Hey art teachers, stop discouraging student's love for anime and manga art

Art schools want to teach you the basics that everyone has to learn, some people want to clutch on drawing a certain style their good at and that hinders them. So in case of Anime/Manga I see a ton of kids in my art department can't seem to grow unless they let go of it in order to learn their fundamentals. Then come back to it after they learn how hair works or that there is a thing called perspective.

Then there are those prick teachers who think anime will never become part of main media. (They are very rare honest). Those are the professors you either don't take, turn in what they want, and learn that there are other forms of art and you don't have to focus on just one. (The take away here).

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You need to remember art schools do have to follow a certain curriculum and that their main goal is teaching you fundamentals that everyone needs to learn. Art is learning those fundamentals and repeating them over and over again, the style doesn't matter if you don't know how proportion and perspective works. Are you forever going to draw characters facing straight at you, or are you going to draw characters turning their back looking behind them, or doing a crab walk while juggling. Which is what a client may want? If it was me, a person crab walking while juggling is what I'd rather spend money on.

I think a good educator would take it on a case by case basis rather than arguing for blanket disapproval of a style. I'm an amateur artist and will probably never attend a school for art, so I can only speak about experiences I've heard from people who did attend. There were many artists I look up to and think are pretty dang good who talked about being mocked or berated for drawing in anime-ish styles, and starting to lose interest in making art or stagnating because they were never allowed to make something that actually interested them. There are certainly students who try to compensate for a lack of fundamentals by aping more popular artists and styles (I'm that kind of person, although I'm trying to relearn from the basics to avoid this), but there are also some artists who have worked on their fundamentals and naturally progressed to a style they enjoy from there.

One thing someone said that got me to think about it was "Sure, you say you draw things this way and say it's your style, but a style comes from a series of informed choices and aesthetic judgements you make. Can you even draw it any other way?" Something like that, I've probably mangled it lol. So basically if a student is able to prove that they can draw more than anime, and they are skilled in or working towards the fundamentals, why blanket-ban anime influenced styles from every assignment? If the assignment is meant to drive home principles of shape usage, or composition, or color theory, or negative space usage and otherwise has no preferred style and the student shows competence but likes using an anime-influenced style, I don't think it'd be right to punish them for that. "Teachers should be focusing more on teaching fundamentals and less on forcing their personal preferences on students." is a tweet I can get behind.

Hmmmmm...

Drawing art in the style of the Regular Show or Spongebob isn't anymore artistically diverse than drawing bad anime, so I'm not sure why anime style in particular is being singled out by professors and many posters here. By taking that approach you've already disregarded the thread premise and manufactured your own alternate thread where these twitter people are actually just a bunch of sellout non-artists complaining that their teachers didn't let them anime everything in Art 101. You've failed to comprehend the actual topic and are instead using the opportunity to preach about how beginner artists who draw anime are shit, or rail against anime as a whole. Thread would be a dumpster fire if not for the few posts talking about instructor bias in higher level college art courses, you know, the actual topic presented in the OP.

Illusion said:

Art schools want to teach you the basics that everyone has to learn, some people want to clutch on drawing a certain style their good and that hinders them. So in case of Anime/Manga I see a ton of kids in my art department can't seem to grow unless they let go of it in order to learn their fundamentals. Then come back to it after they learn how hair works or that there is a thing called perspective.

Then there are those prick teachers who think anime will never become part of main media. Those are the professors you either don't take, turn in what they want, and learn that there are other forms of art and you don't have to focus on just one.

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My experience in art school agrees with this. There's certainly room in an artist's toolbox for the techniques, tricks etc used in anime/manga style, but if that's all you have in there...you're only holding yourself back.

If you're interested in aping the style, why bother with school at all? anime/manga permeate pop culture and internet 'art' circles, but I imagine its very rare to find art teachers who could incorporate it into their curriculum in a way that adds anything more than what you can get from rote imitation practice. The main reason being most art teachers have particular tastes, and typically teach according to their tastes. Its counterproductive to try too swim against the current an art instructor sets up in their class; you grow more if you open up and try to learn as much from their unique perspective. when the class is over, you either incorporate what you did into your oeuvre or your discard it because you learned it doesn't quite fit. I found art classes were often a journey of exploration of what is possible, and discovery of what does and does not work for you and your mode of expression.

I don't think its unreasonable for art instructors to discourage students' love for anime/manga within the bounds of their classroom. Students should be able to forget about anime for few hours and think about something else. when those few hours are up, anime is still there, still everywhere, it's not going anywhere.

This professor is being pretty short slighted and stubborn, but that is his opinion.

Though at the end of the day, please don't go to art school. If you are going to put yourself in crippling debt, at least do it getting a skill that could possibly get you a lot of money.

Anything you would want to know about learning art is on Internet, and it's breadth far surpasses any art school.

On the one hand, he probably shouldn't be penalizing people for their learned style, he could inspire exploration of other art styles a different way. On the other hand though, it's just so played out and I can't blame him for his frustration.

Every creative industry demands people with a unique style/voice. For example, I work in the film industry. Without getting too into it, if my writing didn't have the style and quirks that are unique to me, I would never work. Nobody wants some guy doing his best poor imitation of another writer, you have no quality worth respecting then. The value in an artist comes from their individuality. For whatever reason, the anime art style has become such a staple for young artists that it's become entirely redundant and cliche. In high school, every doodle etched in a notebook was some indistinguishable flippy haired, soft featured face with a broadsword. In college, every art major I encountered cited the same inspirations (Bleach, DBZ, etc.) and their portfolios were nearly indistinguishable from everyone elses - demonic anime boys, angelic female figures with a questionable age, it was like a hive mind that created the same three characters and committed to them and them alone as their artistic focus.

At first I thought maybe Chicago had some sort of bizarre influx of anime fans with similar aspirations but it extended far beyond my local arena. The internet is absolutely flooded with aspiring artists with online samples and portfolios that could easily be mistaken for fan art from their favorite manga/anime/VN. It's become the default style for so many people that it's lost any creative value. There are no unique art styles being coined by so many of these people, they're just retreading the same ground that every Japanese cartoon, VN or manga has already covered thoroughly.

Basically, I guess I would have to say that I'm closer to agreeing with the department head here. It must be really frustrating to work with hundreds of students every semester and have so much of the work be half-baked imitations of the same art style and character designs. These students should be pushed out of their comfort zones and encouraged to explore something unique and new. Maybe penalizing the students isn't the way to go about pushing that change but it's a change that probably should be encouraged in some way or another before we see the creation of exciting new art styles die off in favor of the same bland anime characters and character tropes/designs.

HypedBeast said:

Anything you would want to know about learning art is on Internet, and it's breadth far surpasses any art school.

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This may be true for artists hopping to become animators, illustrators, or designers. I don't think it's true if you want to make capital-A Art and be pimped by galleries. In that case, being versed in art history and aware of critical discourse is valuable to developing a personal art praxis; teachers do this better than the internet. Ditto many techniques used in 2d and 3d art making. Though I do think the most important thing is to visit as many museums and galleries as possible, which art school does not necessarily facilitate

JigglesBunny said:

Every creative industry demands people with a unique style/voice. For example, I work in the film industry. Without getting too into it, if my writing didn't have the style and quirks that are unique to me, I would never work. Nobody wants some guy doing his best poor imitation of another writer, you have no quality worth respecting then. The value in an artist comes from their individuality. For whatever reason, the anime art style has become such a staple for young artists that it's become entirely redundant and cliche. In high school, every doodle etched in a notebook was some indistinguishable flippy haired, soft featured face with a broadsword. In college, every art major I encountered cited the same inspirations (Bleach, DBZ, etc.) and their portfolios were nearly indistinguishable from everyone elses - demonic anime boys, angelic female figures with a questionable age, it was like a hive mind that created the same three characters and committed to them and them alone as their artistic focus.

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And how would them denying their own influences make their work more unique? Its not like if you deny yourself something other influences magically take their place.

Illusion said:

Art schools want to teach you the basics that everyone has to learn, some people want to clutch on drawing a certain style their good and that hinders them. So in case of Anime/Manga I see a ton of kids in my art department can't seem to grow unless they let go of it in order to learn their fundamentals. Then come back to it after they learn how hair works or that there is a thing called perspective.

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This. There's nothing wrong with loving anime, or any art style, music genre, film genre, etc. But it's a good teacher's job to expand students' horizons so that they can approach their preferred styles from a well-rounded perspective.

Castile said:

I had the red one, but it at least was decent compare to other books. It's not hard to understand the teacher's argurment when the anime boom happened, as many people tried to make a quick buck out of it.

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Kuro said:

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Nah man, you gotta bring in the big guns:

H.Protagonist said:

Hmmmmm...

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Wow, this artist really improved over time.

sam huge said:

This may be true for artists hopping to become animators, illustrators, or designers. I don't think it's true if you want to make capital-A Art and be pimped by galleries. In that case, being versed in art history and aware of critical discourse is valuable to developing a personal art praxis; teachers do this better than the internet. Ditto many techniques used in 2d and 3d art making. Though I do think the most important thing is to visit as many museums and galleries as possible, which art school does not necessarily facilitate

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I think hoping to be exhibited in a gallery is more about who you know than your skills. I could be wrong. But these Adam Ruins Everything videos give me that impression.



Also not really related to your post but I think it applies to the thread. Linked since I hit the 2 video limit

Why Even the Greatest Artists Copied
https://youtu.be/_ioCYKZn6fo

HypedBeast said:

This professor is being pretty short slighted and stubborn, but that is his opinion.

Though at the end of the day, please don't go to art school. If you are going to put yourself in crippling debt, at least do it getting a skill that could possibly get you a lot of money.

Anything you would want to know about learning art is on Internet, and it's breadth far surpasses any art school.

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Not everyone who goes to art school ends up in crippling debt....and there's a ton that the internet cant teach you. For instance, personal growth in a student environment is pretty crucial.

citrusred said:

And how would them denying their own influences make their work more unique? Its not like if you deny yourself something other influences magically take their place.

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I'm not saying they should deny their influences - nobody I know ever has - but they use them as a foundation from which they push the boat out and make their own thing that's distinct and doesn't become derivative. What I'm saying here is that for whatever reason, so many artists are just doing lackluster copies of their influences and not offering anything unique or notable that would distinguish them from others.

There are only so many quirky teenage boys with demon powers and swords that you can draw before they all look the same.

Art school is a scam. Go to an Atelier. It's cheaper, and you actually learn how to draw from life.

But yes, learn your fundamentals before trying to do creative styles.

JigglesBunny said:

There are only so many quirky teenage boys with demon powers and swords that you can draw before they all look the same.

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Is shoujo style ok

I believe its equally important to grasp the fundamentals of art as it is to expand the horizons of your craft.

That doesn't necessarily mean abandoning the art style that suits you, it means elaborating it and expanding the potential of your work.

Rogue Blue said:

Nah man, you gotta bring in the big guns:

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Where has this gif been all my life

JigglesBunny said:

I'm not saying they should deny their influences - nobody I know ever has

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That's literally what people generally mean including the statement from the lecturer in the OP though?

Also to be blunt most artists work on the properties of others which literally means aping another persons style that was decided upon by leads.

A lot of people who learn to draw by copying anime are pretty shit. Art styles are just that, styles. They take what exists in reality and change it in specific ways. You need to learn the fundamentals and draw from life before you get any good at changing things up, is the rule of thumb. Being solid in life drawing also makes it easier to create your own style rather than cloning someone else's work. Plus, while it is true anime and manga are growing in popularity outside of Japan, if you are not Japanese in Japan you are not likely to find work calling for that style. If your portfolio is full of anime, you're going to have a bad time. You need range and you need your own identity - This is an art teacher's job to help you develop so you damn betcha' anime will be discouraged. That doesn't make anime styles illegitimate, but it tends to be a crutch people have to be weened off of. Besides, being solid in life drawing will only improve your craft in drawing anime.

Zen said:

Drawing art in the style of the Regular Show or Spongebob isn't anymore artistically diverse than drawing bad anime, so I'm not sure why anime style in particular is being singled out by professors and many posters here. By taking that approach you've already disregarded the thread premise and manufactured your own alternate thread where these twitter people are actually just a bunch of sellout non-artists complaining that their teachers didn't let them anime everything in Art 101. You've failed to comprehend the actual topic and are instead using the opportunity to preach about how beginner artists who draw anime are shit, or rail against anime as a whole. Thread would be a dumpster fire if not for the few posts talking about instructor bias in higher level college art courses, you know, the actual topic presented in the OP.

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You'd absolutely get pushback in art classes if you wanted to cartoon all day unless you were in a class or program for it.

fuchsdh said:

You'd absolutely get pushback in art classes if you wanted to cartoon all day unless you were in a class or program for it.

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^^^
Like, students aren't just taking animation class and calling it a day. College is exploring a multitude of different fundamentals. Which is why by the end of it people have developed a style of heir own.

fuchsdh said:

You'd absolutely get pushback in art classes if you wanted to cartoon all day unless you were in a class or program for it.

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Crossing Eden said:

^^^
Like, students aren't just taking animation class and calling it a day. College is exploring a multitude of different fundamentals. Which is why by the end of it people have developed a style of heir own.

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From the OP

One of their recommendations for CA students was LMST 365F Topics in LMST: Manga & Anime. As most of you are aware, the CA Department as a major does not allow or appreciate that genre of work, and it was not recommended by us that you take that course. If you do decide to take it, please keep in mind that any work you do in this major that has the obvious influence of that style will not be approved.

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We're not talking about people who want to anime all day. We're talking about any anime influence being completely dismissed by instructors for no reason other than they dislike it.

If you can nail the curriculum I don't see a problem with some anime inspired work in a CA program. Though, I would expect a FA department to wag their fingers at your cartoons.

A good basis in art means you can probably do any style. Japanese animation included. I see no harm in it.

80% of the portfolios I reviewed at Rhythm & Hues were badly drawn anime art.

That was half a decade ago. I still have nightmares about it.

As an aside, I'm just gonna go ahead and state for the record that dismissing any regional style out of hand is pretty fucking racist.

cheesekao said:

I wonder what these art teachers think of modern western cartoons because many of them have overly simplistic designs which lack basic human anatomy.

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It's disappointing to see this without any examples. It's also so darn vague. .. But I assure you, even "cartoonists" still need to have an incredibly good idea for anatomy and moving shapes in "mental three-dimensions", sufficient understand of shape, space, posture, and so forth to create good looking (i.e. effective) cartoon characters.



Despite the simplified anatomy, it's all accurate and incredibly posed.



Character relationships and personas can be identified by the individual structure and shape that compromises each character. It's a goofy show and the character designs compliment one another

Compared to say:


(I HONESTLY didn't want to use an anime picture, I love anime too, but this gets my point across better) The characters here practically all look exactly the same. Similar size, colouring, and body type. For a bunch you can almost literally swap hair and clothes and have the same character illustrated with few discernable differences.

The styles are trying to convey two different things. I remember hearing an artist say "Western cartoons are focused on cute designs; Japanese are much more focused on beautiful ones". Certain western cartoons will utilize the shapes and big exaggerated features to make its characters very expressive, help relay the differences between them and visually help relay character information in doing so. Japanese cartoons are a little less preoccupied by this idea, going a little more strictly for visually pleasing designs.





Again you can get great character information just based on appearance alone. Obviously more silly/slapstick shows are gonna simplify design because a realistic style wouldn't work.

Amazing World of Gumball did a great sequence that switches between the series' cartoon art (which works for the tone of the show) then switching to an anime one for a fight scene (which really works since an extreme fight in an anime aesthetic works way better than in the show's simple style).


Yoh Yoshinari is a master of finding a balance between what both art styles do well with a very cartoon-anime hybrid



As Yoshinari might, his style still leans very closely to anime



Steven Universe's style wouldn't do well in a realistic design, but it's clear they understand anatomy and design to create such unique individual characters with unique structure/shape.

Art is significantly more complicated process than looking/copying. The point is to learn the RULES of art ––– so you know exactly how to break them.



Teen Titans/Go also gets that you can do different stories because of a different art style. But despite the "simplified designs" drawing your own unique character often requires skill and a vision. No style is really worse than others and there's good and bad art in both camps. I also don't think any professional artist (of almost any style) gets to where they are with only a mere basic understanding of artistic principles. And, as a professional in just about anything, if you're going to go for straight copying>>>learning then you're going to have a bad time.

Crossing Eden said:

Not everyone who goes to art school ends up in crippling debt....and there's a ton that the internet cant teach you. For instance, personal growth in a student environment is pretty crucial.

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Sure, but thats more about making connections than learning fundies. If you can find like minded people in real life, its the same effect.
Of course not everyone can motivate themselves to self-study like that and might structure to get that done, but art school is certainly not an important factor in becoming an accomplished artist.

Dice said:

It's disappointing to see this without any examples. It's also so darn vague. .. But I assure you, even "cartoonists" still need to have an incredibly good idea for anatomy and moving shapes in "mental three-dimensions", sufficient understand of shape, space, posture, and so forth to create good looking (i.e. effective) cartoon characters.

Despite the simplified anatomy, it's all accurate and incredibly posed.

Character relationships and personas can be identified by the individual structure and shape that compromises each character. It's a goofy show and the character designs compliment one another

Compared to say:

(I HONESTLY didn't want to use an anime picture, I love anime too, but this gets my point across better) The characters here practically all look exactly the same. Similar size, colouring, and body type. For a bunch you can almost literally swap hair and clothes and have the same character illustrated with few discernable differences.

The styles are trying to convey two different things. I remember hearing an artist say "Western cartoons are focused on cute designs; Japanese are much more focused on beautiful ones". Certain western cartoons will utilize the shapes and exaggerations of its characters to help create differences between them and visually help relay character information in doing so. Japanese cartoons are a little less preoccupied by this idea, going a little more strictly for visually pleasing designs.

Again you can get great character information just based on appearance alone. Obviously more silly/slapstick shows are gonna simplify design because a realistic style wouldn't work.

Amazing World of Gumball did a great sequence that switches between the series' cartoon art (which works for the tone of the show) then switching to an anime one for a fight scene (which really works since an extreme fight in an anime aesthetic works way better than in the show's simple style).


Yoh Yoshinari is a master of finding a balance between what both art styles do well with a very cartoon-anime hybrid

As Yoshinari might, his style still leans very closely to anime

Steven Universe's style wouldn't do well in a realistic design, but it's clear they understand anatomy and design to create such unique individual characters with unique structure/shape.

Art is significantly more complicated process than looking/copying. The point is to learn the RULES of art ––– so you know exactly how to break them.

Teen Titans/Go also gets that you can do different stories because of a different art style. But despite the "simplified designs" drawing your own unique character often requires skill and a vision. No style is really worse than others and there's good and bad art in both camps. I also don't think any professional artist (of almost any style) gets to where they are with only a mere basic understanding of artistic principles.

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Amazing post, though Kill la Kills artstyle and character designs weren't by Yoshinari, but another TRIGGER artist,Sushio.

HypedBeast said:

Sure, but thats more about making connections than learning fundies.

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It's both, students influence and encourage each other too.

HypedBeast said:

Of course not everyone can motivate themselves to self-study like that and might structure to get that done, but art school is certainly not an important factor in becoming an accomplished artist.

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It absolutely is for a majority of artists. There is always the minority of self taught artists, (plus it's not like you're done learning once you leave school..), but the internet really can't replace the college experience. There are so many bad habits that college beats out of you.

I don't know, doesn't sound too bad. I'm no teacher though, or artist.

HypedBeast said:

Sushio

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argh sorry you're right. I was gonna post a few other piece by Yoshinari too...

Anyways, same thing, Yoshinari shows that even despite a diverse art style, a critical understand of form is super duper mega important

Crossing Eden said:

It's both, students influence and encourage each other too.


It absolutely is for a majority of artists. There is always the minority of self taught artists, (plus it's not like you're done learning once you leave school..), but the internet really can't replace the college experience. There are so many bad habits that college beats out of you.

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I agree with that. The learning environment matters a lot, you learn as much if not more from other students than your professor, assuming you all work in close proximity between classes.

Dice said:

Compared to say:

(I HONESTLY didn't want to use an anime picture, I love anime too, but this gets my point across better) The characters here practically all look exactly the same. Similar size, colouring, and body type. For a bunch you can almost literally swap hair and clothes and have the same character illustrated with few discernable differences.

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They probably have the same proportions so they can reuse character models since what you posted is a an illustration of a super low budget game. That said clothes help define a characters silhouette so it doesn'tt make much sense to say they all looks the same when you take away the bits that make their silhouette unique within the series.

Zen said:

I agree with that. The learning environment matters a lot, you learn as much if not more from other students than your professor, assuming you all work in close proximity between classes.

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Nothing says bonding more losing your minds together during finals. ^^

I went to art school. And every student who went in wanting to draw anime was fucking trash and awful at it. One person was saying how they wanted to move to japan to draw anime and our teacher was like "LoL, you will never be able to go". I think the reason they say no anime is people tend to stick with and draw trashy spectrums of anime (not your miyazakis or your classic 80s gundam) so all their characters have bad proportions bad silhouettes and bad designs and ZERO fundamentals. If you wanna get good at drawing characters with fluidity and energy and personality you need to start at the beginning and learn to walk before you can run. That is harder to do with modern shitty anime.

It escapes many that the anime and manga style is an abstraction of reality. At the end of the day the core fundamentals do not change and a manga artist might draw in one style for work because they have to conform to a specific style but draw in another style on their free time or on other projects.

If someone can draw a still life image of a person they can probably take that and do a variation in into Disney style, manga style or any other styles. If you start with a specific style, its much more difficult to go back to the still life image. In that sense building your style as just anime or manga becomes a crutch

Dice said:

argh sorry you're right. I was gonna post a few other piece by Yoshinari too...

Anyways, same thing, Yoshinari shows that even despite a diverse art style, a critical understand of form is super duper mega important

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Agree. He is one of the most versatile animators in the buisness.

Kazura said:

And here's something I made that's kinda anime but kinda not?

Anyway, an interesting subject for sure.

​

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Yo. I really dig this.

Crossing Eden said:

function scrollToId(selector, offset = 60) { window.scroll(0, document.querySelector(selector).offsetTop - offset); return false } It absolutely is for a majority of artists. There is always the minority of self taught artists, (plus it's not like you're done learning once you leave school..), but the internet really can't replace the college experience. There are so many bad habits that college beats out of you.

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I mean that's fine for those who need to, but a good amount of the best animators and illustrators didnt go to a art college, or a college at all (Bruce Timm, LeSean Thomas, Shane Glines, etc). Thats not the say that you cant be a great artist and come out of a college (Lauren Faust, Genndy Tartokovsky, and many others are proof of that), but its certainly not a requirement.

Dice said:

argh sorry you're right. I was gonna post a few other piece by Yoshinari too...

Anyways, same thing, Yoshinari shows that even despite a diverse art style, a critical understand of form is super duper mega important

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I do love seeing sketches by amazing artists! He's great!

That's bull.

On the other hand, someone needs to tell these kids to stop drawing terrible 'anime'. The best anime westerners can make is Steven universe. If they try any harder it gets real bad...

Edit: I'm still trying to forget the atrocious shit I was drawing in highschool, but it's burned into my mind.

Im not going to discredit Crossing Edens experience, its certainly a viewpoint I've heard before, but I think there are other important factors to consider.

There are three groups of people who go to art school:

• The superstars: These are the types you see on twitter or artstation who are 18 and already better than 90% of the industry. Teachers treat them like Gods and can do whatever the fuck they want. This is maybe 10% of your students, probably 5%
• The mediocre: Most art schools are happy to take anybody with minimal skills, charge them 4 years of tuition, give them a diploma and set them on their way. Most of these artists are terrible and wont get a job in the industry. This is the majority and speaking frankly, theres usually very little to be done because they dont have the work ethic, talent or required training to even attend art school in the first place. Some of these are the exception and will have great careers but many of them will just have regular jobs. This is the MAJORITY of students, probably around 60% and yes, a lot of these kids draw anime, a lot of them draw spongebob and a lot of them draw spiderman ... however only th anime kids are told to stop drawing their favorite style ... weird
• The rest: Here is the very small group of people that desperately need the right education and feedback in order to make it into the art business, its probably around 20-30% of the students and we rely on what we do in those 3/4 years of school in order to become professionals ... even then most of us dont. You'll be surprised at how many amazing artists graduated from art school who never got a job in the field.

Now , this is a good post

fuchsdh said:

You'd absolutely get pushback in art classes if you wanted to cartoon all day unless you were in a class or program for it.

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I agree with this as an overall point. Art School is there to teach you fundamentals that you can then bend to your will and morph into your own style. However, twisting that into sympathy for what this fucker at Ringling is doing is pretty unfair as well, hes not singling out other art forms, other styles, other cartoony/stylized ways of drawing. Hes specifically saying theres nothing to learn from manga and anime which is patently ridiculous and exposes him as a shit educator and a failed leader.

A lot of students become interested in drawing because of their influences, if it happens to be anime and you shut that down and demonize it you are doing your student a great disservice because you are actively killing what made them passionate about the business in the first place. Are there -some- students that may benefit? Sure! But also consider how many students outright quit drawing because of it as well, and theres a whole lot of twitter testimonials from the last couple of days to attest to that fact.

If you have a student who draws anime -and- their fundamentals are poor then you can do any of the following: address the fundamentals without chastising the style, educate the artist by teaching them the history of how stylization works, how different cultures affect each others art styles, teach them what there is to gain from simplification and what there is to lose from it, based on their interests you as a teacher can introduce them to relevant works and styles that are similar to what they already like and thus expand their horizons, learn the students goals and you teach them to develop their skills in order to meet them, enable them the opportunity to master basic shape language ... and theres a lot more things you can do.

None of them include blacklisting an entire goddamned culture of art that has influenced most relevant media you see today.

In we backtrack a bit, in the 90's this would have been like "hey kid stop drawing that anime bullshit and instead look at what real artists draw, like Rob Liefeld"

supervga said:

I think I remember you from the EatPoo art forum, or at least CA.org.
Always thought you were a good example for someone that went from ho-hum to really good. Your painting skills especially.
Nice to see you working and doing well!

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Oh holy shit I miss those days, such a good group of people, definitely helped being in a forum where I could see Bengal or Gez Fry posting on a regular basis. Thank you so much!

HypedBeast said:

I mean that's fine for those who need to, but a good amount of the best animators and illustrators didnt go to a art college, or a college at all (Bruce Timm, LeSean Thomas, Shane Glines, etc). Thats not the say that you cant be a great artist and come out of a college (Lauren Faust, Genndy Tartokovsky, and many others are proof of that), but its certainly not a requirement.

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Consider that the majority of animators in the industry absolutely did though. And ofc we're not just talking about 2d artists, but CG artists as well. There are a lot of different forms of animation overall.

Zen said:

Is shoujo style ok

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The problem is that you work in the shoujo style long enough and suddenly you realize every male character you draw is just a 10 foot tall bundle of coaxial cables

Dice said:

Compared to say:

(I HONESTLY didn't want to use an anime picture, I love anime too, but this gets my point across better) The characters here practically all look exactly the same. Similar size, colouring, and body type. For a bunch you can almost literally swap hair and clothes and have the same character illustrated with few discernable differences.

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This is pretty unfair and you know this haha, two can play that game



Same exact issues.

Theres a myriad of manga and anime that has unique styles, execution and masterful use of perspective, anatomy, body language, etc etc but we choose to ignore it to just post some generic no name IP and then compare it to all time greats like Glenn Keane, Bugs Bunny, etc while ignoring all the very average or downright bad stuff that also comes from Western media.

Theres a lot of good stuff from all sides and theres a lot of bad, the style is not to blame.

Raging Spaniard said:

This is pretty unfair and you know this haha, two can play that game

Same exact issues.

Theres a myriad of manga and anime that has unique styles, execution and masterful use of perspective, anatomy, body language, etc etc but we choose to ignore it to just post some generic no name IP and then compare it to all time greats like Glenn Keane, Bugs Bunny, etc while ignoring all the very average or downright bad stuff that also comes from Western media.

Theres a lot of good stuff from all sides and theres a lot of bad, the style is not to blame.

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Dude I wasn't picking sides, hence why I kept my art range diverse. There isn't good/bad styles, just good/bad artists. Both still have a degree of objectivity.

I like the designs of the Neptunia artist, but it's hard to deny there's a same-face problem, nor do I always think the artwork is technically impressive (adorable designs though, and totally rocks the character design gimmick behind each). And me picking a deliberately moeblob game isn't that far from you picking a superhero one where, most likely, the whole cast will be fit.

I see the OPs issue more in finding bad artists and them taking an extra hard punishment for drawing in a literally foreign style. But once you tear down that bullshit excuse, it's definitely way more about finding bad/good art.... few can make it into the latter.

Dice said:

Dude I wasn't picking sides, hence why I kept my art range diverse. There isn't good/bad styles, just good/bad artists. Both still have a degree of objectivity.

I like the designs of the Neptunia artist, but it's hard to deny there's a same-face problem, nor do I always think the artwork is technically impressive (adorable designs though, and totally rocks the character design gimmick behind each). And me picking a deliberately moeblob game isn't that far from you picking a superhero one where, most likely, the whole cast will be fit.

I see the OPs issue more in finding bad artists and them taking an extra hard punishment for drawing in a literally foreign style. But once you tear down that bullshit excuse, it's definitely way more about finding bad/good art.... few can make it into the latter.

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Guess it didnt come through, I was mostly being playful, I liked the examples!

As an anime styled artist myself, Ive heard the bs rethoric from the Ringling guy and it always comes off as uninformed and close minded. Attitudes like his hurt the students more than they help