EFFORTPOST [EFFORTPOST] Attack on Tooka: What makes a marsey?

Recently, the world of Marsey Artistry has been in flames as @tooka has been accused of making lazy edits of pre-existing art for clout. Is tooka a talentless hack? Or are the critics just a bunch of stick-in-the-muds?

This picture is one of the first pieces of tooka art I saw. You may notice that this is a trace over pre-existing drawing of Apu (aka, helper pepe). The face comes from this Apu:

You might have been tricked into thinking he traced over this apu, but you'd be mistaken: pay attention to the dimension of the hat, his eyes, his mouth, etc

If we compare tooka's image and the source image, you'll see that tooka actually added quite a bit to the original illustration. He completely changed apu's clothes, added a wide brimmed hat with ears poking out of it, added a little hand keeping the hat from blowing away. In fact, if we zoom and enhance, you'll see that his "trace" isn't strictly a trace. Compare the left side of tooka's apu's eye with the source drawing's left eye, and you'll see that tooka actually improved on the source material (it isn't a sharp angle anymore, but a rounded, more natural looking curve).

"BUT IT'S NOT MARSEY, IT'S STILL JUST A RECOLORED APU!"

okay, but at what point does an illustration of one character morph into an illustration of another character? For reference, let's compare to the marseyest marsey possible, one of the originals drawn by the original artist

If we compare marseylaugh and tooka's character's *character attributes*, we'll see a few things in common:

• Orange ears
• An orange pattern that wraps around the top of marsey's head (obscured by the hat in tooka's drawing, but still visible)
• White face and body (obviously, in tooka's drawing, his character is wearing clothes, but we can see that his face is white and his hands are white)

The only difference in attribute between tooka's character and the original marsey is that the original marsey has a tail, while tooka's drawing does not feature a tail. You could argue we are only seeing the top half of the character in tooka's illustration, but actually tooka provided us with a full body.

It is possible that due to the way the character is standing, we simply don't see it's tail (ie, the tail is behind him). This leads into the real differences between tooka's illustration and the original marsey: Pose and Style. With respect to pose, almost all classic marseys are sitting, legs sprawled, with their face toward the reader, whereas tooka's is standing and awkwardly looking to the side. However, marseys standing up is nothing new:

#23 in the marsey leaderboard is marseysoypoint

#68 - marseymini

The biggest distinction, then, is Style. In almost all marseys, marsey's eyes are black on the inside with white highlights, and are variations on a circle (oval, oval with a chunk out of them, etc).

However, in tooka's illustration, marsey's eyes are massive and misshapen, and feature the whites of the character's eyes, something not usually seen. So, can we """improve""" tookas illustration by removing the whites of the eyes? After all, the irises are black circles with highlights, exactly like marsey's full eye. I tried my (not artistically trained) hand...

despite the fact that I am not an artist, it looks a lot more like a normal marsey. Specifically, marseysmug

is it better? no, I don't think so, because the original was cute, and I think that's the most important attribute of a marsey. Would marsey have been such a smash hit if she had been ugly? no!

(Also, the original marseys were drawn in a more digital art style, with thick, simple shapes, whereas tooka draws in a more pencil-ish style, but I don't think that's super important.)

I'm not saying that the critics don't have a point with some of tooka's work. This one

is a lazier trace of this pepe

But who doesn't shitpost from time to time? Sometimes you don't want to put a ton of work into a post.

What do you think, audience?