40 Days of Art: Anime
Mar. 16th, 2011 10:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tealinI know copying anime/manga is a tremendously popular pasttime for many young artists. This is not necessarily a bad thing: manga artists have an profound grasp of anatomy and drapery, and if you can say anything about the country that brought us giant robots fighting each other long before the invention of CG, it's that they have draughtsmanship to die for.
The problem comes in how people think about the art they are copying. A lot of the line work in anime is very subtle. If you know what is going on in that leg, or that sleeve, you can see how the line describes it, but it is very easy for the ignorant to blast away that detail or not realise what it signifies, rendering the drawing flat, sucking out a lot of the information, and, most importantly, not learning as much as they could. This gets even worse when you get into faces, which are the most stylized part of the anime style and arguably the most important part of one's drawing. People tend to copy the shapes without understanding what is going on: they make a sort of lopsided trapezoid for the face, drop on some gigantic flat eyes, throw in a little triangle nose somewhere between them, and a graphic symbol for the mouth. This mimics the style quite well, so they think they've 'got it,' but what they don't realise is that the style they are copying is a vast simplification of an incredibly complex idea. If you really want to understand the simplification, you have to know what it was simplifying from, and not just think of it as a collage of shapes and features from a stock library.
If you're planning to have a career in animation and you are a manga fan, don't worry! Two of the most amazing animators/artists/draughtsmen I know started in exactly the same place as you. You just have to deepen your understanding of the art you're imitating, beyond the surface likeness. It would also serve you well to dabble in other styles, as schools and employers who get a portfolio full of anime will think that's all you can draw, and as most Western productions are in a different style, they may not think you are up to it. Chances are you won't find a job animating in Japan, so you'll have to learn how to give them what they want even if it's not the style you prefer when drawing on you own time.
The problem comes in how people think about the art they are copying. A lot of the line work in anime is very subtle. If you know what is going on in that leg, or that sleeve, you can see how the line describes it, but it is very easy for the ignorant to blast away that detail or not realise what it signifies, rendering the drawing flat, sucking out a lot of the information, and, most importantly, not learning as much as they could. This gets even worse when you get into faces, which are the most stylized part of the anime style and arguably the most important part of one's drawing. People tend to copy the shapes without understanding what is going on: they make a sort of lopsided trapezoid for the face, drop on some gigantic flat eyes, throw in a little triangle nose somewhere between them, and a graphic symbol for the mouth. This mimics the style quite well, so they think they've 'got it,' but what they don't realise is that the style they are copying is a vast simplification of an incredibly complex idea. If you really want to understand the simplification, you have to know what it was simplifying from, and not just think of it as a collage of shapes and features from a stock library.
If you're planning to have a career in animation and you are a manga fan, don't worry! Two of the most amazing animators/artists/draughtsmen I know started in exactly the same place as you. You just have to deepen your understanding of the art you're imitating, beyond the surface likeness. It would also serve you well to dabble in other styles, as schools and employers who get a portfolio full of anime will think that's all you can draw, and as most Western productions are in a different style, they may not think you are up to it. Chances are you won't find a job animating in Japan, so you'll have to learn how to give them what they want even if it's not the style you prefer when drawing on you own time.
