That's the way it should be anyway :) Well, with regard to the style and general appeal anyway. I do find it both embarrassing and frustrating when sites pop up that have REALLY badly drawn bases/items and it's clear that their "artists" are severely lacking in skill. It embarrasses me to have the name of avatar sites in general slurred by these awful bases and items. It frustrates me when I see users on these other sites squeeing about how cute and awesome the things are when they're just dreadful then we get people criticizing ours which are much better =_=

I know a lot of that is down to people not being able to differentiate between what is actually bad and what they simply do not like because it's not to their personal taste, but it still frustrates me..

But well drawn bases that have different appeal is what it's all about. Not just well drawn from the perspective of being shaded properly and so on either. But properly proportioned and also there's the positioning to take into consideration. Some sites do quite well with the overall dimensions and appearance of their base, then spoil it (for me at least) by having it standing there facing straight forward and bolt upright like a stiff dead corpse. I'd say this is down to skill again though. The better sites have their base standing at a slight angle as this looks more natural, but that will be harder to draw whatever medium is used. So sites who's artists have less skill have bases that face straight forward and look like waxworks, simply because these are symmetrical and don't require tricky perspective. Consequently they end up looking flat most of the time because the artist often isn't very good at creating depth through shading either.

I suppose the main reason I get so irritated about very poor quality sites is that these sites still manage to get money out of people from donations. Why can't they come here and give it to us instead! lol. You're far less likely to be throwing your dollars down the drain by donating to us than you are by giving it to some fly-by-night site run by some school kid who's likely to run off with all the money once they have enough to buy something shiny for themselves...

It hurts me to see people being ripped off by these kids ._. and again, that does the name of avatar sites as a whole no good at all :(