#ratemydrawings

[genericpuff]

Sooo does anyone know this artist?

Back to my reminiscing over RMD, there's one artist specifically from that site who was very popular on the platform and most well known for their 'animated stories' - not literally animated, but utilizing the flash replay tool to draw a scene, cover it over with the background canvas color, and then draw the next scene, making these little comics that you could watch being drawn from start to finish scene by scene.

And that artist was Sadik.

(CW: blood, violence, and old mid 2000's era art ahead!)

Anyone who reads my original works might recognize this name. Well, that's because Sadik is (or potentially was) a real person.

I got to know Sadik during my time on the site, they were an active part of the community and were peak mid 2000's "I made you a cookie but I eated it" emo culture. They eventually migrated to DeviantArt where they became more active there (this was something that happened to a lot of artists who evolved past the flash and Java tools of RMD) but eventually they sort of just fell off the face of the Earth.

Obviously I can't really show the animated works they did because those were constrained entirely to the flash software which no longer works (and thus can't be replayed via Wayback) but here are some of their standalone art pieces that give off exactly the vibe I just described (so if you didn't know what I was talking about before, this should help give you a visual aid):

I adored their work, as did many people at the time. Granted, RMD was a much smaller site, but the Internet as a whole was smaller back then. We spent a lot of time talking through PM's, I told them about Time Gate, and that's how Sadik - the character - was born.

We both sort of drifted away from RMD as time went on, and naturally didn't talk as often as a result. I don't know where Sadik is today. I don't know if they're still creating art or even still alive. Their RMD page is long gone, the few artists who have managed to reconnect through the RMD Discord have no idea who I'm talking about or where they would be today, and even their DA is long since deactivated. I don't even remember how I was able to preserve those older art pieces that were unique to them, but I hope they're still out there creating art. They were good at it and it brought a lot of people joy. I still have the drawings they created for Time Gate back in the day, when it was still just a silly little self-insert Zelda fanfiction. I didn't find these ones by happenstance before the site shut down or via Wayback after - I kept them, and have always made sure to back them up every single time I've switched PC's because I don't ever want to lose them.

So I guess in a way this series of posts about RMD isn't just a eulogy for my past self, old art, and a site that no longer exists - it's also for the artists who nurtured my work back when very few people were, my first fans, who created art that stuck with me through the years, and, in Sadik's case, even became a part of Time Gate's history, still a part of it today. Thank you for being there, Sadik. I hope our paths cross again some day ( ´ ∀ `)ノ～ ♡

#ratemydrawings #media preservation #art preservation #RMD #self post #original art

[drac8itch]

Throwback to my old ask mafurako page....

#indie games #indie horror game #rpg maker #yume nikki #old art #mafurako #askpage #fan account #ask page #sabitsuki #chibipaint #ratemydrawings #2014 tumblr

[swordmaid]

also does anyone else remember this old art website called ratemydrawings (??) and like you used to be able to draw on the website and it also recorded your drawing for you so when you post it you can have the speed paint as well

#like im pretty sure that was a thing before???

[silentxtime]

Patrons got early access to this video.

#video #speedpaint #timelapse #canvasdraw #rmd #ratemydrawings #drawing #coloring #anime

[opti-pessi-mistic]

Six from Little Nightmares

https://www.ratemydrawings.com/drawings/cartoons/985144.html

#little nightmares #six #little nightmares six #video games #gaming #digital art #ratemydrawings #rmd #deviantart #fanart #i cant color

[siglati]

Mutuals, we should hang out and draw together on drawpile, haha jk....

...... Unless??? 😳

#i love this program #reminds me of that old iscribble site #and ratemydrawings

[jujusart421]

Quick Nikola Tesla portrait! Tried to capture that old time photo look haha #quicksketch #sketch #morningpost #art #drawing #morningart #portrait #portraitart #nikolatesla #tesla #portraitsketch #illustration #illustrator #explore #critique #rate #ratemydrawing https://www.instagram.com/p/CKE-9DIBG0N/?igshid=1x5funjy0ev8y

#quicksketch #sketch #morningpost #art #drawing #morningart #portrait #portraitart #nikolatesla #tesla #portraitsketch #illustration #illustrator #explore #critique #rate #ratemydrawing

[foxy1012203-blog]

Rate my drawing! 1-10

#RateMyDrawing

[hanabus-a]

okay so I've been holding myself off from making another long text of me rambling and melodrama as per usual, but hey

lunar new year is in a month and this year will be the final zodiac child design I have to come up with, as a tradition I've been keeping up since 2011

idk it's just insane to me it will be 12+ years since I started doing digital art. I remembered when ratemydrawing was still up and it was basically mouse-friendly and browser-based art program that you could casually draw with other people too.

I have so much thoughts about my art journey.

It's kind of, accelerated since 2016 when I went full freelance? No more doodling for shits and giggles. Attempts to get DMCA from Disney. Being a total shitfuck edgelord and had an absolute blast from it.

During my beginning years I had those constant questions like "uh why artists put so much distance to their audience!! I want to befriend with a cool artist", and now it's 2022, yeah, you know why.

It's kinda funny like, back then I vowed to be fair and friendly to everyone I came across. Even the tiny art forum I was in back then, we'd had a really bad troll and I was a totally good boy and just tried my best to accommodate who came across. I remembered, the troll said to me "Kan, I thought you were the only nice one in here" when I finally reprimanded them.

Oh boy did it took me a decade long to learn about boundaries and I'm still clueless how to establish my own boundaries without being self conscious as fuck.

Twelve Years, I've tried running shop, tabling, selling my first book, flying aboard, being.. something. And finally got my own trauma related to my arts. An entire 12 years journey of being an "artist".

It's like, huh, back then I always wondered why older artists are salty and evasive as fuck. Why some artists are overprotective of their arts. Why some artists are like scary and serious.

I guess I've become scary and serious.

I guess what considered a tool for me to connect with others is now a suspension bridge which is going to take me down when the time comes.

Would the me 12 years ago be jealous of this.

#text #Drawing? For Fun? That shit is for toddlers! - an essay

[askthetricksterking]

do you have an art blog. ;n; i remember you from a looooong ass time ago on ratemydrawings, and I miss your art!

Oh my gosh. That was like, what, almost 10 years ago..?? Jhshfhj its blowing my mind that anyone even remembers my stuff from back then lmao

My art blog/insta/twitter is epiphanypaige. I don't update it much bc full time job means I don't have a lot of energy for art anymore :\

#fingerlickinchikin

[genericpuff]

Remembering My Roots - Rest in Peace, RateMyDrawings

I've talked about my old art before on here, but never really fully in-depth about the site that hosted it. I was reminded of it today while going through my FB memories and felt like I should actually write a true eulogy towards what once was.

Once upon a time, before LORE | REKINDLED, before Time Gate: [AFTERBIRTH], before I had even started drawing webcomics, I entered the world of digital art through one website - not DeviantArt, not Pixiv, but a little site called RateMyDrawings. Back in the day, it was one of the most popular browser-supported art tools, offering multiple different art tools that were, at the time, revolutionary. A flash drawing tool which could replay the progress of your drawing (but the tradeoff was that you had a limited amount of 'ink' aka recording data), a Java-supported tool that was essentially Photoshop Lite (but didn't come with the recording), and later, a more refined tool supported by HTML5 (?) that offered more 3D-like brush tools. There was also DrawChat, a live drawing flash tool where you could draw with others and chat.

And on that site, I created my first works of digital art. No drawing tablet, just a mouse and a loooot of patience. They'd host contests every now and then to win budget Wacom tablets. Sometimes I'd enter, I'd never win. I did eventually get my first drawing tablet, but by then, I'd moved on from RMD onto actual software such as GIMP and Photoshop Elements.

That site is gone now, one of the first art site deaths I'd ever experience in my teen years. I was around 12-13 when I started using this site and I adored it. When people talk about missing the 'tight-knit communities' of old, I don't think of DA, I think of RMD, my first home. Unfortunately, the site couldn't survive in the 'modern' era of the Internet, overshadowed by more advanced tools and art-sharing sites like Deviantart, Facebook, and Instagram.

But I did manage to backup some of my old art pieces before the site finally became completely shuttered in the early 2020's. For a while the site was awake but lacked any content or features, with a message from the site's creator Mick that it might come back, it might not.

It didn't. The old ratemydrawings.com URL now redirects to the inactive FB page. Any attempt to bypass that kill screen like before leads to an Error 404.

But while the site was in its comatose state - before it was shuttered permanently - I was able to access my old profile and extract some of my art pieces of old. I posted them to my FB about 3 years ago, and today they showed up in my memories.

I share a lot of art pieces from creators like Rachel Smythe in an attempt to preserve media. But I also need to remember to preserve my own. So here are a handful of the 100+ pieces I drew on RMD. Enjoy ( ´ ∀ `)ノ～ ♡

Don't be confused by the '1987' part of the username, I picked that number because I was a huge Zelda weeb and 1987 was the year the first Zelda game was made. Whoof.

What's ironic is I actually didn't have the Featured Artist award last time I was actively on the site, so it clearly happened while I was inactive in its final days. The one award I wanted the most and I wasn't there to witness getting it. RIP.

Unfortunately that's all I really have in the way of high-resolution drawings as I wasn't able to preserve much else (though if I find anything more I'll definitely add it to this post!) That said, I was able to nab some screenshots of my homepage via the Wayback Machine where you can see more of the pieces I did back then:

There are so many dorky ass drawings here, some from Time Gate (because it's that freaking old!!!), some are screenshot recreations from anime that I enjoyed (a very common trend on RMD), some are collaborations. There was a point where I learned how to color with the mouse by using low opacity colors and layering them one at a time. Really upped my game there LMAO That Ocarina of Time Link drawing was the first one I ever did that made it to the front page of RMD and y'all, I was so proud, the site back then I think had 50k users total which is nothing compared to the Internet today, but achieving that was one of the greatest things ever LOL The Skyward Sword drawing that followed was one that really felt like a milestone in terms of my art evolution, I felt like I was finally creating something good. I believe I did that Skyward Sword drawing off another DA piece at the time, it was really common to do redraw challenges on RMD what with the technical limitations of the site - I suppose redrawing stuff I liked back then should have been foreshadowing LMAO

That feeling wouldn't last forever ofc once the art high wore off, but even to this day I look back on the pieces from that era fondly. It's where the mysteries of digital art finally started to 'click' in my brain, and I had still barely gotten started.

I also have a few drawings preserved that were done after I got my first drawing tablet, and you can really tell with the improvement of the lineart LOL That said, I think I was around 18-19 when I did these:

Now, one thing that I really enjoyed doing on RMD were collabs - specifically, trading collabs where users would exchange drawing files through the RMD PM system with one another to do steps of a drawing together. Often times I took the role of coloring other people's lineart pieces, which is probably where I started to really learn digital art coloring and come into my own with it.

A collab with user "lime":

Collab with user "Mikai":

A collab with user "Overik", which I specifically remember struggling with because, at the time, my computer monitor's screen was messed up resulting in the entire thing basically being a fluorescent pink:

A collab with "Mist04" that I don't remember doing lmao:

Collab with "Adzumi" (?). I'm fairly certain that's who it was, I definitely remember the process of painting this one, I had loads of fun with it:

Collab with user "ForgottenArtist", IIRC this one was more of a coloring page where they gave out the file freely for others to color, so this was my version. The forums on RMD were great for that sort of thing, people would literally just upload their drawing files for people to have fun with:

So I guess I drew this next little thing in 2021 when the site was still 'live' but not functional, I completely forgot I did this though LMAO Basically the main URL took you to that kill page I showed above, but if you knew any of the extension slugs, you could bypass that kill page and get into the rest of the site, which I was able to by using my username URL. So I got into the Java drawing tool and made this little thing in the hopes I could upload it. Of course, it didn't work, but hey, it was worth getting a screenshot, I suppose:

It's equal parts nostalgic and bittersweet to go through these drawings. Life back then feels so far away and yet I still remember it so vividly, the hours I'd spend drawing on the family PC, feeling more at home with the friends I made online than the ones I had in real life, listening to music that I still listen to to this day. It's far away now, but it still lives through me, in the work I do today. Even someone like me can go from being a complete noob drawing with a mouse to a professional making their living stabbing ink into other people while still drawing the same stories they drew as a child.

There is one piece I had to dig up outside of FB memories, fortunately it wasn't hard to find because I knew I had shared it ages ago on my FB so the search bar saved my skin. My very first digital art piece, of Sheena Fujibayashi from Tales of Symphonia, one of my favorite games of all time.

My very first digital art drawing:

Recreated in 2019:

Past me went through a lot, and they'd be doomed to go through even more still (they hadn't hit the plague yet). And yet they're going to survive, they're gonna keep getting better and better with each passing year. Thanks past me - you've done a lot of dumb shit in your life, but sticking with your craft wasn't one of them. Thank you for walking - through all the good and the bad that you've had to weather through - so that I could run for us both.

#i have other things i wanna mention about old RMD as well but they're better for another post #self post #old art #media preservation #digital art #ratemydrawings

[anubis-005]

hi this might be totally embarrassing if i’m wrong but i thought i’d ask.. so when i was really young, i used to draw on a site called ratemydrawings. did you draw on there also? your username is just so familiar to me for some reason! just curious and thought i’d ask!

Holy crap! I think I was Anubis^_^ back then, If that’s who you’re thinking of. I can’t believe you remember me! That’s crazy, wow what a blast from the past. So cool to hear from another rmd user after all this time ;A; ❤️ 

#asks #anon #I miss those days #I wish I could do the drawing chats again #Anonymous

[trickster511]

Sketchbook Drawing #25 - This is a simple figure practice drawing. I wanted to get better at drawing the female figure by trying something new. What do you guys think? Better than my other lady drawings or worse? #drawing #sketchbook #sketch #lady #beautiful #ratemydrawing #wavyhair #longlegs #figuredrawing https://www.instagram.com/p/BomSxrfF89s/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1uvqd58d4jeav

#25 #drawing #sketchbook #sketch #lady #beautiful #ratemydrawing #wavyhair #longlegs #figuredrawing

[tacogrande]

THEIR NAME WAS blackkittynili I REMEMBER CLEARLY LMAO my english was super duper bad but i just remember u as this sunshine?? i kinda admired?? so i went on a search to find u and LO AN DBEHOLD.. i found this!!!! and i just wanan say ur art has always been so cool AND EVEN NOW THROUGH ALL THAT EVOLVEMENT Im still like ? gahdam? i hope this isnT unnerving or anything but i got really excited LOL;;; i rly hope you have a nice day jay!!! thanks for reading these!! 2/2

 oM HHHHGG!!!! THE RATEMYDRAWING YEARS!! om it’s not unnerving at all this makes me feel realLY HAPPY ; v ; those were the happiest times of my highschool liFE LOOOL! im so happy u found mE TBH! JSASHUAID

also the first half of the message didn’t send! :’0 i hate tumBLR! LOL 

#asks #ging-pariston

[angelfood1995]

vila finds their old ratemydrawings account: chaos ensues

[asksenthesentret-blog1]

Drawn on RMD

#plot #asksenthesentret #sentret #ratemydrawings #pokemon #pokemon ask blog