>>34436
Let's try and get to the bottom of it. Here's some examples of western artists making an attempt. Try and think what specifically looks off.

>>34439
That's a good idea.
1 3 and 6 I find it hard to comment on because of the style.
4 I won't say anything about style, it's just awful quality.
It's 2 the type of thing that bothers me since it is so close. The eyes are too aligned and not curved around the head? The mouth looks too in front? The hands are really not cute? The outline of the face is too solid?
And 5 just looks low quality, but I don't know if I'm just primed to nitpick right now. It's better than what I was thinking of, things like pic here:
>>33630
that are way more obvious.

>>34440
>It's 2 the type of thing that bothers me
>things like pic here
These were done by the same artist, also this pic. Being in monochrome makes it harder to tell. >>33630 is also based on a western character. I think the artist is south american, if that makes any difference.

Eyes curving around the head is a very good point. How do you think most Japanese artists in this sort of sphere learn to draw? If it's online tutorials and that kind thing, i'd like to those get translated by somebody.

Post edited on 29th Mar 2020, 9:59pm

>>34441
>How do you think most Japanese artists in this sort of sphere learn to draw
I really think it must stem from childhood education, maybe the kanji develops some sort of brain area.
It isn't just lack of technique.
To demonstrate this let's look at a less skilled japanese artist. Even this still has that neat japanese look.

>>34442
Does this edit affect your perception of the art in any way?

>>34443
Not him, but having jaggedy comic sans with placeholder looking text does effect my overall perception of the image, yes.
If you mean the drawing itself, it's largely unchanged. Maybe the way you saved it made it slightly more compressed, but I wouldn't really know.

>>34443
Not really.
I'm just talking about the actual drawings, not an overall thematic esthetic.

>>34442
>>34445
>maybe the kanji develops some sort of brain area
What about Koreans and Chinese then? Which would you say is closer to the mark? Koreans for the most part don't know kanji and Hangul is only slightly more complicated than the Roman Alphabet. Top is Chinese, bottom is Korean.

>>34446
That's a good point. I like the top ones better but they still look odd. I also thought that taiwanese made rabi ribi is way more convincing than stuff from wayforward for example.
I'm at a loss then, no matter how close these modern attempts from other countries get (with decades of japanese stuff as reference) the fact is that the japanese had that unique look since almost half a century ago, and every artist there picked up on it quite quickly.

>>34446
They have this distinct Chinese/Korean look but it's still somewhat closer to Japanese style compared to your usual Western attempts (thick lines, "Western" nose syndrome and coloring/shading).

Picture related is from one of Katawa Shoujo artists.

>>34442
Reminds me of this:

'I envy the Japanese the extreme clarity that everything in their work has. It's never dull, and never appears to be done too hastily. Their work is as simple as breathing, and they do a figure with a few confident strokes with the same ease as if it was as simple as buttoning your waistcoat'.
- Vincent van Gogh

>>34449
Oh damn. To hell with this topic then, if this guy was envious what chance do I stand.
Japanese are magic, case closed.

>>34447
>>34448
>>34449
Alright, so what happens when Japanese artists try imitating western art? What sort of impression does that give?
>>34450
I think it's a matter of accepting things as they are. No use fretting about something you can't change like your upbringing. Honestly, i'd rather draw like terufuu than like zun.

>>34451
No amount of japan will make disney stuff appealing to me I think. Well Alice is pretty cute, actually.
>Honestly, i'd rather draw like terufuu than like zun.
I see what you are saying but unskilled as he is, zun's work is just naturally appealing enough that he created new iconic characters all over the place

>>34451
>>34452
Worth mentioning that the "Godfather of Manga" Osamu Tezuka took huge inspiration from Disney movies, namely Bambi.

>>34452
>>34453
>No amount of japan will make disney stuff appealing to me I think.
Historically, the orgins of the art style we think of in otaku media comes down to three people, Walt Disney, Carl Banks and Osamu Tezuka. According to this dubious source, Banks and Tezuka were in correspondence until the latter died.
https://victorialiferous.tumblr.com/post/104168819091/osamu-tezuka-and-carl-barks-were-long-time

Here's a comparison of their art.

>>34453
>>34454
Yeah I've read about that, I meant more the specific characters.
Also I can't see much of a stylistic difference from the west in really early japanese animation.
**never mind that found one from 1947 that looks pretty japanese at times
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qguk94-zLAo
I don't understand why I keep messing up the embed.

Post edited on 30th Mar 2020, 11:05am

>>34455
Winsor McCay and Little Nemo are also notable. A large number of people from Ghibli worked on this pilot for the movie. I think it looks better than the final product.
https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=mG-RORpZ3Pk
Here's a clip from the final film, which I'm pretty sure had less involvement from them. The script and voice acting is shit, so i'd turn the audio off.
https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=MIweiW20eE4h
This is the 1911 short Winsor McCay made, a phenomenal feat for its time.
https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=uW71mSedJuU

>>34436
My personal theory is that it has to do with two things in particular.
1: a desire to draw things that are "cute"
2: the way that they "shape draw" when they draw people is fundamentally different due to the way their people look

I know that second one sounds a little hard to believe, so I'll give some explanation. When people first start to draw, they mistakenly draw faces and objects using the "shapes" they think those things are made out of, rather than the actual lines and contours of the object. For example, a young western child trying to draw eyes will draw eyeballs as ellipses, they will draw large noses mad of triangular and circular shapes, and the head will be a long oval. As they progress in drawing, they will continue to "shape draw" until taught by a serious teacher, by which point certain conceptions of the fundamental shapes of humans are impossible to remove. From that point on they will always subconsciously draw people with those original simple abstractions in mind, no matter how well they can imitate real images. The is where the fundamental difference lies in my opinion. In japan, a child would NOT draw peoples eyes using the ellipse shape, nor would they make the face and oval, and the nose, being flat, most likely would take a lesser prominence on the face. In particular, the very core of the difference lies in the shape of the upper eye and eyelashes. There is a very specific oriental shape to their eyes, and that is what they are trained to see from birth. That is why western "anime" characters just don't look right, no matter how hard they imitate anime as an art-style they will always be trying to "shape draw" something different. When they draw eyes, they are trying to fit it into their perception of what an "eye" is made out of geometrically.

>>34457
I used to draw from life a lot. When I first started, I tired drawing the entire outer "outline" of an object before going on the "inside" to put all the details. Then somebody told me to draw shapes instead, thinking about form instead of lines, and my drawings got substantially better. The world isn't made out of lines. I never drew people though.

Post edited on 30th Mar 2020, 2:58pm

>>34457
I find it pretty believable. The fact that we see faces at all is a very specific structure of visual neuron. No reason to believe this structure is the same in all races.

>>34457
Okay, let's compare children's drawings then. Top is Japanese, bottom is western. They both use dots in the earliest stages. Maybe noses are more pronounced in the west?

>>34460
How are you finding these so quickly?

>>34461
Google and pixiv. I translated "children's drawing" to get the top ones. Maybe I'll get some middle schooler drawings next.

Maybe i'm reaching. I probably am, but the top ones might not outline the face as much. Instead there's more blobs of colors for the face. If i'm remembering right, skin tone crayons weren't that common in kindergarten. I had to use orange and red a lot, and it looked wrong.

Post edited on 30th Mar 2020, 3:59pm

>>34462
Alright, thanks.
Browsing through I think there's a difference, the western ones seem to have less compact faces. Also the japanese ones seem to have at least hints of specular highlights in the eyes more often. And you are definitely right on the outlines.

Post edited on 30th Mar 2020, 4:02pm

>>34460
Look at the eyelashes and the noses, when the japanese kids drew noses they drew them wide or not at all, and eyelashes are a single pointed line going out to the side. Western kids drew eyelashes as strands pointing upwards, and noses are long. Also, the faces seem to be generally longer. There's something else as well but I can't put my finger on it. I can tell that there's a difference, maybe it's the line work?

>>34457
If it's due to physiology, the next obvious question is: why is it even appealing to us?

>>34465
Good question. It's also not like anime characters actually look like asian people either for the most part. It's not an accurate portrayal.

>>34466
I think what you are saying is correct, but there's a caveat. Even though I don't like cosplay in general, westerners in anime cosplay look even grosser than asian 3dpd cosplaying.
So I agree that the characters don't look asian, but still asians approximate them best.

>>34467
Westerner is broad. Slavic girls look very very different from anglo-saxon girls. A very cutsey Ukrainan girl would probably look better in cosplay than an orange-skinned square face, especially if it's something like silent hill or resident evil.

Pic is Van Gough's Japanoise imitation of a wood-print.

Post edited on 30th Mar 2020, 4:48pm

>>34468
Yeah it's broad, I'm just saying the closest I've seen is asian. There's also that one famous turkish girl I suppose.***
***Oh jesus no, I hadn't looked her up in years. Forget that. Time is cruel, memories are unreliable, 3dpd is never OK.

>>34470
Anzujaamu? I'm not a fan of cosplay either, I just looked up "turkish girl cosplay". In the pictures where she looks like a doll, it's okay, but that's all just makeup. Without any she's totally off the mark. It might as well be an actual mask.

>>34471
Yeah.I had fuzzy memories of the pics.
I just saw her on video, it's horrifying.
Anyway, I stand by the idea that even though in a non obvious and unrealistic manner, the art style does reflect the japanese appearance.

It might be interesting to add that the MC in Eizouken also looks pretty ugly, almost like a JP imitation of a western character akin to (>>33630). I'm assuming the "ugly western aesthetic" was intentional just because of how different the artwork is to what you usually see an anime, so it might be fruitful to use that as a basis for comparison.

>>34473
It's trigger-esque. Pic was drawn by Takafumi Hori.

>>34473
Not just the MC, eizouken's OP is one of the uglier things I've seen in a while as a whole, music included.
Panty & stocking might also be of interest here.

>>34473
Eizouken is weird. It's supposed to be about how great anime is, but it seems afraid to look like one. The colors are also too muted.
>>34475
I don't mind the song but the OP sequence is terrible. There's something like 10 frames of unique animation, and 30 seconds of it is just the title fading out. I'm irritated at all the praise it gets compared to so many other great openings and endings this season.

I just remembered that I used to think anime was inspired by cats. Don't know if it's just a personal thing but maybe it's worth mentioning.
>>34476
>I'm irritated at all the praise it gets
The moment I looked at it I knew it was bait for a large and obnoxious audience. I was surprised that it wasn't produced for netflix.

>I just remembered that I used to think anime was inspired by cats. Don't know if it's just a personal thing but maybe it's worth mentioning.
Generally, cats are super cute, and their eyes are an important component to their perceived adorableness. So I can understand your former thinking.

>>34477
Hm maybe that's why catgirls work so well

>>34477
Anime as a whole probably wasn't directly inspired by cats, but there's a lot of characters I've seen that I tend to think act like cats or look like cats.
Maybe that's just because I have too many cats.

"NECO DROP"
Capcom's new cat based puzzle game lets you unlock cat versions of your favorite Street Fighter characters
https://game.capcom.com/cfn/sfv/necodrop

>>33637
That last part about including something because one happens to like it looks more like a feature common to lots of different kinds of literatures to me; as opposed to anime in particular, that is. Be that as it may, it certainly is one of fiction's major allures.

>>33625
Maybe the uniqueness of Japanese anime / culture is just a myth after all; one that large parts of the world have been, not even consciously, fostering for centuries. Of course there must be an air of elusive exceptionality blowing into the face of someone considering Anime in such an environment. The reason, however, is not some innate property of Anime, but as I mentioned before, the great effort that has been undertaken to write the elusive qualities of Japaneseness into Japan.

I rather western animation do their own thing rather than shamelessly copy anime.

>>38371
They do. And it's shit.

>>38377
Spiderverse is an exception

If you ever spend any time in western art communities, one thing you'll notice is how absurdly obsessed everyone is with finding their very own super special and unique art style. Basically, aspiring anime-style artists are pressured into committing artistic self-sabotage.

>>42242
Gonna be worse now than AI-generated art is out in the wild. Art-styles will go even more unhinged...

>>42242
>western art
And then they all look like the same ugly ethically diverse fat bloated over stylized characters with big red noses.

>>42242
Once I believe the epitome of art was to look like a photograph. Ah, simpler times.