>>53033014When I'm talking about "form," I mean it in a technical sense, as in one of the primary elements of art. In illustration, when we're talking about form, we usually mean an illusion of depth. When we draw a sphere on a piece of paper, it doesn't literally have depth, but we depict it as though it did through things like shading -- adding value through something like shading to a flat image is what turns a circle into a sphere, right?
So when I say Nishida's works are "formless," I don't mean something subjective like, "they have an airy, ethereal vibe and I don't like it." I mean she's doing a poor job of rendering these Pokemon as though they had any depth to them. And I say this because her cast and form shadows, her highlights, her diffused highlights, etc. are often a total clusterfuck for reasons that aren't apparent -- they often imply inconsistent or outright contradictory sources of light.
And that, to me, is a mistake. Because it's clear Nishida is trying to render these images as though they had depth (that's why she's got all the shadows and highlights and stuff), but she's doing an awful job of it. That's all I'm saying.
