Who made fun of the kid?

vampireapologist:

Any time you see a meme of some “bad” artwork, or a piece of “cringy fandom art with thousands of notes (that’s actually just an innocent drawing), some “poorly-drawn” sparkledog or fursona, it’s very likely it’s a kid’s drawing. And those kids WILL see it.

I especially see a lot of reposted artwork of sonic ocs and fursonas on tumblr just for people to laugh at, and when I trace the artwork back to dA, it was made by some 12 year old.

On a smaller scale: when I was a kid, I worked for hours and hours to animate some cute dogs, one with hovering with a little pair of wings, another to look like it was taking a nap and breathing serenely, but when I posted it, the site sped it up or something. I put it on deviantart, and someone older said it looked like something was trying to burst out of the dog, and everyone started making fun of it and laughing. I was 9. I went to my neopets pages and deviantart and deleted all of my animations and gifs in case any of the others were actually “bad” without me noticing.

I didn’t try animating again for a long, long time. And I didn’t post anything new to deviantart for years. Most importantly, I didn’t improve much during that time.

Later, when I made friends with supportive artists, I got better in a few weeks than I had in over a year.

The approval or disapproval from older artists will literally make or break younger artists and their careers. Their futures are literally in our hands. We need to be gentle with them.