On Anime Style
September 1st, 2009. Categories: Comics, Garanos, Illustration, Musings, Projects.When I work on comics, or anything else for that matter, I typically have some sort of background noise going in the form of music or a DVD. I can’t even count how many times I’ve watched Home Movies or The Office all the way through. It had been awhile since I’d pulled out Sailor Moon, though, so I’ve rewatched the first three seasons in the last week.
My Sailor Moon R (2nd season) box set was quite dusty, in fact, when I pulled it out. Unfortunately, I’d only gotten R when the first and second season box sets were available, since I got it for a Christmas present and the giver had gotten the two box sets mixed up. I got about three quarters of the way through the second season when I decided I wanted to watch the first season again, so I tracked down a copy of it, marathoned it over two days, then finished R. Then Chris and I watched Sailor Moon S together, since he hadn’t seen it.
He’s insisting we take a break before we move on to SuperS. Nonetheless, here’s a picture of Sailor Mars I drew the other night when I was in the mood.
Watching Sailor Moon made me pine a bit for the days when I was drawing straight anime and not feeling self-conscious about it. Fine art professors will do that to you, I’m afraid.
I made the hard switch to a significantly less-anime style for Garanos Volume II because of the pressure to perform for my academic superiors. When the time came, I had a lot of fun doing the Volume I cover since it was closer to my old way of doing things; it was like slipping into a comfortable pair of shoes. Soon after that, it occurred to me that a) I’m not in school anymore, so my professors no long have jurisdiction about what should be in my portfolio, and b) I enjoy drawing anime-style.
I’m not doing this comic for them, and I never was in the first place. In other words…
They can’t tell me what to do! They’re not the boss of me! I do what I want!
So I did just that. I started drawing what I wanted.
Starting with page 337, there’s a significant loosening-up of my drawing style, which had effects on the final colored pages. I stopped trying so hard to be un-anime that I was able to loosen up and settle into a style that’s now truly a fusion of then and now.
Ultimately, the artistic growth I’ve gone through from the switch has been worthwhile. But sometimes I wonder what Garanos would look like now, had I ignored the chanting of “Anime is Just One Style” and continued to let my style at the end of Volume I evolve organically through the pages that followed.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:13 pm
I’ve been an arbiter for the “get away from the anime style” movement for a while, although I am nowhere near as bad as art teachers (having experienced it in high school). I like anime, and I can completely admire an anime artist with an original style. It’s the “generic” anime style that I can’t get behind. It looks too homogeneous and it doesn’t really encourage the artist to expand much further than being able to emulate that overall style.*
I’ll fully admit that when I switched Bardsworth to color, I deliberately went with an anime-like style shift in order to better market it. Yes, I’m a whore. But since then I’ve been trying to slowly break out of it. I don’t think it’s as easy to classify myself as being anime-like anymore, and I’d like to think it’s my own style. Which is the bottom line I always tell young artists – your style should be your own.
All that having been said, I can honestly say that I’ve never thought “anime” when I look at your art, Alex. I can see where it’s been inspired by it, but it’s definitely your style. Which is why I love it so much.
*And don’t even get me started on the throbbing forehead veins, the sweat drops, the literal sound effects (“falls over”), and the other cliche anime things that artists stick into their work.