I'm not saying that Owen's art is bad or good (I love his backgrounds), it's just he can't draw cats. The art doesn't look lazy to me, just rushed. HarperCollins just should've hired someone who knows how to draw cats and REALLY paid attention to errors in their book. (I hope I explained everything right)
Oh my god, I’m not the only person who thinks this! He cannot draw cats for the life of him. The faces for the most part look fine but the bodies and posing… I feel with more time he could have created better work over all. Or they could’ve just hired someone who can actually draw cats.
I’ve never been a fan of the new cover designs, mainly because of the harsh lighting, incorrect colors (milk mustache Violetshine, brown tabby Sol), the bad cat selfies for The New Prophecy (I do NOT need a close up of Leafpool’s cat lips, thank you) and the samey posing (Mistystar on the cover of River leaping at the camera is a breath of fresh air) but was hoping this could be a chance for Richardson to stretch his legs. But it seems to just be more of the same. And if someone told me that Rock’s art was AI generated I’d probably believe them
I think thats the main reason I prefer the old art style. The new one feels like those "AI" generated pictures even tho they aren't. The old ones look more traditional and have a charm the new ones are lacking. I do like some of the new artworks, sometimes the style works but they do blend together due to the lack of clear personality or defining traits
yeah tbh, a lot of the art here feels like AI, Rock's especially. One I was really looking at was Brightheart and Cloudtail's. Some blades of grass curl behind others and disappear, and just the way the faces look is very off to me. Same with a lot of other portraits, their faces do NOT look right. Either the artist was too crunched for time to be able to fix how everything looked, or something more nefarious is going on.
@@theunicornsys I don’t think he’s actually using AI. I think he just isn’t good at drawing cats, point blank. It’s the same way some mangaka might have human anatomy down pat, but the majority of animal characters in manga/anime have awful anatomy. His backgrounds (if he’s the one that draws them) look good. They seem to be like stylized to be desktop screensavers, but they’re appealing. But the cats are just weirdly posed, which isn’t great because the cats are the main focus of the covers. 🧍🏾♂️ Like Squirrelflight on the cover of Darkness Within where one half of her muzzle is half the size of the other half, Among Us Nightheart on the cover of Sky, and the cover of Wind that has off center faced Splashtail and Frostpaw doing her best Yellowfang impression. And he’s obviously been trying to use references like McLoughlin did (Oakheart’s pose on this book comes from an image I’ve seen several times, I think it’s an Oriental Shorthair or an Abyssinian), but he’s either using some very simple and samey references of cats sitting or he’s not being given time to use the references he needs to.
Skystar being allowed in starclan is a crime... no offense to the Skystar fans, but he kinda messed his redemption up after DoTC in the moth flight, riverside super editions, and Shadowstar's novella. I know it was the writers fault forgetting about his redemption, but skystar seemed a bit... I dunno... two faced in my opinion?
@@snakesareamazing Yeah, he was kind of an asshole in the same sense Blackstar and Leopardstar are considered assholes, but he wasn’t villainous or malicious by any means.
@vvx777 I wouldn't even say he was an asshole in that book. I mean it has been a while since I last read it, but I remember that Clear Sky exiled Quick Water, which was completely justified. And while I don't think he should've let her join again, that was only because Thunderstar convinced him
@@snakesareamazing it’s also been quite awhile since i’ve read the book, so i’m operating off a shaky memory, but i believe you’re right that was he was cordial for the majority of the book, but i think somewhere in the latter third of the book, he started to be contentious/hostile over the quick water situation. I’d have to double check though, since i could easily be misremembering
I genuinely wouldn't be surprised if they used an AI algorithm to put this book together; between the incorrect color selections and the various errors littered throughout the book, if there WERE people in charge of it, they clearly didn't put any care into it. It's kind of sad that they didn't even write custom new bios for the characters and instead carried over random information from the 10 year old version. This is a HUGE franchise and the fact they can't even do their "Ultimate Guide" correctly is an insult to the long-standing fandom they have.
It peeves me off to no end how the Warriors team just cannot be consistent with the designs of their own characters. Seriously, what number is this for alternate Firestar colors???? They really need to make model sheets of some kind.
Something I noticed was that while a lot of cats' bios went largely unchanged from the 10th anniversary guide to the 20th anniversary guide (which made sense in most cases, as for cats like bluestar and tallstar, not a whole lot was added in the interim), a few cats who are currently still alive or died in AVOS or TBC were still left largely untouched. Cloudtail and Brightheart, Jayfeather, and Cinderheart. None of them got any updates from the 10th anniversary guide aside from some minor rewordings that don't change the meanings.
11:13 I’m pretty sure it’s laziness. If one cat had this problem than it would be an error, but since so many cats have this problem, it’s laziness. Man, I’m so glad I did not buy this.
Honestly I think his art is better for the comics rather than illustrations for the ultimate guide, I wish they had the old art style from the previous covers before they changed all of them. It had more of a "soul"
They actually used Mothwing’s new art, the one for Mothwings novella, for the website/app so I think it’s a mistake and they mixed Tree and Mothwing up.
Just checked the website and you're right. Mothwing and Tree's art has been swapped in the book. On the "How Well Do You Know Mothwing?" quiz, they're using the art that updated Ultimate Guide is calling "Tree" as Mothwing's quiz background. The cat that has the green, starry background should be Mothwing and Tree should be the more angry looking one. Great catch!
Hello lol, it’s me on another account. They changed Mothwing and Tree’s images around so Mothwing’s profile has tree and Tree has Mothwing’s profile. Like, come on, everyone knows that it’s Tree and Mothwing just swapped around..
Honestly the whole book just feels rushed. With how frequently old art is reused and flipped/traced it feels like they either tried to go a cheaper route or the artist wasn't given a reasonable enough time to create whole new pieces. Which is also probably why there's a lot of portrait shots.
I would hate to find out that the artist had been rushed/crunched during at any point during the making of this book. For all the accusations and alluding to the use of AI, I feel like it's more likely that there were strict deadlines, rather than using an AI program to illustrate some of these cats. If flipping, tracing and reusing old art is a way to mitigate a heavy workload, then that's fine by me.
Also, I'm pretty sure Mapleshade's Clan being listed as RiverClan isn't something new. It was like that before either in the last guide or on an old version of the app/website
Probably an oversight when moving the profiles to the new book. Mapleshade used to be listed with RiverClan cats; she's right behind Crookedstar in the 2013 Ultimate Guide.
Ngl i was really excited for this book, but the reused art, hidden disabilities and the pelts/apprentances being wrong imidiatly turned me away from it. Unless all that is fixed i wont be buying it at all and ill just use a pdf i found
Incase your curious I just rented the Ebook version of the guide from my library and the off colars are there so I don't think it was a printing error it was probably laziness and or some intern who was given his lunch break to get the colars dimmonds in order. And they didn't knoe anything about Warriors. Lol
My issue with the newer covers and character art is this. Does the art look NICE? Barring a few weird eye placements, yeah, it overall looks nice. However, it also looks very… generic. It's visually quite boring and flat, even with the cool lighting. It looks like the artist was instructed to “draw a cat,” and granted, they did a fine job in that regard, but they just look like normal, non-sapient domestic cats, with very little discernible emotion or personality, and the scenes are completely devoid of action. These are supposed to be fantasy novels! And most regrettably, I could not tell you which cat any of this new art is supposed to depict if you took their names off of the pictures. (I think that’s one of the reasons people sometimes say that the cover art “looks AI generated.” Where’s the HEART?) One thing I REALLY love about the warriors fandom is the fans’ ability to depict the characters in ways that make them instantly recognizable, even when everyone has their own interpretation of what they look like. Put Mothwing and Leopardstar (both cats described in the books as “dappled golden tabby she-cat with amber eyes”) next to each other, and it’s extremely clear who is who. Meanwhile, we aren’t even SURE if the people who put the ultimate guide together accidentally swapped Tree and Mothwing’s portraits on their respective pages, because the artist made them look practically identical! From a character design standpoint, that is completely unacceptable. Good character art should give you an idea of at least some of their personality traits, and the cover of a book should make you want to know more about what’s happening, or find out what relevance the art has to the story. The official art utterly fails on both of those fronts, and it’s a damn shame, because the artist is clearly skilled in drawing cats in a realistic style, and I believe they COULD have given us something great, IF they had better direction. And if not, there are SO many artists in this fandom who could have drawn much more interesting covers/portraits with their eyes closed. It would not have been hard to find an artist more suitable.
I’m pretty sure that on the characters section of the Warriors website Tree’s photo in the short-haired one and Mothwing’s is the long-haired one. I think that’s where it comes from. Maybe they’ve changed it now.
I’ve never bought WC books cuz money, but the mistakes just show how the Erins don’t care about quality anymore. I stopped reading after Last Hope because everything felt too different.
The Erins aren’t even the ones making the books now. They write what they’re given, but every decision comes from the editorial workshop group that makes the stories and decisions.
They probably didn’t do the disabilities that the cats have in the pictures possibly due to it being hard,though I do feel like they could have done brighthearts better,the others probably would have been harder due to the art style they were using.
Putting the patterns in the diamonds might work if they sized them up a bit, they're a bit small on the page so the patterns for some of tortoiseshells might not come through all the way.
I heard that there was a mistake with hawkfrost's design, apparently he's like a simesese in his appearance? Edit, I don't have the book, so iam just speculating from what iam told, I'm well aware hawkfrost isn't a color point, although I really think it's a better design for him.
From what I can tell Hawkfrost is pretty similar to has canon appearance. He’s a brown tabby with blue eyes and has a flash of white on his chest (that might extend down to his belly???).
@TheAshfurApologist from his very first appearance he's always been a tiger clone with a strong resemblance to Brambleclaw. He was never a color point
@@Shadowfate93 yes I know, what iam saying is I've heard that there is a mistake where hawkfrost is a color point instead of a tigerstar clone. I don't have the book so iam just going by what others have said. Iam just not complaining though, he never felt right as a clone and it felt forced.
I bought this just to see what characters were included 10 years later. I honestly kind of regret spending money on it, because the 2013 guide was so much better in terms of character consistency, blurbs, etc. Not hating on Owen for undoubtedly being on a time crunch and not really knowing how to draw cats/maybe not necessarily having the time to learn a framework, though.
The reason the art looks so offputting is because it's AI. It can't accurately represent the characters because the input image selection they have isn't diverse enough to do so, which is also why a lot of the images end up having weird dopplegangers. Because the AI used the same base image to form the details around. It can't accurately represent the disabilities because there are no/very few images that SHOW that disability, so the ai doesn't have a lot to work off of. The lighting is weird because the images used as input are mostly photography, but the prompts they use are made to look "epic" and the AI doesn't know how to make something look epic unless it's given enough inputs to get an idea of what that's *supposed* to look like
I understand that comparing artists work to AI is kinda bad but I always thought the art here looked heavily AI generated. I know it’s probably because the artist can’t draw cats, or was extremely rushed and had to put some slightly unfinished art in the book but goodness just hire someone who can actually draw cats please. The faces look so off-
God the new art is so ugly I'm sorry why didn't they just hire someone who could draw cats. Not only is there no personality in the new art it is also just ugly
I am quite disappointed with this book. The book felt lazy and lacking of several things. They definitely could’ve done better. Honestly I think that they just need to redo most of the book.
The new art style really looks AI-generated... The old art had its issues but it at least had a style and some charm. Even if the new depictions aren't AI, they're a serious downgrade
I don't think Skystar was a bad cat. I think he made bad decisions that were driven by fear from things he went through in life. We act like he should have been smarter/known better etc, but I think most ppl forget that most of the events of DoTC happen when Skystar is 1-2 yrs old. He's still really young, driven by irrationality and emotions and is basically at the cat age of an idiotic college aged kid. A lot of his decision with enforcing the borders to ensure his cats had a steady place to hunt for food without worry of sharing it with other cats is driven by how he watched cats starve to death - including his sister - so I don't blame him for being extremely protective over hunting rights. Yeah, abandoning Thunder was a bad move - but trying to hoist fatherhood on someone after telling them that their mate AND his other children just died and now you HAVE to take this while dude hasn't even had time to grieve was ridiculous. Should he have pulled it together and acted like a good father sooner? Maybe. But I also have to consider the fact he didn't have a father figure it seems, because we never SEE their father so I assume he likely was a victim of starvation as well at some point before Jagged Peak and Fluttering Bird were born. The fear of starving and losing cats he cared for to it again is also a huge part of what drove him to try and keep more territory than his group really needed to survive. It's an understandable fear but executed poorly. Another of Skystar's flaws, to me, was that he cared too much about the opinions of cats he had just met rather than keeping strong bonds with his family and friends who had known him all his life. This desire to be liked and seen as someone who could be relied by these strangers I think only added more pressure to him to do what he believed those cats wanted - which was strict borders, no close friendships with the other groups, and for cats from each group to stick with their own. And yes, stealing his son's girlfriend was an asshole move - but did he even know Thunder was into Star Flower? It's been awhile since I read DOTC but the way Star Flower was with Thunder always struck me as manipulative on her part while how she was with Skystar seemed more genuine. Plus her no nonsense attitude just made her seem like a better fit for Clear Sky than for Thunder. I started DOTC liking Clear Sky, went to hating him, and ended the series feeling neutral about him once I gave actual thought to what was driving him - fear. Though Micah's death WAS his fault, and I am still mad at him over it.
I'm not saying that Owen's art is bad or good (I love his backgrounds), it's just he can't draw cats. The art doesn't look lazy to me, just rushed.
HarperCollins just should've hired someone who knows how to draw cats and REALLY paid attention to errors in their book.
(I hope I explained everything right)
James AL Barry
Oh my god, I’m not the only person who thinks this! He cannot draw cats for the life of him. The faces for the most part look fine but the bodies and posing…
I feel with more time he could have created better work over all. Or they could’ve just hired someone who can actually draw cats.
For his defense
He probably IS rushed. By the team, not by his own volition.
I’ve never been a fan of the new cover designs, mainly because of the harsh lighting, incorrect colors (milk mustache Violetshine, brown tabby Sol), the bad cat selfies for The New Prophecy (I do NOT need a close up of Leafpool’s cat lips, thank you) and the samey posing (Mistystar on the cover of River leaping at the camera is a breath of fresh air) but was hoping this could be a chance for Richardson to stretch his legs. But it seems to just be more of the same.
And if someone told me that Rock’s art was AI generated I’d probably believe them
I think thats the main reason I prefer the old art style. The new one feels like those "AI" generated pictures even tho they aren't. The old ones look more traditional and have a charm the new ones are lacking. I do like some of the new artworks, sometimes the style works but they do blend together due to the lack of clear personality or defining traits
yeah tbh, a lot of the art here feels like AI, Rock's especially. One I was really looking at was Brightheart and Cloudtail's. Some blades of grass curl behind others and disappear, and just the way the faces look is very off to me. Same with a lot of other portraits, their faces do NOT look right. Either the artist was too crunched for time to be able to fix how everything looked, or something more nefarious is going on.
@@theunicornsys I don’t think he’s actually using AI. I think he just isn’t good at drawing cats, point blank. It’s the same way some mangaka might have human anatomy down pat, but the majority of animal characters in manga/anime have awful anatomy.
His backgrounds (if he’s the one that draws them) look good. They seem to be like stylized to be desktop screensavers, but they’re appealing. But the cats are just weirdly posed, which isn’t great because the cats are the main focus of the covers. 🧍🏾♂️
Like Squirrelflight on the cover of Darkness Within where one half of her muzzle is half the size of the other half, Among Us Nightheart on the cover of Sky, and the cover of Wind that has off center faced Splashtail and Frostpaw doing her best Yellowfang impression.
And he’s obviously been trying to use references like McLoughlin did (Oakheart’s pose on this book comes from an image I’ve seen several times, I think it’s an Oriental Shorthair or an Abyssinian), but he’s either using some very simple and samey references of cats sitting or he’s not being given time to use the references he needs to.
The fact they had to put "Tigerstar (Tigerclaw)" is actually really funny xD
Mwhahahaaha
Skystar being allowed in starclan is a crime... no offense to the Skystar fans, but he kinda messed his redemption up after DoTC in the moth flight, riverside super editions, and Shadowstar's novella. I know it was the writers fault forgetting about his redemption, but skystar seemed a bit... I dunno... two faced in my opinion?
I don't think Skystar was that bad in Shadowstars Novella
@@snakesareamazing
Yeah, he was kind of an asshole in the same sense Blackstar and Leopardstar are considered assholes, but he wasn’t villainous or malicious by any means.
@vvx777 I wouldn't even say he was an asshole in that book. I mean it has been a while since I last read it, but I remember that Clear Sky exiled Quick Water, which was completely justified. And while I don't think he should've let her join again, that was only because Thunderstar convinced him
@@snakesareamazing
it’s also been quite awhile since i’ve read the book, so i’m operating off a shaky memory, but i believe you’re right that was he was cordial for the majority of the book, but i think somewhere in the latter third of the book, he started to be contentious/hostile over the quick water situation.
I’d have to double check though, since i could easily be misremembering
@@DaDogSoliloquiesblackstar and Leopardstar murdered Stonefur...
I genuinely wouldn't be surprised if they used an AI algorithm to put this book together; between the incorrect color selections and the various errors littered throughout the book, if there WERE people in charge of it, they clearly didn't put any care into it. It's kind of sad that they didn't even write custom new bios for the characters and instead carried over random information from the 10 year old version. This is a HUGE franchise and the fact they can't even do their "Ultimate Guide" correctly is an insult to the long-standing fandom they have.
Yeah I was just thinking that the art could have been done using AI too since all the poses are the same.
It peeves me off to no end how the Warriors team just cannot be consistent with the designs of their own characters. Seriously, what number is this for alternate Firestar colors???? They really need to make model sheets of some kind.
Something I noticed was that while a lot of cats' bios went largely unchanged from the 10th anniversary guide to the 20th anniversary guide (which made sense in most cases, as for cats like bluestar and tallstar, not a whole lot was added in the interim), a few cats who are currently still alive or died in AVOS or TBC were still left largely untouched. Cloudtail and Brightheart, Jayfeather, and Cinderheart. None of them got any updates from the 10th anniversary guide aside from some minor rewordings that don't change the meanings.
11:13 I’m pretty sure it’s laziness. If one cat had this problem than it would be an error, but since so many cats have this problem, it’s laziness.
Man, I’m so glad I did not buy this.
i am too
I did 😭😭😭 but there are a few gems
James Al Barry should have done the artwork for this Ultimate Guide
Honestly I think his art is better for the comics rather than illustrations for the ultimate guide, I wish they had the old art style from the previous covers before they changed all of them. It had more of a "soul"
Gonna make my own ultimate guide smh
That would be kinda fun tho
LOL FOR REAL
They actually used Mothwing’s new art, the one for Mothwings novella, for the website/app so I think it’s a mistake and they mixed Tree and Mothwing up.
Just checked the website and you're right. Mothwing and Tree's art has been swapped in the book.
On the "How Well Do You Know Mothwing?" quiz, they're using the art that updated Ultimate Guide is calling "Tree" as Mothwing's quiz background. The cat that has the green, starry background should be Mothwing and Tree should be the more angry looking one.
Great catch!
Hello lol, it’s me on another account. They changed Mothwing and Tree’s images around so Mothwing’s profile has tree and Tree has Mothwing’s profile. Like, come on, everyone knows that it’s Tree and Mothwing just swapped around..
Honestly the whole book just feels rushed. With how frequently old art is reused and flipped/traced it feels like they either tried to go a cheaper route or the artist wasn't given a reasonable enough time to create whole new pieces. Which is also probably why there's a lot of portrait shots.
I would hate to find out that the artist had been rushed/crunched during at any point during the making of this book. For all the accusations and alluding to the use of AI, I feel like it's more likely that there were strict deadlines, rather than using an AI program to illustrate some of these cats.
If flipping, tracing and reusing old art is a way to mitigate a heavy workload, then that's fine by me.
Also, I'm pretty sure Mapleshade's Clan being listed as RiverClan isn't something new. It was like that before either in the last guide or on an old version of the app/website
Probably an oversight when moving the profiles to the new book. Mapleshade used to be listed with RiverClan cats; she's right behind Crookedstar in the 2013 Ultimate Guide.
I hate how messed up this guide is for the reasons stated, but the art that is actually AMAZING I appreciate, like the Rootspring section
missing your videos 💔 hoping you come back someday, your videos are very watchable!
Ngl i was really excited for this book, but the reused art, hidden disabilities and the pelts/apprentances being wrong imidiatly turned me away from it. Unless all that is fixed i wont be buying it at all and ill just use a pdf i found
Incase your curious I just rented the Ebook version of the guide from my library and the off colars are there so I don't think it was a printing error it was probably laziness and or some intern who was given his lunch break to get the colars dimmonds in order. And they didn't knoe anything about Warriors. Lol
My issue with the newer covers and character art is this. Does the art look NICE? Barring a few weird eye placements, yeah, it overall looks nice. However, it also looks very… generic. It's visually quite boring and flat, even with the cool lighting. It looks like the artist was instructed to “draw a cat,” and granted, they did a fine job in that regard, but they just look like normal, non-sapient domestic cats, with very little discernible emotion or personality, and the scenes are completely devoid of action. These are supposed to be fantasy novels! And most regrettably, I could not tell you which cat any of this new art is supposed to depict if you took their names off of the pictures. (I think that’s one of the reasons people sometimes say that the cover art “looks AI generated.” Where’s the HEART?)
One thing I REALLY love about the warriors fandom is the fans’ ability to depict the characters in ways that make them instantly recognizable, even when everyone has their own interpretation of what they look like. Put Mothwing and Leopardstar (both cats described in the books as “dappled golden tabby she-cat with amber eyes”) next to each other, and it’s extremely clear who is who. Meanwhile, we aren’t even SURE if the people who put the ultimate guide together accidentally swapped Tree and Mothwing’s portraits on their respective pages, because the artist made them look practically identical! From a character design standpoint, that is completely unacceptable.
Good character art should give you an idea of at least some of their personality traits, and the cover of a book should make you want to know more about what’s happening, or find out what relevance the art has to the story. The official art utterly fails on both of those fronts, and it’s a damn shame, because the artist is clearly skilled in drawing cats in a realistic style, and I believe they COULD have given us something great, IF they had better direction. And if not, there are SO many artists in this fandom who could have drawn much more interesting covers/portraits with their eyes closed. It would not have been hard to find an artist more suitable.
are you the rabbit that got longtail
I’m pretty sure that on the characters section of the Warriors website Tree’s photo in the short-haired one and Mothwing’s is the long-haired one. I think that’s where it comes from. Maybe they’ve changed it now.
I’ve never bought WC books cuz money, but the mistakes just show how the Erins don’t care about quality anymore. I stopped reading after Last Hope because everything felt too different.
The Erins aren’t even the ones making the books now. They write what they’re given, but every decision comes from the editorial workshop group that makes the stories and decisions.
@@Weirdanimalboy I was tryna figure out what to say for who was making the decisions. Thanks.
@@Weirdanimalboy I've heard about that. Damn, that sucks.
They probably didn’t do the disabilities that the cats have in the pictures possibly due to it being hard,though I do feel like they could have done brighthearts better,the others probably would have been harder due to the art style they were using.
How did they fuck this up so badly lol. I'll be skipping this one.
14:10 WHHHAAAT? That’s Sol? I thought that was Lionblaze?
14:13 also, isn’t that Pebble Heart? Didn’t Moth Flight discover the moonstone?
Tbh when I read littleclouds and runningnoses part I believed that they mixed up the art.
Or just put there pattern in the diamond color things. I kinda want to get even tho the colors are messed up.
Putting the patterns in the diamonds might work if they sized them up a bit, they're a bit small on the page so the patterns for some of tortoiseshells might not come through all the way.
11:27 i dont think its just a printing error because the ebook has the fucked up colors too
though maybe that doesn't count idk
where'd ya go?
I thought that was tawnypelt 😭😭 3:21
I heard that there was a mistake with hawkfrost's design, apparently he's like a simesese in his appearance? Edit, I don't have the book, so iam just speculating from what iam told, I'm well aware hawkfrost isn't a color point, although I really think it's a better design for him.
From what I can tell Hawkfrost is pretty similar to has canon appearance. He’s a brown tabby with blue eyes and has a flash of white on his chest (that might extend down to his belly???).
@@Weirdanimalboy I don't know myself, I just heard others talking about how there was a mistake where he was a color point.
@TheAshfurApologist from his very first appearance he's always been a tiger clone with a strong resemblance to Brambleclaw. He was never a color point
@@Shadowfate93 yes I know, what iam saying is I've heard that there is a mistake where hawkfrost is a color point instead of a tigerstar clone. I don't have the book so iam just going by what others have said. Iam just not complaining though, he never felt right as a clone and it felt forced.
Uh, is that true? I always thought that fanartists just thought up the idea of him being a colourpoint and made it a trend.
hope you're doing okay!
I bought this just to see what characters were included 10 years later. I honestly kind of regret spending money on it, because the 2013 guide was so much better in terms of character consistency, blurbs, etc. Not hating on Owen for undoubtedly being on a time crunch and not really knowing how to draw cats/maybe not necessarily having the time to learn a framework, though.
The reason the art looks so offputting is because it's AI.
It can't accurately represent the characters because the input image selection they have isn't diverse enough to do so, which is also why a lot of the images end up having weird dopplegangers. Because the AI used the same base image to form the details around. It can't accurately represent the disabilities because there are no/very few images that SHOW that disability, so the ai doesn't have a lot to work off of. The lighting is weird because the images used as input are mostly photography, but the prompts they use are made to look "epic" and the AI doesn't know how to make something look epic unless it's given enough inputs to get an idea of what that's *supposed* to look like
I understand that comparing artists work to AI is kinda bad but I always thought the art here looked heavily AI generated. I know it’s probably because the artist can’t draw cats, or was extremely rushed and had to put some slightly unfinished art in the book but goodness just hire someone who can actually draw cats please. The faces look so off-
God the new art is so ugly I'm sorry why didn't they just hire someone who could draw cats. Not only is there no personality in the new art it is also just ugly
Hard no for me. It’s very dangerous for the horses, one injury is life threatening and most horses have to be put down afterwards.
Warriors cats has the worst editors ever, never noticing mistakes
I am quite disappointed with this book. The book felt lazy and lacking of several things. They definitely could’ve done better. Honestly I think that they just need to redo most of the book.
BlueStar is “white”😂😭💀
Nah, she’s SnowFur now.Don’t mix it up.
The new art style really looks AI-generated... The old art had its issues but it at least had a style and some charm. Even if the new depictions aren't AI, they're a serious downgrade
The new art makes the books look so unserious to the point where some of them feel embarrassing to read in public
I don't think Skystar was a bad cat. I think he made bad decisions that were driven by fear from things he went through in life. We act like he should have been smarter/known better etc, but I think most ppl forget that most of the events of DoTC happen when Skystar is 1-2 yrs old. He's still really young, driven by irrationality and emotions and is basically at the cat age of an idiotic college aged kid. A lot of his decision with enforcing the borders to ensure his cats had a steady place to hunt for food without worry of sharing it with other cats is driven by how he watched cats starve to death - including his sister - so I don't blame him for being extremely protective over hunting rights. Yeah, abandoning Thunder was a bad move - but trying to hoist fatherhood on someone after telling them that their mate AND his other children just died and now you HAVE to take this while dude hasn't even had time to grieve was ridiculous. Should he have pulled it together and acted like a good father sooner? Maybe. But I also have to consider the fact he didn't have a father figure it seems, because we never SEE their father so I assume he likely was a victim of starvation as well at some point before Jagged Peak and Fluttering Bird were born. The fear of starving and losing cats he cared for to it again is also a huge part of what drove him to try and keep more territory than his group really needed to survive. It's an understandable fear but executed poorly.
Another of Skystar's flaws, to me, was that he cared too much about the opinions of cats he had just met rather than keeping strong bonds with his family and friends who had known him all his life. This desire to be liked and seen as someone who could be relied by these strangers I think only added more pressure to him to do what he believed those cats wanted - which was strict borders, no close friendships with the other groups, and for cats from each group to stick with their own.
And yes, stealing his son's girlfriend was an asshole move - but did he even know Thunder was into Star Flower? It's been awhile since I read DOTC but the way Star Flower was with Thunder always struck me as manipulative on her part while how she was with Skystar seemed more genuine. Plus her no nonsense attitude just made her seem like a better fit for Clear Sky than for Thunder.
I started DOTC liking Clear Sky, went to hating him, and ended the series feeling neutral about him once I gave actual thought to what was driving him - fear. Though Micah's death WAS his fault, and I am still mad at him over it.
I agree that he's not truly a bad cat for the same reasons you stated here. I also love that you compare his age to an "idiotic college kid" XD
This book absolutely has to be AI generated.