Needs Help: Inkblot Cartoon Style

All examples on the page are Zero Context Examples of the "this is this" variety. The wicks don't fair much better:

So. Out of 28 examples checked, only one is good, and two are just passable.

Edited by Crossover-Enthusiast on Oct 9th 2019 at 2:33:53 PM

Sorry for the wait, ~Crossover-Enthusiast. Seeing your recent post in the ZCE thread, I went ahead and opened.

I'll propose that we make this trope a Useful Note.

I've noticed other "art style" tropes like Thin-Line Animation and Noodle People have a similar problem.

The thing is that these art styles are tropes, and there's no reason their examples couldn't be given proper context by describing how this particular example of the style is expressed. If there are folks willing to do that, they ought to be given the opportunity.

Failing that, though, converting them to Useful Notes seems an acceptable way of preserving the informative function of the definition while stopping the spread of ZCEs.

Thanks again for opening, Berrenta. I'm surprised the thought went to making it a Useful Notes — a while back on the ZCE thread, there was actually discussion about making these kind of tropes indexes, but it fizzled out.

In any case, I'm neutral on the matter. I thought we could fill in the information ourselves, somehow, maybe reinforce that "this is this" is not good context, especially on a trope about animation, but since this is a problem that plagues all "animation style" tropes, not just Inkblot Cartoon Style (albeit it's one of the more egregious ones), maybe greater action needs to be taken.

Since this is a pretty consistent issues with animation styles in general, the index idea still strikes me as a decent one, because people just don't seem to know how to give context for these kinds of things.

I'm not even sure what our best option would be otherwise.

Agreed. They're not chairs but it's difficult to make them work as tropes. Since these don't necessarily reflect the plot, tone, or characters, there's not much context to add besides variations on phrases like "thin lines around round shapes".

Personally, I think we should try to describe the examples in tangible terms understandable in text form before going any further.

If we can do so without making every example sound the same, we might as well at least try it.

I tried adding context to some works I was familiar with on the page; do those entries look like sufficient context?

Yes.

Well... tiring but definitely possible to contextualize.

That's some first-class work there, Synchronicity. I've gone through the work-namespace wicks of Ink Blot Cartoon Style and commented out most of the ZCE wicks. Where I was able to instead add context myself or pull it from Synchronicity's work on the main page, I have.

At this point, I feel satisfied that Ink Blot Cartoon Style is in fact a trope and that it is perfectly possible (if a bit of a PITA) to add context to it. While there are certainly more examples that could be given context and unhidden, the page has more than the minimum number of examples at least. The wicks are in a similar spot: there are many that could use contextualizing and unhiding by folks familiar with the works, but at least there aren't unhidden ZCEs cluttering up pages any more.

A Long-Term Projects thread to perform similar cleanup duties on Thin-Line Animation, Noodle People, and any other art style tropes with ZCE problems might be the best way to go from here. I'll toss Animesque as another trope to add to that list; a cursory glance shows that many of its examples don't have much more context than "[work] is influenced by anime," although it does seem to have quite a few decent-to-good examples, too.

Edited by HighCrate on Feb 21st 2020 at 10:45:51 AM

I mean, the ZCE thread exists, obviously, but that's not great for tackling big projects- believe me, I've tried.

Yeah, I think the problem with art style tropes is distinct enough from other ZCEs that it could benefit from its own thread.

Agreed. These are real tropes that can be tangibly described, but need to avoid ZCEs like the plague.

But yeah, I can get behind a project for these things, even if it's just Short Term.

I think a lot of these animation/art style tropes work better as definition only pages with some monitering to make sure the wick examples have proper context or we could only allow lampshades/ in-universe examples or examples where the style clearly adds something to the work

Edited by MacronNotes on Feb 22nd 2020 at 12:19:24 PM

So if all we need is a cleanup, we could probably close this, right?

Do we need to crowner between cleanup and turning into useful notes or indices?

I would say so.

Here we go.

I have to say, I'm opposed to turning them into indexes because that would exclude single characters or episodes done as homages to said style. Useful Notes can be worked into their descriptions, however.

What other "animation/art style tropes" have similar ZCE problems?

• Deranged Animation
• Noodle People
• Thick-Line Animation
• Thin-Line Animation

Maybe we can make an Animation Tropes cleanup on LTP for them? If not, we would have to TRS them individually.

Got it.

Animesque was brought up as well.