main six and the downturn in expressiveness and artistic style are both symptoms of that same cause.
Plus there’s a lot of stereotype to these images. In older pics, Rainbow Dash’s hair was around the same length as what she has in the show. Now it’s cut short because I guess tomboys have to have short hair. Applejack had softer features and the same arrangement of three small freckles she normally has, but now she’s got a big square jaw and dark blotches on her face and she’s built like a tank. I can only assume that’s to show off how tough and not-girly she is. Twilight wore dresses and shirts based on some of her pony outfits, but now she wears a sweater vest and tie to remind us she’s smart. I find it hard to believe that subtlety and diversity are so incompatible.
More like, Kilala’s style looks like Loppodity’s, and not that they’re coalescing bilaterally.
Yeah, I miss Kiki’s old art style myself, but we have to admit that it fell into a generic style itself. In the one you posted, the breasts are only slightly different sizes, and there’s a little bit of sameface going on. I agree that her new style feels very rigid, but it’s an experiment, more or less. A lot of artists who like to do diverse groups like this are often challenging themselves and are tired of doing the same body type six times over whenever they do a group picture. Maybe we’ll see a return of the kinds of expressions we see in your once she settles into the style.
Also, Loppy and Kiki are a couple. It’s kind of natural that they’d look like each other.
The reasons aren’t racial, it’s a lot simpler than that: the humanizations in the above image are better at bringing to mind the ponies they’re meant to represent. In this newer image, the racial, face structure, and body type variations are played up to such an extent that the characters themselves are difficult to recognize.
To put it bluntly, Applejack looks Superman wearing a blond wig and a Stetson, Rainbow Dash looks like the twelve-year-old male protagonist of a card game anime, and Twilight looks like Legolas after an encounter with a rogue hairstylist. I haven’t even got a comparison for Pinkie.
Tumblr’s being brought up a lot in the comments here, and I can see why- Kilala’s art style has noticeably shifted to one much more in line with the standard expectations of what diverse art on the website looks like. Even her depiction of her own OCs wasn’t this exaggerated before. The comments that this feels like a checklist aren’t unfounded, either. I’ve never seen a group of friends in reality with such even distribution of racial backgrounds and body types. You’d expect at least one of them to show up twice. The final point that makes me suspicious about the motives behind this change is the choices of which race to assign to which character. All of these have been seen before, and not uncommonly. Either Kilala’s been getting a lot of ideas from popular opinion on the communities she frequents, or she has managed through sheer coincidence to match up with them.
I really can’t say whether this was meant to pander to people, to draw the approval of an audience that demands humanized art meet a quota of racial diversity. The artist alone knows that. But it’s a drastic, mostly unprecedented change- and if I was Kilala trying to fit in with that group, this is how I’d do it. While I have multiple complaints about this change, the biggest one is that it takes the artist’s previously distinctive humanization style and makes it into something that’s far more generic and significantly less appealing. It may be trying to stand out, but this picture just fades into the crowd.
One more note: Lopoddity’s name was mentioned earlier as a possible influence. I checked the artist tag to see what her humanizations look like. Turns out they look like these ones, right down to the outfits.