I never thought I’d be saying this about someone who does art but after following the Rory saga from the very beginning on tumblr, reading this entire thread after I found it and now after looking at her website…Rory should become a furry artist.
The only thing she has any sort of skill left at doing is animalistic characters. Literally every human character she’s ever designed is hideous.
She clearly understands shape and what makes a character design good, and albeit it is easier to give animals unique shapes (how much can you change a human before it looks uncanny, whereas an animal it can look way different and still be normal to the average viewer?) it's weird how it doesn't translate over to her humans.
These designs have no actual dimension to them - they look like every other thing you'd seen in Rebecca Sugar's sketchbook or in a Cartoon Network show that never got past the pilot. They're so unbelievably one dimensional for no good reason - whereas the weird proportions work so well for the gorilla drawing! It's uninspired but I could absolutely see this as a character in a kids show or something - what can you really say about all 10 of the other humans?
She clearly understands shape and what makes a character design good, and albeit it is easier to give animals unique shapes (how much can you change a human before it looks uncanny, whereas an animal it can look way different and still be normal to the average viewer?) it's weird how it doesn't translate over to her humans.
These designs have no actual dimension to them - they look like every other thing you'd seen in Rebecca Sugar's sketchbook or in a Cartoon Network show that never got past the pilot. They're so unbelievably one dimensional for no good reason - whereas the weird proportions work so well for the gorilla drawing! It's uninspired but I could absolutely see this as a character in a kids show or something - what can you really say about all 10 of the other humans?
It helps that, from what I’ve seen, Rory draws a lot of alligators, bird people and similar things even when it’s not for assignment. There’s no fetish elements involved, she obviously just gets genuine enjoyment out of it and it shows in the quality of her work with her animal characters.
You made an excellent point about the proportions too. What makes her art so jarring and unpleasant on human characters actually works really well on animals, yet she just can’t help herself. Gotta get Strawberry’s Dorito body in there.
The animal art vs the human art feel like they were drawn by 2 different artists! I wouldn't mind seeing a Zootopia-like 2D cartoon if her designs were done like the alligator.
I wonder if she just keeps making these horrifying humanoids because she specifically doesn't want to stick to anthro? Ever since her rorpie days she was drawing humans and posting those for the most part compared to what you see in her college app portfolio. If you told me in 2013 that she'd actually be good at designing animal characters in 2021 I'd have been very confused. I don't think she'd be able to direct her own work though based on her senior thesis animation, but under a competent director with people taking care of everything else she could be involved in some pretty great anthro-art projects down the line.
This one really does appear to have been drawn by two different people. The car, an evocation of a BMW 507 with a few invented details, is really good. It's all in proportion, the light and shade really brings out the curves in the bodywork and the shine on the paint, the wheels are superb. Look at the way the camber reverses because they are off the ground! There's a sense of motion, of action; it's great.
The figure, on the other hand, is rather crude. Her dress and feather boa are simplistic and lifeless, her face is flat and her hair is an afterthought. She adds nothing to the picture.
Perhaps the artist needs to accept that her affinity is for objects rather than people and focus her efforts that way. There's plenty of demand for 'car caricature' style cartoons and lots of them aren't as good as this.
There are so many things in art she is actually legitimately extremely good at, and yet she focuses on the one thing she’s absolute ass at. What a waste.
Her use in color is definitely good, he/she?? knows how to use them, but god those proportions, it's like they went to art school and all they were showing students was wannabe rebecca sugar shit, can we juts keep making fun of the average tumblr style in general? Even if it "may" look good sometimes?
Not to continue to necro a dead thread, but with this fresh post I'll chime in; I read through the whole thread finally a while back and I gotta admit, vanishing into obscurity is an end I didn't predict. It's the sensible path to choose, but with Rory's ego I'd never have guessed. Wonder how that career in animation worked out. Interesting that their classmates didn't like them, online personas are often just personas but I suppose they had two different unpleasant sides. Wonder if they'll ever resurface under a new name with an improved artstyle, or a new name, same awful style, or neither.
There's a couple of things pointing to Rory likely never having picked herself back up and launching a career in animation under any of the positions that she had an eye on, under her legal name or otherwise. For one thing, her LinkedIn has been updated a bit since last posted here in 2019. LinkedIn didn't release their #OpenToWork profile photo frame until late June of 2020, which means that she didn't secure an internship or full-time work her senior year and went back to LinkedIn over the summer after graduation in a desperate bid to apply to any open positions, which were few and far between even for those students who weren't social pariahs during a state of national emergency.
There is no About, any work or volunteer experiences, projects, honors, awards, commendations - all that's listed is her Cal Arts education from 2016-2020, some skills, and 14 companies that she's interested in (places like Netflix, Disney, DreamWorks, etc.), a very apt metaphor for her hubristic expectation that Cal Arts alone would rocket her into a highly coveted position post-graduation.
And yet, she still had the presence of mind to scrub her old portfolio website and host the new one under the name "Rory R.", which has yet to be updated. Even on the new website where she's attempting to rebrand herself, her contact information still has her full real name attached to her alumnus email. She's not going to be able to outrun her past, and she knows that - that's why she was still making a weak attempt to break into the industry under her full name, and why she hasn't tried to start from scratch in any meaningful way.
The sphere of professional animation is tightly knit and extremely tribalistic, they know who she is. She's not just a future PR risk, she's burned a lot of bridges. In an industry where people will try to get you fired over a few tweets about cannibalism and where the majority of jobs come from referrals, she's completely fucked herself over before her career could even begin in earnest.
People don't like to talk about it, but the truth is that out of every crop of illustration and animation students, only a select few actually make it to an industry job, and those that do are probably not working in a field as glamorous or as highly competitive as the ones she has listed (character design, visual development, and storyboarding are easily the most difficult fields to get into). A massive amount of students drop out of the program in their freshman and sophomore years to work at a Starbucks and complain about the school on Twitter, and more go on to graduate to do the same thing. Sometimes the 'successful' ones are the ones who draw furry porn and beg for other people to pay their rent or vet bills online.
My guess is that part of why Rory hasn't resurfaced is because she's humiliated that she didn't actually have the talent or the hustle to rise above her past and rub elbows with Rebecca Sugar and become an up-and-coming character animator on yet another show that would join the echelons of The Amazing World of Star and the Forces of Gravity Falls Universe. Even without the metaphorical murder of her online reputation, I somehow have doubts that she would have 'made it'. A lot of studios see these objectively talented kids come to them with huge egos that can barely get through ordering a pizza without having a breakdown, and I can tell you that talent alone doesn't translate to a career.
There's a couple of things pointing to Rory likely never having picked herself back up and launching a career in animation under any of the positions that she had an eye on, under her legal name or otherwise. For one thing, her LinkedIn has been updated a bit since last posted here in 2019. LinkedIn didn't release their #OpenToWork profile photo frame until late June of 2020, which means that she didn't secure an internship or full-time work her senior year and went back to LinkedIn over the summer after graduation in a desperate bid to apply to any open positions, which were few and far between even for those students who weren't social pariahs during a state of national emergency.
There is no About, any work or volunteer experiences, projects, honors, awards, commendations - all that's listed is her Cal Arts education from 2016-2020, some skills, and 14 companies that she's interested in (places like Netflix, Disney, DreamWorks, etc.), a very apt metaphor for her hubristic expectation that Cal Arts alone would rocket her into a highly coveted position post-graduation.
And yet, she still had the presence of mind to scrub her old portfolio website and host the new one under the name "Rory R.", which has yet to be updated. Even on the new website where she's attempting to rebrand herself, her contact information still has her full real name attached to her alumnus email. She's not going to be able to outrun her past, and she knows that - that's why she was still making a weak attempt to break into the industry under her full name, and why she hasn't tried to start from scratch in any meaningful way.
The sphere of professional animation is tightly knit and extremely tribalistic, they know who she is. She's not just a future PR risk, she's burned a lot of bridges. In an industry where people will try to get you fired over a few tweets about cannibalism and where the majority of jobs come from referrals, she's completely fucked herself over before her career could even begin in earnest.
People don't like to talk about it, but the truth is that out of every crop of illustration and animation students, only a select few actually make it to an industry job, and those that do are probably not working in a field as glamorous or as highly competitive as the ones she has listed (character design, visual development, and storyboarding are easily the most difficult fields to get into). A massive amount of students drop out of the program in their freshman and sophomore years to work at a Starbucks and complain about the school on Twitter, and more go on to graduate to do the same thing. Sometimes the 'successful' ones are the ones who draw furry porn and beg for other people to pay their rent or vet bills online.
My guess is that part of why Rory hasn't resurfaced is because she's humiliated that she didn't actually have the talent or the hustle to rise above her past and rub elbows with Rebecca Sugar and become an up-and-coming character animator on yet another show that would join the echelons of The Amazing World of Star and the Forces of Gravity Falls Universe. Even without the metaphorical murder of her online reputation, I somehow have doubts that she would have 'made it'. A lot of studios see these objectively talented kids come to them with huge egos that can barely get through ordering a pizza without having a breakdown, and I can tell you that talent alone doesn't translate to a career.
If Rory listed their name on their portfolio as Rory R, I think it's possible they've begun to go by another name and the reason you aren't finding them is because of that. Some people just abandon websites and social media and if you get a job, you might not update a LinkedIn because you aren't searching anymore.
Or there could be a more recent one under a different name.
If their college email is the most professional one they have, they might not change it from their portfolio website despite changing names.
I think they're still out there somewhere, posting quietly. I want to believe.
And yet, she still had the presence of mind to scrub her old portfolio website and host the new one under the name "Rory R.", which has yet to be updated. Even on the new website where she's attempting to rebrand herself, her contact information still has her full real name attached to her alumnus email. She's not going to be able to outrun her past, and she knows that - that's why she was still making a weak attempt to break into the industry under her full name, and why she hasn't tried to start from scratch in any meaningful way.
I decided to have a look around the new portfolio and when you click on Story and Reel/Films it seems to be locked. Not really a great sign as when clients and companies are looking at your portfolio there's only so much time they have that having locked pages would turn them away as they don't want to waste time having to ask what your password is.
And some sort of new art we haven't seen before. Only sharing one example because I couldn't be arsed doing it all. I'm not the greatest artist out there but I feel like what Rory has is problems when it comes to the shapes of characters and especially their faces, they feel flat? Odd? Inconsistent? I can't really tell but there's just something.
I decided to have a look around the new portfolio and when you click on Story and Reel/Films it seems to be locked. Not really a great sign as when clients and companies are looking at your portfolio there's only so much time they have that having locked pages would turn them away as they don't want to waste time having to ask what your password is. View attachment 2874199
And some sort of new art we haven't seen before. Only sharing one example because I couldn't be arsed doing it all. I'm not the greatest artist out there but I feel like what Rory has is problems when it comes to the shapes of characters and especially their faces, they feel flat? Odd? Inconsistent? I can't really tell but there's just something. View attachment 2874202
It's the color choices and almost corporate style they all share. They're either all cool and desaturated, or all saturated. Nothing really "pops" or stands out as remarkable.
I decided to have a look around the new portfolio and when you click on Story and Reel/Films it seems to be locked. Not really a great sign as when clients and companies are looking at your portfolio there's only so much time they have that having locked pages would turn them away as they don't want to waste time having to ask what your password is. View attachment 2874199
And some sort of new art we haven't seen before. Only sharing one example because I couldn't be arsed doing it all. I'm not the greatest artist out there but I feel like what Rory has is problems when it comes to the shapes of characters and especially their faces, they feel flat? Odd? Inconsistent? I can't really tell but there's just something. View attachment 2874202
I can't believe I'm saying this, but at least they aren't monstrous transphobic caricatures. So there's been some improvement, however moderate. No enormous knockers, waists the size of an ankle, or dick-sucking blobfish lips here!
Why does Rory consistently draw women with No Hips? They usually have a heavily exaggerated rectangular or inverted triangle body shape. NGL it looks really ugly.
Why does Rory consistently draw women with No Hips? They usually have a heavily exaggerated rectangular or inverted triangle body shape. NGL it looks really ugly.
Why does Rory consistently draw women with No Hips? They usually have a heavily exaggerated rectangular or inverted triangle body shape. NGL it looks really ugly.
Because, in the words of John K., the industry is ran by dykes and we all know theres nothing trannies and dykes hate more than a beautiful woman. Even cartoon ones.
I'm not the greatest artist out there but I feel like what Rory has is problems when it comes to the shapes of characters and especially their faces, they feel flat? Odd? Inconsistent? I can't really tell but there's just something.
The example of animals and the car earlier are both very dynamic, and very detailed for what they are. The humans are just too flat, simplistic, and geometric in comparison.
It’s like you can tell what her illustrative style would naturally be like if she hadn’t spent years emulating Rebecca Sugar for humans, and Sugar’s characters don’t look like they have a line on them that wasn’t drawn with some sort of shape tool.
Not exactly to do with Rory herself but as a heads up to ppl who wanna reread through the thread, don’t click on any of the tumblr links that go directly to her username because it’s just been claimed by this waste of oxygen. Just another miscreant who wasn’t shoved into enough lockers as a kid and, for all the preaching in the bio, is just riding Rory’s coattails.
