Noticed that a lot of art in the figure (medium) tag is being flagged as off-topic and I was wondering what the standard is for those images since help:upload_rules didn't have anything.
Flagged images like post #9569176 and children are all promo images for a mass produced figure, there are also older active promo images as well like post #298505 and post #287440 which are just there to showcase the figure as a product.
We have images like post #1721676 and post #302581 which are mass produced figures but posed by the photographer.
What is the standard for figure (medium)? If all of these are on-topic can it be added to the help:upload rules like cosplay photo? If not or only some of them are can that also be clarified?
Personally I don't think we should have product promo images like post #9569176 where there is just a simple background and potentially a dozen or more images with just slightly different angles. That's not to say I am opposed to all product promo images, but I feel they need more effort than only the figure and different angles. For example post #7453875 where they at least have the figure with props to loosely give a similar impression as the artwork it's based on.
I agree with GreyOmega, a lot of the basic promo images don't have much value, but there's also a bunch of posts that do show pretty good artistic expression (post #625978 is another one I like)
High-end anime figures are 3D models with high aesthetic value turned into physical memorabilia. The modeling involved is an artistic endeavor in the most straight forward definition of the term. Framing them for the purpose of a photo is an additional artistic endeavor on top of that. I find it baffling that there is so much genuinely abysmal garbage with zero aesthetic value and zero relation to ACG/otaku culture that is active on this site yet someone feels the need to target something like post #7453875 for deletion.
Flag bad photos, flag cheap looking prize figs or whatever but don't target something based on its medium especially since you are seemingly unable to evaluate aesthetics. Maybe if that photo had a layer of gay irony on top of it with some impact font text you'd see the value in it, I don't know anymore, I'm sorry.
I wouldn't call post #9569176 for example high end. Expensive, sure, but that's with all lewd figures. I think the argument holds value with post #7453875 though, especially since there's actually a "set" to speak of, and it's not just a plain lightbox, and the figure itself looks better too.
For the record I am not the flagger and I agree figures are art though I prefer figure photography, I saw the flag and was suprised there was no standard in the rules even if we agree the purpose of the thread is to get those standards set in stone.
not an approver but i think high quality custom figures, or at the very least high-effort promotional photos for mass produced figurines the likes of post #8159861 or post #8159833 should be worthy of approval. basically treat it with the same sensibilities as cosplay photos.
I think they should be approved if the image or the figure looks good even if there's no effort into the background or composition. So if you generally approve of Onimai's art style, you should probably approve the Onimai figure images because it's basically the same, as it's a quality figure, and probably even more detailed than the anime and manga because they both already have a very simple style.
Obviously, better composition still helps. IMO, the child images are overall better than the parent because the parent is a bad collage of two images with a weird seam in the middle. They also all have annoying copyright text.
Though flag reasons don't really matter, I think you should only flag things as off-topic if they're objectively off-topic (i.e., if you would add the off-topic tag when flagging). Anime is obviously on-topic, so just downvote the post and don't flag if you simply don't like how the art looks. Figures aren't against the upload rules, so stop flagging them unless they look like cheap G.I. Joe junk. Often the mouth looks bad and I think that's a fine observation, but on these Onimai figures, the mouth looks fine. The only bad angle is post #9569590, mostly due to the nose.
My issue is encouraging uploading mass produced figures will only inevitably open the flood gates that will turn the figure (medium) into a dumping ground for tons of mass produced figure images of just a figure only with a simple background. Tons of figures come out every week and each of those releases will have around 7-13 images per figure. If you think I'm exaggerating, just doing a loose count of the figures listed in Tokyo Otaku Mode's near daily email of new figures for preorder will give you numbers like June 8-14: ~21 new figures; June 15-21: ~41 new figures, June 21-28: ~71 new figures; and the current week: ~50 new figures.
Though we can't stop anyone from uploading massive variant sets, I think it's reasonable to only upload one per figure, on average. Or front and back. Unless all the angles are actually quite good and uniquely interesting shots.
I'd imagine most of the 183 figures created each month aren't very good, though. And you would need people actually interested in uploading them.
Though the figures may be produced in high quantities, only a handful are produced in high quality.
My issue is encouraging uploading mass produced figures will only inevitably open the flood gates that will turn the figure (medium) into a dumping ground for tons of mass produced figure images of just a figure only with a simple background. Tons of figures come out every week and each of those releases will have around 7-13 images per figure. If you think I'm exaggerating, just doing a loose count of the figures listed in Tokyo Otaku Mode's near daily email of new figures for preorder will give you numbers like June 8-14: ~21 new figures; June 15-21: ~41 new figures, June 21-28: ~71 new figures; and the current week: ~50 new figures.
There's nothing about figures that would inherently lead to a flood of anything, if you genuinely have this concern you should be looking at the entirety of photo_(medium), large_variant_set or the myriad of copy-pasted template (meme) tags that constantly flow downstream from the Internet at large.
They do not circumvent the extant system in any way, you can always use the blacklist. Someone is currently flooding the site with dull Touhou variant sets and I forgot that it was even happening until I checked the variant set tag because I had immediately blacklisted them when I first saw them.
I've seen similar concerns about "flooding" in regards to other on-topic content but it has never made logical sense to me. Is it just about the availability of material? There are hundreds of thousands of game_cgs from thousands of games that have not been posted but no one is flooding anything with them (though maybe they should, it would certainly raise the median post quality). The same is applicable to artbook scans and artist CG galleries. Hundreds of thousands of potential posts, no flood.
