Yes, let's apply cultural standards universally, surely this will make the world a better place. At least professional artists know how to avoid offending anyone's tastes.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William-Adolphe_Boug...

Perhaps the painting you referenced was meant to evoke disgust, or feelings of guilty pleasure. Imho, both are not really appropriate on a project page especially if used excessively and without reason.

At least the child in your painting looks naturally shy, given the situation. This in contrast to the cartoons, where the child seems to be taking the lead in seduction. Why ascribe feelings to children which they don't have?

The painting you have used as a reference point of cultural standards is not a current style of art that is widely practised or recognised as ‘normal’.

What's absurd is determining the age in the first place. It's hard enough to do it reliably by looking at photos of Japanese Idols, let alone of heavily stylized characters.

Indeed, they seem somewhat hypersexualised for their suggested age or at least hypersensualised to some extent.

Furthermore, and this is purely my opinion of course - they seem a bit... tacky(?) and I must admit if I had opened this link at work I would have been a bit embarrassed if someone cartoons of young girls like this on my display.

Perhaps at least a more diverse range of sketches would be both more relatable and useful to demonstrate the project.

Regardless, I’m not sure what rules of HN I broke to deserve -5 votes for voicing my reaction to a projects landing page.

How do you guys determine their age or even gender?

These are fictional characters, they can be 500 years old and have 3 penises.

One of the first images has a girl in what appears to be a school uniform...

And that tells you what exactly? How do you know it's not a trans guy?

You see, you can't tell the age, you can't tell the gender, because they are not real.

What's their age and what posses are not associated with that age?