A more likely scenario is that everyone complains that anime isn't accepted in the mainstream, and then as soon as it does those same folks will start crying about sellouts.
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Hey art teachers, stop discouraging student's love for anime and manga art
- Thread starter ElBoxy
- Start date
A more likely scenario is that everyone complains that anime isn't accepted in the mainstream, and then as soon as it does those same folks will start crying about sellouts.
OP
OP
This is where you make that anime and manga class apart of the major.
So it's not disproportionate, but it affects more women because they outnumber men? And so many of them are bad because they solely take inspiration from shonen and 'anime of the month'?
Yea again, very small minority of students. And elephant in the room is whether or not they actually get work compared to the students who don't define themselves by drawing anime.
Disproportionate implies that it's because they're women. Male students get told the EXACT same thing. Professors don't discriminate when it comes to beating the anime out of their students.
Hell yes.
Again, it definitely helps if you've actually had first had experience with this topic instead of relying on hearsay.
I'm just an amateur, but the issue with that professor in the first post is that he hides a lot of incorrect rambling behind the nuggets of truth.
FFS we've had Ping Pong and Ancient Magus's Bride off the top of my head in the last year or so for stand out beautiful shows.
IMO: if the class is on composition, colour or whatever then going max weeb is fine. But you should be doing what's hard, not hiding an unwillingness to learn new things behind a copied style.
This professor is an ass, though. I'd take a course by Steve Ahn or something online over risking art school and having to listen to someone like him.
FFS we've had Ping Pong and Ancient Magus's Bride off the top of my head in the last year or so for stand out beautiful shows.
IMO: if the class is on composition, colour or whatever then going max weeb is fine. But you should be doing what's hard, not hiding an unwillingness to learn new things behind a copied style.
This professor is an ass, though. I'd take a course by Steve Ahn or something online over risking art school and having to listen to someone like him.
Do you think it could also improve if you told them to go read some Tezuka or something? Why does it have to be negative reinforcement?
That's a pretty terrible way to teach as far as I am concerned.
I dunno. If your approach is to just tell them the style they like is inferior and to stop studying it seriously, that seems both regressive and toxic.
I've pointed this out already, to you I believe as well, but comparing this situation to a single class is nonsense.
This is not a teacher reprimanding a student in a portrait painting class for drawing lewd Naruto art.
It's the head of the entire computer animation field telling people that during their 4 years (I assume?) they should not take a single
anime or manga inspired class and that allowing that style to influence their work is not accepted.
If that seems like an acceptable and productive way of teaching a creative major to you, we have very different ideas of what college level education should be about.
Would you accept the head of Computer Science track to tell his students that they should never write anything in Python without even giving any justification other than
' i don't like it'
OP
OP
I mean, if the art checks off all the requirements needed for a passing grade then that should be more than enough. There is no universal art style.
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Right, but what if the style and influence was pursued by women more than men as well? Or would you say it was about the same?
We need to start a big thread about art , learning art etc. I am trying to do art , need critics , tips to improve. I feel i am stuck in the same spot
I think it much more likely that art teachers are getting annoyed at what's probably been a surge in anime/manga-obsessed goobers who refuse to stray from that style than teachers taking a hard stance against the style itself.
The fandom is not known for having much chill.
The fandom is not known for having much chill.
we have some great artists around here, inktober was fun , but then i got sick and never checked the thread again. i remenber gaf had a big thread but when i started to post there neogaf imploded 3 days later lol
But it's literally about one single class over what I assume is the entire semester or year's course list.
If that is the issue they should probably take that out on their admissions department for letting in a bunch of low talent weebs lol
Look at it this way. A teacher in charge of a course authorized by the university is being told by what I assume is a superior
that at least all of their own CA track students should not allow anything she says to affect their work in his own class. The style she is teaching about is not acceptable for submission.
Despite the fact that it is a class about animation and they are animation majors.
That's some petty ass shit. I don't care how many bad DBZ Furry Sonic avatars he has seen.
If said professor considers Kentaro Miura's work "fast food" they're a dumbass.
Art school?
Perhaps everyone is different but my cousin who works as a concept artist for a game developer and does freelance in the sude who dropped out of university told me me going to university for art is a waste of time and money. He told me gaining skills on his own and using online tutorials was better. I just don't understand the need to go to unuunivers for something like art.
Perhaps everyone is different but my cousin who works as a concept artist for a game developer and does freelance in the sude who dropped out of university told me me going to university for art is a waste of time and money. He told me gaining skills on his own and using online tutorials was better. I just don't understand the need to go to unuunivers for something like art.
Well yeah, I agree with you. But I'm not a professor of art.
You're completely wrong and this is hand drawn. CG is primarily used as a supplement and very few anime shows or movies are CG focused.
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Are you speaking from experience? Do you want to post your work if thats the case.
I think the idea isn't necessarily that anime/manga-style art is bad, it's just very difficult to make a career if that's what you're aiming for in America.
However over the years I don't think this is necessarily true anymore. Anime is bigger in America than it's ever been thanks to sites like Crunchyroll. You'd be surprised at the amount of young people that watch anime and it's no big deal or secret like it was when I was in school.
I thin kit's possible there'll be a strong market for Western-made and well-made anime-style stuff in the future. You can already see this like in the new Castlevania series for example.
However over the years I don't think this is necessarily true anymore. Anime is bigger in America than it's ever been thanks to sites like Crunchyroll. You'd be surprised at the amount of young people that watch anime and it's no big deal or secret like it was when I was in school.
I thin kit's possible there'll be a strong market for Western-made and well-made anime-style stuff in the future. You can already see this like in the new Castlevania series for example.
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.
lol Christ all mighty these are ghastly!
Thanks art teacher. I could be working on the next Dragon Ball Z but instead I had to waste countless hours studying "Van Gogh" and he didn't do anything important like bring the entertainment of two adult men to children around the world.
This is not a starting class.
Why did 90% of the people in this thread not read the OP?
What is this universal Manga /anime style that should be stamped out, hmm?
Any art teacher worth their cost would direct their students from any particular style. It does make sense that american teachers try to lead students away from anime because that's a market that's not going to make money in the states, but a good teacher will help you develop your own style, and that means not being married any other style
Possibly an unpopular opinion: Anime 'style' is great when it's great, however, kids often use it as a crutch and it doesn't help them improve their artistic skills.
The issue with many manga-influenced kids, is that they tend to ignore the basics.
You can enjoy stilized artwork, but please understand geometry, shapes and anatomy.
You can't be the next Miura if you ignore the basics.
You can enjoy stilized artwork, but please understand geometry, shapes and anatomy.
You can't be the next Miura if you ignore the basics.
"American teachers try to lead students away from anime because that's a market that's not going to make money in the states"
I think the kicker is that this is not true. The reason to lead a student away from a style is put quite well by Loomis in one of his books - a style that an artist gains whilst they are a novice, that is lost when the novice is trained in fundamentals, is not likely to have been a style with any quality to it. :-)
But if someone is actually getting those fundamentals down whilst drawing in a style calling after Toriyama or Oda or Araki or whatever, then they're probably going to get really good because strong fundamentals + appealing style = $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Japanese brains are not wired to find a manga style more appealing than a Yank or Brit brain. The question is "is this style a mask for a lack of fundamentals" - if no, then telling someone to get rid of their style because it's not legitimate is probably the least intelligent thing anyone can tell you in art.
I think the kicker is that this is not true. The reason to lead a student away from a style is put quite well by Loomis in one of his books - a style that an artist gains whilst they are a novice, that is lost when the novice is trained in fundamentals, is not likely to have been a style with any quality to it. :-)
But if someone is actually getting those fundamentals down whilst drawing in a style calling after Toriyama or Oda or Araki or whatever, then they're probably going to get really good because strong fundamentals + appealing style = $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Japanese brains are not wired to find a manga style more appealing than a Yank or Brit brain. The question is "is this style a mask for a lack of fundamentals" - if no, then telling someone to get rid of their style because it's not legitimate is probably the least intelligent thing anyone can tell you in art.
Wow, lots of ... passionate misinformation here, haha.
Ive been around Ringling a fair bunch, its ... a problematic place. My wife graduated with a BFA in illustration and it took us a long time to pay for her 120k plus in college loans. I wont say dont go to art school but I will defimitely say "dont go to Ringling.
As for my own experience I am a Joe Kubert graduate, have a native "anime" style and have worked/done work for many companies like EA, Lab Zero, Fangamer, Capcom, Udon, etc etc for over ten years, Im pretty damn qualified to talk about this topic :P
First thimgs first, in the real world it doesnt matter what style you have, if you're good, you can find work. There are many, MANY outlets out there. Character design, storyboarding, comics, covers, illustrations, vis dev, world building, coloring, layouts, prop designs, weapon designs, creature design, background artists, animators, cleanup artist, shading artists, background designers, special effects artists, graphic designers and the llist goes on and these jobs are available as full time work or as freelance or as part time and they are all over the place with many different needs, goals and challenges. Lots of people take a while to find the right job because they may not be the right fit, but its very, very rarely a case where style comes intoplay, its ,uch more about personality, problem solving and being flexible so you can delover what your project needs
Second thing second, lots of people have no fucking clue what "anime" even is. To some it means "bad art", to some it means "foreign art", to some its just that anime they don't like and thats something I find to be very prevalent.
People dont usually say this is anime style
They say its Ghobli style! How convenient!
Hey guess what, this is anime too
Hell yes backgrounds count, they take way more artists than charavters do!
People like to keep putting art styles into weird boxes. Ome day its calarts style thats making the rounds yet nobody calls that "American Style", we dont do that with Disney, either! Yes, I know that most people associate an anime look with Dragon Ball or some lower common denomination high school show with a bunch of schoolgirls with weird hair and giant eyes but thats as disingenous as watching some shitty Scooby Doo episode and thinking "American Style is garbage". We must become able to discern quality regardless of style.
With that out of the way, lets talk about art education at the college level.
Usually a lot of these horror stories happen to women! My wife was told, in her expensive ass college by a respected FEMALE instructor, to quit drawing and just get married, my friend Missy who is featured in the OP was also lambasted for her style and many of my lady friends have been through it as well. Hell, go to ANY anime convention in America and youll see most artists are women. Women who got fed up with being told they couldnt do what they wanted and became self reliant instead.
Why is that even a thing, you ask? Because manga and anime create fans due to how varied their comtent is, you can have romance, comedy, drama, action, food, sex, kid stuff, politics etc etc instead of 90% superhero books for dudes in the US. There was this group of female nerds waiting for something different since the 90's and with the advent if the internet manga and anime took hold of the female fanbase by giving them the variety they craved for, creating fans!
Many college instructors are too old, out of the loop and not flexible in their thinking. If I have a student that has bad fundamentals, in doesnt matter what style they try, its gonna look like shit .. however, nobody that draws in "the Marvel style" is told to chamge styles, even if they are shitty artists, wonder why that is?
A lot of these older educators probably saw an anime movie, like one of the Dragon Ball ones with Broly or whatever, thought it was ridiculous compared to Beauty and the Beast and just swore off the entire genre altogether. In reality manga and anime should be studied closely because it teaches an artist how to be ruthlessly efficient. When American cartoons like Transformers or Hannah Barbera have to deal with budget issues their shows become a laughing stock due to how obvious they are with their asset reuse but manga and anime have mastered framing, pacing and timing so that they can have compelling entertainment without having to animate or draw everything which is incredibly important to learn in art school.
What any art school should really focus on (aside from failing students which is a whole other deal) is to separate style from fundamentals. A young artist shouldnt be ashamed of their style just because their fundamentals are low, thats what school should be for! As I learn basic shapes, linework, perspective, color etc then I would apply those teaching with my native style and, not unlike alchemy, see what the results are, THATS an art education because it gives me tools to learn for myself.
So yeah, fuck Ringling.
If you're an artist, heres my advice. Dont worry about jobs, worry about how awesome you can be and analyze what is stopping you from getting there, its probably not your style but rather being stellar at any particular skill. When you're a beginner you should try to be really good at -one- thing and leverage that to get yourself out there, then start working on the supplementary skills you need to reach that mext level. Maybe its color, maybe its perspective, maybe its storytelling, figure out what it is for you, find the references you need and go chase them as hard as you can. Dont worry if your style is too much of thisor that, if its AWESOME good things will happen.
Fantastic post, so glad you brought up where it intersects with internalised ethnic and gender elitism. I'm really curious about how gender demographics in different parts of the art industry diverge beyond how they do in the games industry. People often say "well there's not many lady coders because theyve been discouraged from (or arent 'biologically inclined' to, lol dead) STEM fields" But I think there's something going on in the creative training landscape as well.
Weird fact though, (brag alert) I studied art in 6th form (last 2 years pre-university for UK) and the teachers would straight up tell other students not to do anime styles, and when I was listening they'd be like, not you Gaki, you can do whatever. Partially because I guess they recognised I did just prove myself time and time again everytime they challenged me to do something different, and partially maybe because I was an impenetrably socially obtuse mess child and that my parents would settle for "survived a reasonable chunk of adulthood somehow". Still I didn't approve of that double standard, I think that just reveals the motivation is elitism, shortcutting students they didn't think were as good by encouraging them to blend in with the academic standards and conditioning them to be apologetic in case they tried and failed to go against the grain.
Anyway to all those countless posts saying "YOU NEED TO LEARN CORE FUNDAMENTALS BEFORE YOU START DRAWING ANIME", that might sound pragmatic in theory but I wouldn't have developed an INTEREST in art if I didn't start out tracing weeb shit out of comics and magazines, trying to master drawing sonic the hedgehog and pokemon in my teens. Finding work you're passionate about and can endure to the point that you're willing to dedicate the time and effort necessary to get good at it... to me that takes priority over picking a safe direction where other people will recognise progress right away.
I never did master drawing pokemon and sonic styles all that well, but I've been a game artist for 10 years making a modest living and getting lots of pats on the back so w/e.
I mean I would agree with that too, but it doesn't discount what I said. The states isn't really a place where you can make a lot of money off of anime. It's a growing industry sure, but as someone in this field who knows producers, I can say very confidently that it's not really viable. But yeah, I think your point is a great one too
I thought this was gonna be about teachers stressing a grasp of fundamentals instead of mimicking a style, but it looks like they're just being close minded assholes.
Wow, lots of ... passionate misinformation here, haha.
Ive been around Ringling a fair bunch, its ... a problematic place. My wife graduated with a BFA in illustration and it took us a long time to pay for her 120k plus in college loans. I wont say dont go to art school but I will defimitely say "dont go to Ringling.
As for my own experience I am a Joe Kubert graduate, have a native "anime" style and have worked/done work for many companies like EA, Lab Zero, Fangamer, Capcom, Udon, etc etc for over ten years, Im pretty damn qualified to talk about this topic :P
First thimgs first, in the real world it doesnt matter what style you have, if you're good, you can find work. There are many, MANY outlets out there. Character design, storyboarding, comics, covers, illustrations, vis dev, world building, coloring, layouts, prop designs, weapon designs, creature design, background artists, animators, cleanup artist, shading artists, background designers, special effects artists, graphic designers and the llist goes on and these jobs are available as full time work or as freelance or as part time and they are all over the place with many different needs, goals and challenges. Lots of people take a while to find the right job because they may not be the right fit, but its very, very rarely a case where style comes intoplay, its ,uch more about personality, problem solving and being flexible so you can delover what your project needs
Second thing second, lots of people have no fucking clue what "anime" even is. To some it means "bad art", to some it means "foreign art", to some its just that anime they don't like and thats something I find to be very prevalent.
People dont usually say this is anime style
They say its Ghobli style! How convenient!
Hey guess what, this is anime too
Hell yes backgrounds count, they take way more artists than charavters do!
People like to keep putting art styles into weird boxes. Ome day its calarts style thats making the rounds yet nobody calls that "American Style", we dont do that with Disney, either! Yes, I know that most people associate an anime look with Dragon Ball or some lower common denomination high school show with a bunch of schoolgirls with weird hair and giant eyes but thats as disingenous as watching some shitty Scooby Doo episode and thinking "American Style is garbage". We must become able to discern quality regardless of style.
With that out of the way, lets talk about art education at the college level.
Usually a lot of these horror stories happen to women! My wife was told, in her expensive ass college by a respected FEMALE instructor, to quit drawing and just get married, my friend Missy who is featured in the OP was also lambasted for her style and many of my lady friends have been through it as well. Hell, go to ANY anime convention in America and youll see most artists are women. Women who got fed up with being told they couldnt do what they wanted and became self reliant instead.
Why is that even a thing, you ask? Because manga and anime create fans due to how varied their comtent is, you can have romance, comedy, drama, action, food, sex, kid stuff, politics etc etc instead of 90% superhero books for dudes in the US. There was this group of female nerds waiting for something different since the 90's and with the advent if the internet manga and anime took hold of the female fanbase by giving them the variety they craved for, creating fans!
Many college instructors are too old, out of the loop and not flexible in their thinking. If I have a student that has bad fundamentals, in doesnt matter what style they try, its gonna look like shit .. however, nobody that draws in "the Marvel style" is told to chamge styles, even if they are shitty artists, wonder why that is?
A lot of these older educators probably saw an anime movie, like one of the Dragon Ball ones with Broly or whatever, thought it was ridiculous compared to Beauty and the Beast and just swore off the entire genre altogether. In reality manga and anime should be studied closely because it teaches an artist how to be ruthlessly efficient. When American cartoons like Transformers or Hannah Barbera have to deal with budget issues their shows become a laughing stock due to how obvious they are with their asset reuse but manga and anime have mastered framing, pacing and timing so that they can have compelling entertainment without having to animate or draw everything which is incredibly important to learn in art school.
What any art school should really focus on (aside from failing students which is a whole other deal) is to separate style from fundamentals. A young artist shouldnt be ashamed of their style just because their fundamentals are low, thats what school should be for! As I learn basic shapes, linework, perspective, color etc then I would apply those teaching with my native style and, not unlike alchemy, see what the results are, THATS an art education because it gives me tools to learn for myself.
So yeah, fuck Ringling.
If you're an artist, heres my advice. Dont worry about jobs, worry about how awesome you can be and analyze what is stopping you from getting there, its probably not your style but rather being stellar at any particular skill. When you're a beginner you should try to be really good at -one- thing and leverage that to get yourself out there, then start working on the supplementary skills you need to reach that mext level. Maybe its color, maybe its perspective, maybe its storytelling, figure out what it is for you, find the references you need and go chase them as hard as you can. Dont worry if your style is too much of thisor that, if its AWESOME good things will happen.
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!
Well, you can't make a lot of money off of anime... but anime is just animation. If someone's an animator, and they get told "you are drawing Stephen Universe keys now" after doing an anime style for their entire portfolio, a good artist is going to go and figure out how to draw that style. Good animation is good animation, regardless of style.
I think we're in total agreement and I'm just finding things that sound intelligent to say, mind!
I kinda got away with being influenced by anime in art school by actively trying to obscure it and I think in the end it was a good thing. And frankly most of my favorite artists have a very obvious anime influence but they all took it and made something new out of it instead of redrawing actual anime like 12 year olds. Check out Jérémie Perin for Example. His anime influence is obvious yet he has a style that's completely his own. I think that discouraging students from drawing things that look straight out of Anime/Manga is actually a good thing, because it gives us stuff like this:
And here's something I made that's kinda anime but kinda not?
Anyway, an interesting subject for sure.
And here's something I made that's kinda anime but kinda not?
Anyway, an interesting subject for sure.
Because they're incredibly stubborn otherwise.
Not just about checking off boxes.
Yes.
There were eve seniors during my time who had stuck super rigidly to the anime art phase.
That did not go well for them
Copycat syndrome in general is stamped out. Not influence altogether. A student becomes their own person.
Learning WAY into very rare case/major hypothetical here.
Same thing with writing programs.
I had a fiction teacher who outright banned sci-fi / fantasy and a poetry professor who placed a moritorium on submitting rhyming poems.
Sadly all I ever found populating art schools in the form of professors were old self absorbed artists who couldn't make it commercially who could only then make a living by turning their degree towards a teaching role. However, bearing their personal resentment for the industry they were all incapable of surviving in for various reasons they always went on long rants about "commercial art" like it was just shit and was deserving of derision. News flash...why the fuck would anyone want to ignore commercially viable skills in any trade they cared enough to enter a college degree program for? If you can't teach people how to make it commercially what are you teaching them? How to FAIL like they did? How to make art that has to have a fucking backstory announced before it as to its "deeper meaning" to artificially shim up the audience's interest?
You got maybe 5 full seconds before someone viewing art decides if its interesting or not. If you can't capture interest at a glance through composition in skill you fail. Artists that want to talk about that shit forever dont spend enough time fucking doing art and should just go write a damned fanfic about their subject matter already and stop wanking off in the publics ear everytime they do something. Professors that get preachy, that dont appreciate commercially viable art, that dont appreciate that if something has a market its worth learning how its made, are not even has beens....they are those that never were nor will never be significant at art and if the only way to pass their class is do art just like their own then they are not serving their role and only serving their own ego.
Fuck those professors. Fuck those who buy into preachy storytime bullshit and required reading about every pieces significance. Fuck those who demand you reinforce their own illusions of grand vision. The ones to study are the ones who craft methodically for a market and how to sell to those markets. Be they anime artists, comic artists, game artists, or whatever. Those folks tend to be less manic and more serious about just getting down to work and teaching techniques for the student to interpret however they need it to for whatever gig they line up. They understand that you have to turn your skill towards meeting your audience's needs and that those may or may not always coincide with personal preference or varying styles they may like. They take joy in doing a job well. Thats its. No backstories. No ego boosting parroting of just their own likes and dislikes. They do whats needed for the audience thats their own and they do it as well as possible.
Having an appealing style backed by strong fundamentals is a rare case? No wonder art grads have trouble getting jobs!
"Manga" is just a style. Every artist is influenced in different ways, but an employable artist needs to be able to demonstrate both a strong style (to stick out from the pack) and strong fundamentals (so they can be trusted to execute on a wide variety of tasks). A fantastic artist that draws inspiration from Toriyama or Araki is just as legitimate as an artist that draws from Kirby or Herge.
^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^
As in learning the fundamentals while steeped deeply in copycat territory.
If we as a society are going to finally strike the deathblow in the anime scourge then we must uproot the infestation at the school level. It is the only way forward as a species.
For real though, I think that many professors or experienced professionals look down their nose a bit at anime because a large draw of that "style" is the fact that it is relatively cheap to produce in the context of animation and lends itself well to kinetic motion. From their perspective they may view anime as an artistic crutch that enables overly simple and mundane art that lacks the type of compositional or stylistic depth that they're trying to educate their students on. I definitely don't agree with that assessment of it but I can anecdotally attest to friends I've had who saw substantial growth as an artist once they moved away from their anime inspirations.
Quoting for truth.Wow, lots of ... passionate misinformation here, haha.
Ive been around Ringling a fair bunch, its ... a problematic place. My wife graduated with a BFA in illustration and it took us a long time to pay for her 120k plus in college loans. I wont say dont go to art school but I will defimitely say "dont go to Ringling.
As for my own experience I am a Joe Kubert graduate, have a native "anime" style and have worked/done work for many companies like EA, Lab Zero, Fangamer, Capcom, Udon, etc etc for over ten years, Im pretty damn qualified to talk about this topic :P
First thimgs first, in the real world it doesnt matter what style you have, if you're good, you can find work. There are many, MANY outlets out there. Character design, storyboarding, comics, covers, illustrations, vis dev, world building, coloring, layouts, prop designs, weapon designs, creature design, background artists, animators, cleanup artist, shading artists, background designers, special effects artists, graphic designers and the llist goes on and these jobs are available as full time work or as freelance or as part time and they are all over the place with many different needs, goals and challenges. Lots of people take a while to find the right job because they may not be the right fit, but its very, very rarely a case where style comes intoplay, its ,uch more about personality, problem solving and being flexible so you can delover what your project needs
Second thing second, lots of people have no fucking clue what "anime" even is. To some it means "bad art", to some it means "foreign art", to some its just that anime they don't like and thats something I find to be very prevalent.
People dont usually say this is anime style
They say its Ghobli style! How convenient!
Hey guess what, this is anime too
Hell yes backgrounds count, they take way more artists than charavters do!
People like to keep putting art styles into weird boxes. Ome day its calarts style thats making the rounds yet nobody calls that "American Style", we dont do that with Disney, either! Yes, I know that most people associate an anime look with Dragon Ball or some lower common denomination high school show with a bunch of schoolgirls with weird hair and giant eyes but thats as disingenous as watching some shitty Scooby Doo episode and thinking "American Style is garbage". We must become able to discern quality regardless of style.
With that out of the way, lets talk about art education at the college level.
Usually a lot of these horror stories happen to women! My wife was told, in her expensive ass college by a respected FEMALE instructor, to quit drawing and just get married, my friend Missy who is featured in the OP was also lambasted for her style and many of my lady friends have been through it as well. Hell, go to ANY anime convention in America and youll see most artists are women. Women who got fed up with being told they couldnt do what they wanted and became self reliant instead.
Why is that even a thing, you ask? Because manga and anime create fans due to how varied their comtent is, you can have romance, comedy, drama, action, food, sex, kid stuff, politics etc etc instead of 90% superhero books for dudes in the US. There was this group of female nerds waiting for something different since the 90's and with the advent if the internet manga and anime took hold of the female fanbase by giving them the variety they craved for, creating fans!
Many college instructors are too old, out of the loop and not flexible in their thinking. If I have a student that has bad fundamentals, in doesnt matter what style they try, its gonna look like shit .. however, nobody that draws in "the Marvel style" is told to chamge styles, even if they are shitty artists, wonder why that is?
A lot of these older educators probably saw an anime movie, like one of the Dragon Ball ones with Broly or whatever, thought it was ridiculous compared to Beauty and the Beast and just swore off the entire genre altogether. In reality manga and anime should be studied closely because it teaches an artist how to be ruthlessly efficient. When American cartoons like Transformers or Hannah Barbera have to deal with budget issues their shows become a laughing stock due to how obvious they are with their asset reuse but manga and anime have mastered framing, pacing and timing so that they can have compelling entertainment without having to animate or draw everything which is incredibly important to learn in art school.
What any art school should really focus on (aside from failing students which is a whole other deal) is to separate style from fundamentals. A young artist shouldnt be ashamed of their style just because their fundamentals are low, thats what school should be for! As I learn basic shapes, linework, perspective, color etc then I would apply those teaching with my native style and, not unlike alchemy, see what the results are, THATS an art education because it gives me tools to learn for myself.
So yeah, fuck Ringling.
If you're an artist, heres my advice. Dont worry about jobs, worry about how awesome you can be and analyze what is stopping you from getting there, its probably not your style but rather being stellar at any particular skill. When you're a beginner you should try to be really good at -one- thing and leverage that to get yourself out there, then start working on the supplementary skills you need to reach that mext level. Maybe its color, maybe its perspective, maybe its storytelling, figure out what it is for you, find the references you need and go chase them as hard as you can. Dont worry if your style is too much of thisor that, if its AWESOME good things will happen.
But you should expect it when drawing western animation, or what do you mean?
This. Too many students come in with a mentality of" I just want to draw cartoons".
Fuck boy, get that shit out of here. You gon' learn or be shit.
No one cares about your grades. They mean fuck all. Reason why I stopped caring by my last semester.
I think this is a great point. I know the sentiment is "don't lean on a pop art style and branch out" but I find that in practice it amounts to a ban on that style.
