In one side we are excluding a group of people, that maybe have found in pixels, a medium in wich they can express themselves;
Totally, and more power to them. If they ask for critique however, they are saying "I value informed opinions on how I can make my art better, please give such to me". Now, most people will like proper anatomy and proper color theory and and and. I agree that some people with quirky styles, if they were to take such advice, would lose their quirkyness perhaps. In such cases, people should stick to their self-expression through pixel art and not ask for critique, but just showcase their work. Through sheer repetition of the same mistakes, the pixelation users - like any critique-based community - have created a 'good pixel art in twelve steps' sorta program. Good traditional skills, good color selection, few colors, good aa, good dithering, good animation, there you go. This is essentially cookie-cutter. However when this is applied to a user with a clear sense of personal want and a drive to better theirselves, they can both filter out what they don't need from the process, and also grow without losing themselves to the will of a forum. It's up to them. Nobody ever died from getting critique, you know?
If they chose pixels, as the medium, we shouldnt send them to fuck themselves, and learn to draw on paper first.
Pixels is just a medium. I don't send people to pencilwork because pencils are awesome, but just because they force you to deal with various fundamentals of art, like good volumetrics and such. You can get lost in the world of the few pixels and never progress as an artist macroscopically, so to speak. It really isn't a good medium on which to become a good artist! Pixels should come after traditional studies. So we're not saying 'go use your pencils because that's what you deserve' we're saying 'learn anatomy, learn volumes, learn lights, go study real life, go draw a building and a telephone' more or less. Can you draw a building in pixel art when you're not looking at it? I guess with photo reference you sorta can, but it's really good practise to go out there with a drawing pad and draw things around you from odd angles you choose, not that you found on google image search.
I think one should (hippie corny shit on its way) embrace and nature that person, that may be just either expresing themselves, or naturing a talent.
I embrace the most odd and nonsensical art you'd want. But if the artist asks me for my opinion on how to make something better, I will give them my opinion on how to make things better. Sometimes I have nothing to say (there's a lot of threads I don't reply to you'll notice) but if I do have something to say, it is usually because the artist hasn't 'sold' be with his quirky style. Perhaps you and I have different thresholds on what sort of 'quirky' art we can take. Perhaps you see something with burn-retina colors and jaggy lines and unfinished and you go 'oh how wonderful and individual this is'. Sometimes I do this as well, but not very often. You shouldn't feel like other people who have different tolerances than you are just hard-asses out to destroy individual styles. We wouldn't tell Gustav Klimt to mind his selout, man. But there aren't many Gustav Klimts around here in this forum...
In other cases, we see people that i would dare to say, make conscious "mistakes"
I'd guess in 95% of these cases where you say they're conscious choices, they're just things they tried, failed, and decided 'this is now a choice!'. Not many Klimts around...
eventhough, if someone is a Klimt and they do things 'wrong' in purpose, me or anyone else telling them we feel they're making mistakes won't really make them change their mind. If you do something 'wrong' on purpose, you've heard it all before a million times, they can tell you to do it right once more and it still won't phase you, you'll stick to your guns.
To me, being anatomically correct is nothing to write home about
Actually it's very difficult, so I'd definately write home to dad to let him know I could now draw a human being half-decently, so now I can concentrate on not having to do that anymore.
if i wanted an exact replica
There is no exact replica. You are not a photography camera. Even a photo is not reality, it is a distilment of a specific point in time, a specific point of view, under specific lighting conditions. It will never happen again just like that, it is an
artistic result. Choice and intuition conspire unfathomably to create a piece of art that is as highly individual as your fingerprint. Just because someone has learned to draw anatomically correct doesn't mean he draws out leonardo vitruvian man charts. It's just an asset that makes his art easier to the eye of the viewer because they can follow the human form smoothly. They still infuse their art with their personal charges just as well as the random-unfinished-jaggy-pixel artist does.
We don't want to stifle individuality here. It's a critique board, one is asked to find potential flow-breaking errors here. Art is not science, everybody might have different opinions as to what breaks flow, but it has been documented that generic opinions do converge towards methods of construction, of color usage, of implementations of symbols that read better and convey specific moods. Most people will agree warmer colors are 'nearer' and that having secondary areas of interest complement the center-stage symbol, so on. Just because someone is trying to retain his individual eye on art doesn't mean he should knee-jerk against any of that. As I said, no matter what they do, when they sit down and choice and intuition conspire, what will result will be singular art anyway.