Polygons and whatnot (mostly polygons)

[Chronodiver Lokii]

I knew SOMEONE was gonna make that joke
dangit Chok xD

 

[choknater]

someone's gotta do it

 

[PsychoIncarnate]

There has been 1 character from my story I've ALWAYS put off drawing, because I've never done a good job with him.

I'm finally going to try and design something set that looks good...So far I'm not doing too well with it

 

[Oneupsalesman]

I drew Marceline the Vampire Queen from Adventure Time. And..I used a crappy online webcam-picture-taker. I'll be putting up more of my stuff on here soon.

 

[PsychoIncarnate]

When you draw a person you can draw their body lengths more accurately if you measure how many head lengths the body is. The average person, according to what I found, is 7 head lengths tall in total.

THIS chart shows 8 head lenths tall, which is the IDEAL person

 

[Geist]

THIS chart shows 8 head lenths tall, which is the IDEAL person

FACTBOMBWHABBAM
8 head lengths is commonly referred to 'heroic proportions'. They're ideal, like you said, in the sense that they're used to glorify and exaggerate proportions, and were used in greek art (mostly sculptures). These proportions were also more commonly used for males.

People are roughly 7 head lengths tall. It's not generally a rule that I follow rigidly with my own art, because it's hard to precisely follow when you're stretching and exaggerating proportions and forcing perspective, as well as laying out intricate poses. It's also not extremely rigid in nature, and people's bodies and heads come in a huge variety of shapes.

I drew Marceline the Vampire Queen from Adventure Time. And..I used a crappy online webcam-picture-taker. I'll be putting up more of my stuff on here soon.

sweet. I'm fond of people drawing certain stylized characters in other styles, even if I have a personal butthurt bias over anime.

Pertaining to above: considering different anime styles use every proportion from 1 head length to 9 head lengths (which is considered villanous btw), it also might not be a rigid rule to follow. However, an important rule of proportions you definitely want to train yourself for drawing characters is the proportions of individual body parts in relation to eachother.

Also welcome to the AE C:
I totally agree that you should post more of your stuff. I love seeing people post here regularily.

 

[PsychoIncarnate]

I believe they use 8 head lengths in fashion as well

They make the legs longer (In woman, not sure about men)

 

[Geoberos]

I haven't drawn any humans in quite some time. Although this one I started sometime close enough cousin to a human. Just an idea I always had in mind but never really got to.
[COLLAPSE="I wish I could have a Winning Streak with Diddy Kong"]

[/COLLAPSE]
I think I'm having quite the trouble imagining the placement of armpits.

 

[PsychoIncarnate]

I think what will help with the arm pit problem is if you have a clear idea where the chest and shoulders are located at. Draw lines through where they are going to be, even if you don't have distinct chest features in the final drawing

 

[choknater]

geist why do you have a personal butthurt bias over anime

 

[Geist]

I believe they use 8 head lengths in fashion as well

They make the legs longer (In woman, not sure about men)

Correct sir
With men the head is mostly shrunken so his muscles make him look like a space marine or something
I always found the leggy female look to be a bit odd personally :/
I guess it's fine if they're amazonian or super built.

I haven't drawn any humans in quite some time. Although this one I started sometime close enough cousin to a human. Just an idea I always had in mind but never really got to.
[COLLAPSE="I wish I could have a Winning Streak with Diddy Kong"]

[/COLLAPSE]
I think I'm having quite the trouble imagining the placement of armpits.

This might help. http://chestofbooks.com/health/anat...ges/Fig-242-Surface-anatomy-of-the-axilla.jpg
The armpit is actually an absence of muscle that is surrounded by a few key areas that shape it. The Pecs have a teardrop shape that taper in towards the underside of the deltoid. The deltoid is also a teardrop shape that sits on your shoulder like a pauldron. The Bicep begins underneath both the deltoid and the pectoral. Just remember where the muscles go, and the armpit literally draws itself.

geist why do you have a personal butthurt bias over anime

My bias isn't all-encompassing (I really like studio ghibli for the most part)
but
there's something that killed it for me by having a traditional western illustration/animation education from a pretty early age. Basically without trying to go into a rant (I probably will), there are forms of exaggeration and expressionism in animation that have been ingrained in my mind to take precedence over other forms. One of my favorites of these are the specific ways that western illustration caricaturizes facial features and body language. They use mechanics based more around physical anatomy, and are deep rooted in the philosophy that in order to exaggerate, you have to have an understanding in how something functions in its true state. This is one of the reasons western animation can become extremely intricate and extremely hard to master, or even make look decent in most cases, because a mastery of the basics is already a requirement from the get-go. Kind of but not really like how picasso achieved realism at an early age and had nowhere to go but really crazy. His insanity was still very much based on real life, and he was as good as he was at what he did because of it.
In anime this is unfortunately not the case, or at least it's nowhere near the majority of the case.
Expressions in both the facial and body aspects of anime tend to follow a much more rigid set of rules that do follow aspects of exaggeration, but don't exist on the plane of functionality. They work more on the level of superficial recognition, where the emotional reactions are thinned down not into a subtle range of contexts based on real body language, but a systematic ordering of a more or less hyperbolic emotion. This is fine in many cases, and most people will defend this as being a subjective aspect of the culture it reflects from japanese memetic devices, but objectively it results in two distinct things:
One- it is extremely easy to produce and manufacture, easy to replicate, is visually appealing for said minimal effort, and comes with very accessible pre-defined rules that are more or less stenciled and imitated, rather than innovated.
Two- it is potentially robbed of a large spectrum of illustrative creativity.
A large part of my bias comes from these two things (which obviously have their exceptions). Most people will see the first result as an overall positive thing, but personally I don't value quantity over quality, and I see this as very lazy animation. in my opinion it subtracts a big piece of artistic value simply because it turns so mechanical and predictable.
Similarly, many people would take the second result as an inherently bad thing, where I can see it as both positive and negative. Yes, as mentioned above, the fact that the entire illustrative process is devolved into a very mechanical being can potentially hurt storytelling in some cases, or at least takes away from anime's ability to use pure animation as a means to drive story, it also allows for more focus on creating story the main focus in a purely writing sense, instead of falling to the trap of focusing purely on animation. Which, funny enough, is something that those big cg spectacle movies are doing in theaters now with the explosions and the special effects and the transforming robots and blue cat people.

A lot of the time I bring up these points, many people are keen to bring up the typical arguments of how so and so breaks the mold because of x or because of y, but my inner animator/illustrator/painter doesn't care as much about any of those things as much as animation quality. I want to watch the drawings move, that's what I do professionally, that's what I'm into. When I see the same thing over and over again I tend to get very bored.

Which brings me to the second part of why I'm absurdly biased.
In animation, every frame and every step is deliberate to create a fluid and synergistic narrative. Body language and exaggeration and all those other words I keep repeating like a broken record come into play here as well. Everything has a purpose, and a key exaggeration, which goes back to the old mantra, you have to know real function before you can exaggerate it. Every subtle bit of information presented in animation should be reflected back to a deep understanding of anatomy, motion, momentum, balance, composition, etc. Anime does a lot of these things very well, but what it lacks a surprising amount of the time is that deliberateness of narrative. I'm not talking about story narrative here, but more of how the each drawn frame in, say, a disney movie is deliberately planned to fit in with the actions of their characters. Anime suffers from a lot of 'junk frames', and when you consider the already lowered frame rate and the fact that so many frames are superficially repeated (yes I'm bringing up this argument) you get something that looks pretty on the surface, but ultimately ends up being just really lazy. And as I'm getting more and more training and experience these things stand out like a sore thumb and just make me cringe. To me, this blatant cheating is the equivalent to a big mac being served to you in a fancy restaurant with nice dimmed lights on a gold platter while a dozen musicians cascade you with your own theme song that was composed by John Williams. It's still a ****ty burger. And it was probably sitting under a heat lamp for like a day or something.

Also this is totally minor, but do you know how frustrating it is when presenting your portfolio to someone, be they professional or not, to have them ask why among your wide breadth of styles you took years practicing, why you don't have any anime?
Or when an artist who draws mainly anime inevitably corners themselves into a stylistic chinese finger trap and not only refuses to move, but is incapable of breaking their bad habits and end up having their talent suffer because of it. It happens a lot at AIV and a lot of other art schools. It sucks to see.

There's also other things that sully it for me, but they're more subjective things like that the cultural references aren't my cup of tea, the anime fandom very much bugs the hell out of me, way too much bloom and so on.

It's just not my thing.

 

[HondaFoo]

Thanks for the write-up Geist.

For me, I take it one step further: I really ****ing hate most anime/manga, and really I've grown to dislike Japanese art and culture in general. Which is ironic, because 10 years ago all I drew was Pokemon and the only place I wanted to live was Tokyo

My reasons are personal and kind of complicated, but the short of it is—I learned how to draw anime/manga style before I learned real anatomy and the basics of drawing figures, and it took me a long ****ing time to unlearn all of that **** during college, during which I grew to resent it. Then that resentment spilled over into games and anime and now I just dislike Japanese stuff in general. Not everything, of course, but usually stuff has to pass through a really thick filter before I start taking it seriously

Also don't forget that the art industry is much more saturated over there, so naturally there's tons of mainstream trash, the stuff that I hate

Wow I sound pretty angry, but I guess I kinda am

/therapysession

 

[Oneupsalesman]

sweet. I'm fond of people drawing certain stylized characters in other styles, even if I have a personal butthurt bias over anime.


Also welcome to the AE C:
I totally agree that you should post more of your stuff. I love seeing people post here regularily.

Thanks, I appreciate that, seriously.

 

[Chronodiver Lokii]

I still draw some anime and enjoy watching shows....
But I have to lean more towards what Bren and Honda have to say xD
I RARELY draw anime anymore and when I do just to quickly doodle....it just looks weird to me. When I draw 'anime' stuff, it has more features of realism and western comics than it did before I came to Aip. And I'm 110% okay with that. No more big desu eyes, noses, line mouths, triangle faces - all have been swapped for using exaggerated real eye shapes, noses that aren't weird triangle or line shapes, mouths with lips/shape/etc, and faces that have curves

It takes a lot of practice to break that mold......and I still have a LONG way to go.....but it's worth it.

And yeah, I still plan to draw anime stuff on the side....cuz I mean c'mon artist alley at cons and commissions are good ways for me to make food money/rent money. = u= Even considering going to anthrocon (note: not remotely even close to being a furry....but I have friends who go to anthrocon and it's in Pittsburgh and they pay sooooo well. But man I am frightened after hearing some of the stuff people get asked to draw there....)

And the whole 'classmates drawing anime' thing.....yiiiiiiiiiikes. I've seen it done for my classes where we study anatomy....
Yikes. And as someone who is just enthralled with human anatomy now.....cringing. CRINGING EVERYWHERE.

 

[global-wolf]

Oof. I had just drawn anime stuff yesterday lol. Shaman King fanart

Spoiler

I do notice that most art schools refuse to look at anime drawings for the reasons above. For me though, the exaggeration in some anime/manga has helped me understand planes in the face- I can just look at it and very easily see where things cover each other up. Best example of this is probably Eyeshield 21 (gorgeous art and good in general, you should read). In my opinion Yusuke Murata's art is better than that of any Western comic artist's, while still keeping its anime qualities. I don't think the art in lower-quality anime is much different technically from Western comics like Peanuts or Calvin and Hobbes- the difference is probably that the prettiness of the anime encourages people to copy it.

 

[Chronodiver Lokii]

And there is good anime
Just like there are bad western comics
See: ROB LIEFIELD OR HOWEVER YOU SPELL HIS LAST NAME

It's all about the execution : o

Like, you make pretty art global = u=

 

[global-wolf]

True, everything has goods and bads on the extremes. Also I just looked up that guy and ashgakljsklfas kjsjkhlakjf the muscles eww

Thanks Lokii <3

 

[Chronodiver Lokii]

IKR
What did he do to poor captain America?! And all of his ladies
They have no organs!

 

[C.SDK]

My bias isn't all-encompassing (I really like studio ghibli for the most part)
but
there's something that killed it for me by having a traditional western illustration/animation education from a pretty early age. Basically without trying to go into a rant (I probably will), there are forms of exaggeration and expressionism in animation that have been ingrained in my mind to take precedence over other forms. One of my favorites of these are the specific ways that western illustration caricaturizes facial features and body language. They use mechanics based more around physical anatomy, and are deep rooted in the philosophy that in order to exaggerate, you have to have an understanding in how something functions in its true state. This is one of the reasons western animation can become extremely intricate and extremely hard to master, or even make look decent in most cases, because a mastery of the basics is already a requirement from the get-go. Kind of but not really like how picasso achieved realism at an early age and had nowhere to go but really crazy. His insanity was still very much based on real life, and he was as good as he was at what he did because of it.
In anime this is unfortunately not the case, or at least it's nowhere near the majority of the case.
Expressions in both the facial and body aspects of anime tend to follow a much more rigid set of rules that do follow aspects of exaggeration, but don't exist on the plane of functionality. They work more on the level of superficial recognition, where the emotional reactions are thinned down not into a subtle range of contexts based on real body language, but a systematic ordering of a more or less hyperbolic emotion. This is fine in many cases, and most people will defend this as being a subjective aspect of the culture it reflects from japanese memetic devices, but objectively it results in two distinct things:
One- it is extremely easy to produce and manufacture, easy to replicate, is visually appealing for said minimal effort, and comes with very accessible pre-defined rules that are more or less stenciled and imitated, rather than innovated.
Two- it is potentially robbed of a large spectrum of illustrative creativity.
A large part of my bias comes from these two things (which obviously have their exceptions). Most people will see the first result as an overall positive thing, but personally I don't value quantity over quality, and I see this as very lazy animation. in my opinion it subtracts a big piece of artistic value simply because it turns so mechanical and predictable.
Similarly, many people would take the second result as an inherently bad thing, where I can see it as both positive and negative. Yes, as mentioned above, the fact that the entire illustrative process is devolved into a very mechanical being can potentially hurt storytelling in some cases, or at least takes away from anime's ability to use pure animation as a means to drive story, it also allows for more focus on creating story the main focus in a purely writing sense, instead of falling to the trap of focusing purely on animation. Which, funny enough, is something that those big cg spectacle movies are doing in theaters now with the explosions and the special effects and the transforming robots and blue cat people.

A lot of the time I bring up these points, many people are keen to bring up the typical arguments of how so and so breaks the mold because of x or because of y, but my inner animator/illustrator/painter doesn't care as much about any of those things as much as animation quality. I want to watch the drawings move, that's what I do professionally, that's what I'm into. When I see the same thing over and over again I tend to get very bored.

Which brings me to the second part of why I'm absurdly biased.
In animation, every frame and every step is deliberate to create a fluid and synergistic narrative. Body language and exaggeration and all those other words I keep repeating like a broken record come into play here as well. Everything has a purpose, and a key exaggeration, which goes back to the old mantra, you have to know real function before you can exaggerate it. Every subtle bit of information presented in animation should be reflected back to a deep understanding of anatomy, motion, momentum, balance, composition, etc. Anime does a lot of these things very well, but what it lacks a surprising amount of the time is that deliberateness of narrative. I'm not talking about story narrative here, but more of how the each drawn frame in, say, a disney movie is deliberately planned to fit in with the actions of their characters. Anime suffers from a lot of 'junk frames', and when you consider the already lowered frame rate and the fact that so many frames are superficially repeated (yes I'm bringing up this argument) you get something that looks pretty on the surface, but ultimately ends up being just really lazy. And as I'm getting more and more training and experience these things stand out like a sore thumb and just make me cringe. To me, this blatant cheating is the equivalent to a big mac being served to you in a fancy restaurant with nice dimmed lights on a gold platter while a dozen musicians cascade you with your own theme song that was composed by John Williams. It's still a ****ty burger. And it was probably sitting under a heat lamp for like a day or something.

Also this is totally minor, but do you know how frustrating it is when presenting your portfolio to someone, be they professional or not, to have them ask why among your wide breadth of styles you took years practicing, why you don't have any anime?
Or when an artist who draws mainly anime inevitably corners themselves into a stylistic chinese finger trap and not only refuses to move, but is incapable of breaking their bad habits and end up having their talent suffer because of it. It happens a lot at AIV and a lot of other art schools. It sucks to see.

There's also other things that sully it for me, but they're more subjective things like that the cultural references aren't my cup of tea, the anime fandom very much bugs the hell out of me, way too much bloom and so on.

It's just not my thing.

I really, really wanted to pick this post apart and give my input but I chose not to. All I can say is sorry. I'm sorry that your traditional western education has made you biased towards anything that breaks from that mold. Also, Studio Ghibli's work is more like Disney than anime per se, so it would also be understandable why their work is an exception for you.

Thanks for the write-up Geist.

For me, I take it one step further: I really ****ing hate most anime/manga, and really I've grown to dislike Japanese art and culture in general. Which is ironic, because 10 years ago all I drew was Pokemon and the only place I wanted to live was Tokyo

My reasons are personal and kind of complicated, but the short of it is—I learned how to draw anime/manga style before I learned real anatomy and the basics of drawing figures, and it took me a long ****ing time to unlearn all of that **** during college, during which I grew to resent it. Then that resentment spilled over into games and anime and now I just dislike Japanese stuff in general. Not everything, of course, but usually stuff has to pass through a really thick filter before I start taking it seriously

Also don't forget that the art industry is much more saturated over there, so naturally there's tons of mainstream trash, the stuff that I hate

Wow I sound pretty angry, but I guess I kinda am

/therapysession

Well, I can see why Japanese art might not be your thing (if we're talking about "anime"), but damn, Japanese culture as well? Anime/Manga is mostly prevalent in big cities such as Tokyo. I'm pretty sure there's a good amount of art in Japan that isn't anime or anime influenced.

For example:

Spoiler

I still draw some anime and enjoy watching shows....
But I have to lean more towards what Bren and Honda have to say xD
I RARELY draw anime anymore and when I do just to quickly doodle....it just looks weird to me. When I draw 'anime' stuff, it has more features of realism and western comics than it did before I came to Aip. And I'm 110% okay with that. No more big desu eyes, noses, line mouths, triangle faces - all have been swapped for using exaggerated real eye shapes, noses that aren't weird triangle or line shapes, mouths with lips/shape/etc, and faces that have curves

It takes a lot of practice to break that mold......and I still have a LONG way to go.....but it's worth it.

And yeah, I still plan to draw anime stuff on the side....cuz I mean c'mon artist alley at cons and commissions are good ways for me to make food money/rent money. = u= Even considering going to anthrocon (note: not remotely even close to being a furry....but I have friends who go to anthrocon and it's in Pittsburgh and they pay sooooo well. But man I am frightened after hearing some of the stuff people get asked to draw there....)

And the whole 'classmates drawing anime' thing.....yiiiiiiiiiikes. I've seen it done for my classes where we study anatomy....
Yikes. And as someone who is just enthralled with human anatomy now.....cringing. CRINGING EVERYWHERE.

Well, see, the big anime eyes that cover almost the entire face is if you could say, a style within the anime style. I'm pretty sure you know that not all anime is big eyed cutesy school girls. And if there is a lot of it today, that is called fanservice. The styles within anime vary. There's anime that resembles more western art (such as superhero comic books) such as Berserk:

Spoiler

and anime/manga that more closely resembles "anime" such as Lucky Star

Spoiler

So I dunno, I can appreciate all the varying styles in anime and I can also appreciate western art/animation as well.

Oof. I had just drawn anime stuff yesterday lol. Shaman King fanart

Spoiler

I do notice that most art schools refuse to look at anime drawings for the reasons above. For me though, the exaggeration in some anime/manga has helped me understand planes in the face- I can just look at it and very easily see where things cover each other up. Best example of this is probably Eyeshield 21 (gorgeous art and good in general, you should read). In my opinion Yusuke Murata's art is better than that of any Western comic artist's, while still keeping its anime qualities. I don't think the art in lower-quality anime is much different technically from Western comics like Peanuts or Calvin and Hobbes- the difference is probably that the prettiness of the anime encourages people to copy it.

Eyeshield 21 is a good, good manga

 

[HondaFoo]

Sometimes I just wonder how much further along I'd be if I spent my youth drawing Disney princesses instead of Dead or Alive girls Sailor Moon Pokemon

 

[C.SDK]

Sometimes I just wonder how much further along I'd be if I spent my youth drawing Disney princesses instead of Dead or Alive girls Sailor Moon Pokemon

Neither. You should've spent your time studying anatomy. You need to learn anatomy before you can correctly distort anatomical features that are also prevalent in Disney's work.

 

[Chronodiver Lokii]

Like, once again, I love stuff like Lucky Star AND stuff like GitS and Claymore....
I'm just looking for a career in the games industry and in the western games industry there is no room for anime.
And, thanks to Bren and Aly, I'm a stickler for anatomy

 

[Geist]

things

I don't quite see what the passive aggressiveness was for. The idea that I don't generally care for anime should offend you as much as it would offend me that you do like it. Which is none.
Apologising for what amounts to a personal preference in drawing processes is unnecessarily condescending and a bit melodramatic.

Also may I add that i'm incredibly picky across the board and western animation does NOT get an auto pass and studio ghibli is NOT my only exception. regardless of whether or not any of us like anime or not, coming from an industry standpoint, a lot of the things I listed just are and no amount of cognative dissonance changes that. I emphasised that the reasons I dislike it are not objectively bad and I stand by that. It just so happens that's why I don't like a lot of it.

 

[cannedbread]

it sucks i can't properly conduct what i like or dislike and why. if i like something i just do and its so hard to give a reason why and vice versa.

 

[C.SDK]

I don't quite see what the passive aggressiveness was for. The idea that I don't generally care for anime should offend you as much as it would offend me that you do like it. Which is none.
Apologising for what amounts to a personal preference in drawing processes is unnecessarily condescending and a bit melodramatic.

Also may I add that i'm incredibly picky across the board and western animation does NOT get an auto pass and studio ghibli is NOT my only exception. regardless of whether or not any of us like anime or not, coming from an industry standpoint, a lot of the things I listed just are and no amount of cognative dissonance changes that. I emphasised that the reasons I dislike it are not objectively bad and I stand by that. It just so happens that's why I don't like a lot of it.

Sorry, it's a pet peeve of mine. I can totally respect that you simply do not like the anime style. That is fine. It's just that your entire post came off to me as ignorant and that your western art education somehow makes you superior to other art styles. But if you weren't trying to come off as that, then I do apologize. I am glad that you recognize that you are being biased, though.

As for me, I can appreciate both the "anime" style and western styles or any style for that matter. I can see some of your artwork (which I have) and appreciate it but I can also see Global-Wolf's fan art, and appreciate that as well.

So in other words, I can appreciate some really anatomical art but I can also appreciate something completely different like chibi.

 

[neous]

Let's all remember Bob Ross today. [his 70th birfday, but im sure you all already know]

its too bad he didnt paint any ANIME in his lifetime though M I RITE

also, hi everyone.

 

[Geist]

Sorry, it's a pet peeve of mine. I can totally respect that you simply do not like the anime style. That is fine. It's just that your entire post came off to me as ignorant and that your western art education somehow makes you superior to other art styles. But if you weren't trying to come off as that, then I do apologize. I am glad that you recognize that you are being biased, though.

No worries, they say 90% of all conflicts begin with miscommunication.
I was more or less trying to emphasize that the processes I grew up with conflicted with the processes of anime, not that either or was purely better.

As for me, I can appreciate both the "anime" style and western styles or any style for that matter. I can see some of your artwork (which I have) and appreciate it but I can also see Global-Wolf's fan art, and appreciate that as well.

So in other words, I can appreciate some really anatomical art but I can also appreciate something completely different like chibi.

I definitely can as well, but when you take something in as your profession it becomes a much different beast.
If it makes any difference to you, I have actually studied anime for a brief period of time and I feel I can draw it quite well. I just don't find it enjoying and will probably only do it if I'm being paid.
>_> I actually think I posted something that was anime waaaay way back because so many people were bugging me. And someone is running around the forums here with a sig full of chibis I drew lol

 

[PsychoIncarnate]

I'm trying to evolve past anime myself.

Not sure how successful that's going though

 

[C.SDK]

Let's all remember Bob Ross today. [his 70th birfday, but im sure you all already know]

its too bad he didnt paint any ANIME in his lifetime though M I RITE

also, hi everyone.

Neous! I want to collaborate with you someday. I like your style

No worries, they say 90% of all conflicts begin with miscommunication.
I was more or less trying to emphasize that the processes I grew up with conflicted with the processes of anime, not that either or was purely better.

I definitely can as well, but when you take something in as your profession it becomes a much different beast.
If it makes any difference to you, I have actually studied anime for a brief period of time and I feel I can draw it quite well. I just don't find it enjoying and will probably only do it if I'm being paid.
>_> I actually think I posted something that was anime waaaay way back because so many people were bugging me. And someone is running around the forums here with a sig full of chibis I drew lol

Yeah, I was beginning to suspect that. It's different to appreciate both styles and actually create both styles if they contradict each other. One of my favorite anime artists' background is fine arts. In fact, I think most established artists have degrees in fine arts. Maybe nowadays people strictly study "anime" without studying anatomy and all that stuff western art emphasizes so that'd be something of concern. But even then, it's really not that big of a deal to me. Who are we to judge if someone wants to strictly work in the anime style? Someone can be extremely good at realism, but they may opt for the anime style because they find it more appealing. I dunno.

 

[Geist]

I tend to sway towards 'westernized' anime a lot more anyways, like the legend of korra.
good example of adapting a lot of western techniques in a more eastern style, plus the matte paintings are just gorgeous.
There were still parts that bugged me but considering most of the time I can't sit through an episode of most anime I'd have to say I really liked it

God you know what really bugs me a lot
those shows with the super linear composition and the hieroglyph sideways-but-not-really characters. I tend to watch metalocalypse and archer in the background and pretend they're radio dramas.

I feel like I need to rewatch all of looney tunes now

 

[choknater]

okay

i see what you're getting at

haha thanks to the likes of osamu tezuka their pipeline is very different. sometimes they just want to accomplish a huge volume of stuff very quickly, which explains phenomena like "QUARITY"...

but anyway

we all just wanna tell a story

there are many ways to do it

 

[Geist]

damn those made me laugh
I just wanna draw pretty pictures

 

[C.SDK]

I tend to sway towards 'westernized' anime a lot more anyways, like the legend of korra.
good example of adapting a lot of western techniques in a more eastern style, plus the matte paintings are just gorgeous.
There were still parts that bugged me but considering most of the time I can't sit through an episode of most anime I'd have to say I really liked it

God you know what really bugs me a lot
those shows with the super linear composition and the hieroglyph sideways-but-not-really characters. I tend to watch metalocalypse and archer in the background and pretend they're radio dramas.

I feel like I need to rewatch all of looney tunes now

Legend of Korra is interesting. A lot of the characters' appearance remind me of some FMA characters. A lot of the cartoon shows on Adult Swim make me cringe. Hell, even Family Guy does too when you start paying attention to the animation. It's so simplistic, so robotic, ugh...

okay

i see what you're getting at

haha thanks to the likes of osamu tezuka their pipeline is very different. sometimes they just want to accomplish a huge volume of stuff very quickly, which explains phenomena like "QUARITY"...

-snip-

but anyway

we all just wanna tell a story

there are many ways to do it

LOL. Yeah, that stuff is bad.

But yes! That's also the most important reason why I would ever watch anime. I won't watch anime just because it's "anime," I'll watch anime if the narrative appeals to me.

 

[Geist]

A lot of high quality animation studios in the west are dabbling in 3d animation and some are outright converting. should be an interesting progression.
The flash programs some studios are using now just make the animators ridiculously lazy lol

 

[HondaFoo]

Neither. You should've spent your time studying anatomy. You need to learn anatomy before you can correctly distort anatomical features that are also prevalent in Disney's work.

Well the thing about Disney is most of their styles are more representational of actual anatomy—their faces are simple but not reduced to emoticons, their expressions show proper stretch and pull of the face so that it actually conveys form and mass, and the range of body shapes and sizes generally have more character than most anime. They also tend to draw out complete forms rather than leave lines out—for instance, compare the eyes and nose of the characters below

Spoiler

As a kid learning how to draw people, you can see how one might build better fundamentals than the other. Nothing beats studying the real thing of course, and I eventually did and found great interest in it, but as a kid I think doing a bunch of Disney fan art still would've helped me a lot more in the long run than drawing Ash and his stupid ****ing elongated eyes with different colored spots in them that don't make any sense

It's more about the understanding of form than the art styles

But what do I know I still only draw stupid fan art nowadays anyway

 

[C.SDK]

Well the thing about Disney is most of their styles are more representational of actual anatomy—their faces are simple but not reduced to emoticons, their expressions show proper stretch and pull of the face so that it actually conveys mass and weight, and the range of body shapes and sizes generally have more character than most anime. They also tend to draw out complete forms rather than leave lines out—for instance, compare the eyes and nose of the two character below

Spoiler

Nothing beats studying the real thing, but as a kid I think doing a bunch of Disney fan art would've helped me a lot more in the long run than drawing Ash and his stupid ****ing elongated eyes with different colored spots in them that don't make any sense

But what do I know I still only draw stupid fan art nowadays anyway

That is true. However, if you don't know, there's different anime styles within the "anime" style. I'm sure if you looked at other anime, you'll realize that some styles don't have those large, elongated eyes or any other typical anime-ish styles.

The Japanese have been doing their own thing since 1914 but it wasn't until during and after WWII that western art and to be more specific, Walt Disney, influenced anime/manga artists in Japan. One of the big names that pioneered manga and anime into what it is today is Osamu Tezuka. He was heavily influenced by Disney and looked up to Walt Disney. He created Astro Boy. So, long story short, the anime/manga that you see today, started out by Disney influence. And you can see this still stood true in later works like Speed Racer. The most recent artist that you can still see influence still to this day is Hayao Miyazaki. However, I won't deny that the anime/manga that was created back then, was an entire different beast than what it is now. I just like to think that it's just the way things go. Things change and styles develop into other things as time goes on just like everything that has to do with art.

 

[HondaFoo]

Well I am talking in generalizations, and I do realize there are many styles within anime. For this discussion, though, I had been regarding "anime" as the stereotypical generic style that you see most of the time

The anime series and films that I do like tend to retain little or none of that exaggerated expression style that you see in stereotypical anime, and usually have some influence beyond only Japanese culture, whether in the art style or just thematically. Samural Champloo is one of my absolute favorite works, animated or otherwise, and a big part of that is because it has a Japanese take on something not originally Japanese (in this case, mixing a bit of rap/hip hop with traditional Japanese history). Akira was interesting, too, because it didn't have your typical anime visual style, at least for the characters

However when it's just Japanese indulging on more Japanese it honestly drives me a little insane

But like I said it's kind of a personal issue for me, so it's okay to assume I am biased and hold a grudge against anime, because I do

 

[PsychoIncarnate]

Would my style be considered anime? I'm not trying to do anime...

I am going to post something later today when I get home if no one remembers anything I've posted.

...For some reason people think my stuff looks like Digimon though.

 

[Geist]

There's probably a small bit of ambiguity on the definition of 'anime'
I know that when I refer to anime, I'm definitely not referring to any part of story, writing, plot, character development, dialogue, or otherwise. That's called writing and isn't specific to anime.
Regardless of styles within anime, there's a large amount of fundamentals that encompass most, if not all of said styles. If there weren't, then there would be no point in even referring to those particular styles as anime, but they're classified as such all the same.

Would my style be considered anime? I'm not trying to do anime...

I am going to post something later today when I get home if no one remembers anything I've posted.

...For some reason people think my stuff looks like Digimon though.

not really
if I had to guess, I'd say some people think your style looks like digimon from the creature design aspect, which comes from using similar proportions, shapes and stylistic details like veins, certain tooth shapes, etc.

 

[C.SDK]

I just like anime, haha.

Buut it's fine if you guys don't like it