Why do they think they can get away with saucer-sized eyes, huge heads, hair that could be used as sawblades, or 500ml sweat droplets?
It's just part of the style. You could make similar complaints about just about any animation style.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
I thought it meant that Ranma loves rock. \w/(^_^)\w/
Kuwaga wrote:
It can also mean that people are enjoying the music.
Ugh, I hate it when people don't know the difference. Pet peeve alert.
The devil horns are the sign used for "enjoying the music." Thumb is holding down middle and ring fingers, while index and pinky are extended as far apart as possible. Understanding the horns, compared to I love you.
adelikat wrote:
I very much agree with this post.
Bobmario511 wrote:
Forget party hats, Christmas tree hats all the way man.
I found this one interesting, so I'll comment.
All the examples you give are aspects of magnitude; that is, the eyes/heads are too big, etc. Whereas 'drawing eyes on top of hair' is just plain wrong, rather than a caricature. What sayeth thou?
All the examples you give are aspects of magnitude; that is, the eyes/heads are too big, etc. Whereas 'drawing eyes on top of hair' is just plain wrong, rather than a caricature. What sayeth thou?
I thought it meant that Ranma loves rock. \w/(^_^)\w/
Kuwaga wrote:
It can also mean that people are enjoying the music.
Ugh, I hate it when people don't know the difference. Pet peeve alert.
The devil horns are the sign used for "enjoying the music." Thumb is holding down middle and ring fingers, while index and pinky are extended as far apart as possible. Understanding the horns, compared to I love you.
That's right, though you see lots of people doing it "wrong" in Japan.
I found this one interesting, so I'll comment.
All the examples you give are aspects of magnitude; that is, the eyes/heads are too big, etc. Whereas 'drawing eyes on top of hair' is just plain wrong, rather than a caricature. What sayeth thou?
If you look closely at Golden Age (1930's/1940's) cartoons*, one thing you'll see from time to time is that they "break" joints to create better movement -- that is, the joint bends backwards, opposite the way it'd normally bend. This is "just plain wrong" -- but it creates a better result than if they didn't break the joints. The animation is smoother, more dynamic, and oddly enough, more believable.
In short, animation is not a sequence of life drawings. You draw what you need to draw to get the desired reaction from the audience. In this particular case, you draw the eyes on top of the hair because the eyes are vital to reading emotion (in fact, you can convey just about any emotion solely through the eyes if you draw them well). You could of course choose different hairstyles for your protagonists, but as noted earlier, part of the overall style for Japanese cartooning includes really weird hairstyles and I guess they don't want to be constrained by having to leave the face free. Every once in a while you'll see a character whose eyes are hidden, though -- most commonly by opaque glasses, but also by hair, hats, hoods, and the like. Frequently these characters are more "mysterious" than others on the show.
The great freedom of drawings is that they do not have to imitate life.
* If you're curious about Golden Age animation techniques, I highly recommend The Animator's Survival Kit, a book by Richard Williams, who was the animation director for Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
I always just assumed it was a bandwagon thing, because anime/manga is hardly renowned for being an upwelling of original characters and themes anyway.
The whole 'eyes can portray an emotion by themselves' thing is a bit lame. So can the mouth, but they sure don't focus on that, do they? In fact, they're fucking tiny most of the time, unless they are being glib. Which is often.
Yeah, sure, the way I justify it to myself is that it's a faux transparency effect, where you can see through enough strands of hair to see the shape of the eyes, but you still see the color of the hair. And completely blocking parts of the eyes tends not to look good.
Seriously, why did the US boxes keep drawing him like that
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Well sure, a lot of people who draw in a given style aren't thinking too hard about why the style is the way it is. So you'll have a lot of crappy drawings in the manga style because works using that style are popular and people just imitate what they see without understanding the fundamentals. That doesn't mean there aren't good reasons for the style to be the way it is. After all, you can't have everyone imitating each other. A skilled animator is going to have that knowledge of the fundamentals of drawing and the basics of the style, because you can't use the style to full effect without it.
As for eyes vs. mouth, honestly the eyes are a lot more emotive than the mouth is. I'm not saying that you can't read emotion from the mouth alone, but it's far easier to do so with the eyes. They're the big signallers we look to when wanting to know how someone feels. You could do an entire animation with just pairs of eyes in the darkness (in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if someone has), but it'd be much, much harder to do with just floating mouths.
Remember, in animation, you have about 1/24th of a second for your frame to make its impact. 1/12th or 1/8th if you're duplicating frames. (And assume the huge amount of just static people standing around in your average anime style is because they have to be there for the scene, but they aren't trying to make an impact on the action. Scenery, in other words.). You need big motions to make that impact! Take the action as far as you think it can go believably, then take it a bit further. If it turns out you went too far, you can edit it back down. But usually you won't need to.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
The whole 'eyes can portray an emotion by themselves' thing is a bit lame.
Call it whatever you like, but it works.
So can the mouth, but they sure don't focus on that, do they? In fact, they're fucking tiny most of the time, unless they are being glib. Which is often.
It's the cuteness factor: Big eyes + small mouth = cute.
Have you noticed that when a cute character shouts really loudly, his mouth is drawn really big, and he stops looking cute?
This is pretty much my entire argument against manga/anime. They use massively caricatured motions/emotions to portray things that would be much better served by subtle visual/audial cues. The only reason I can think of this is for its target market being kids, i.e. those who haven't learnt to pick up on such subtleties yet. However enough anime is marketed at non-kids for this to apparently be inaccurate. Hence the bandwagoning accusation.
Oh, yeah, anime does occasionally have very small movements (usually mouth, to show emotion oh oops stop proving your own points jackass). But the 'camera' always helpfully zooms in so you can't miss them.
How much anime have you seen anyways? Not all anime series are like Ranma 1/2 with ridiculously exaggerated expressions and actions. There are also lots of anime oriented more at eg. romantic drama which often tend to use less exaggeration.
(And of course then there's the "realistic style" anime, with all body proportions being realistic. For some reason the vast majority of them are really, really boring, even those which have a more fantasy or scifi type setting. I don't know why.)
Btw, anyone who has the misconception that all anime is targeted to kids should check some more brutal anime series such as Elfen Lied. That ought to change their opinion a bit.
This is pretty much my entire argument against manga/anime. They use massively caricatured motions/emotions to portray things that would be much better served by subtle visual/audial cues.
I find this argument, when coming from somebody who has an avatar that violates that exact statement, hilarious.
(Also, animation can use exaggeration of emotions, eyes, and proportions to further the contrast between itself and live action.)
Seriously, why did the US boxes keep drawing him like that
