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Someone
You need to stop drawing anime.

This isn't something you have a choice in. If you are truly serious about your artistic improvement, you need to stop drawing anime. You can go back to it later once you've learned the basics, but until you have a firm grasp of anatomy, value/light, perspective, color theory, composition, etc. you are not ready to stylize in any capacity. Being an artist is fucking hard, and you cannot cut corners just because you don't want to spend time learning the boring things. Very few people want to actually draw photorealism, but you have to know how. Simplifying forms, in a way, is much, much harder than drawing things as they are.

Realism is not a style, but a foundation upon which all other art forms are based. Every truly successful artist learned to draw from life before he stylized his artwork. Even abstraction is grounded in life (albeit further removed than some other forms); an abstract artist still needs to know how to use symbols to connote feelings and represent complex forms. He has to know what a real person looks like to be able to create a symbol which registers as "human" to the viewer. He has to know how colors and shapes and their arrangement subtly affect the human mind in order to invoke the desired emotion within the painting. All of these things apply to anime/manga artists as well.

A realistic painter, an abstract artist and a mangaka (I feel gay saying this but I don't want to repeat "___ artist" again) all draw the same thing: the human form. Each artist does so in a different manner, but fundamentally, they are representing the same exact thing. Each of these artists learn, or at least should learn, how to draw the human form in the same way -- they start with what they see, and only after that has been mastered do they move onto exaggerating and altering the anatomy and form in favor of something more aethestically pleasing or appropriate for the piece's mood and context. You cannot start drawing things stylized to begin with, or your learnings are fundamentally flawed from the beginning; instead of consciously stylizing things in a way to make them more appealing, you end up languishing in ignorance, further and further distorting the form until it's so far gone it's not even recognizably human -- you're stylizing something that is already a stylization. It just doesn't work. You have to have that foundation, something you can return to in order to understand what makes something human and what makes something not look human, or you will be completely blind to your errors.

Tracing the footsteps of an artist you admire is always more productive than blindly copying his final works. And I will reiterate, yet again, what exactly every single successful artist in history has done: he learned from life. He drew what he saw, he studied anatomy, he carefully watched how light behaved, and he supplemented his observations with textbook knowledge that was not drawn by 13 year old girls on DevianTART. Yes, even anime/manga artists. Amuria and Ramy are not people you should aspire to.

Picture related. It's by Pablo Picasso, one of the most famous abstract artists of all time. Even he knew how to make a realistic painting; it was his solid foundation in the basics of art that made his subsequent foray into the abstract arts so successful.

here's some great tutorial stuff:
http://ipgd.freehostia.com/

I'd agree with it, but only from a Western early 20th century point of view.
It's certainly the way I advise people to go, but it's not the only way. That sort of thinking and training didn't start until the 19th C really and had its heyday in the early 20th C before people went back to simply being influenced by other secondary works- well away from any realist source or inspiration.

of course you could cite the Renaissance where they started using realism again as a basis for their artwork, but the only purpose was to achieve an idolised pastiche of the imagery they saw being dug up from ancient Greece and Rome in the form of mosaics, frescos, and statuary... Quite often real influences weren't needed as a source for the imagery they produced. You could argue again that the trend had existed in ancient Greece, Rome and Egypt where a lot of very realistic sculptures have been retrieved, but really that trend had a limited place and seems confined to statuary only and only for certain periods.

Throughout most history around the world in fine arts, crafts and even things like graphic design, imagery and technique has been based on copying popular stylisations and improving on or just using those already in existence, rather than going to a primary source.

:)

So for some of the modern styles we have and to improve things like anatomy I'd give the advice you quote lists, but it doesn't work for everyone in all situations and never has.

I agree 100%.

Hawk
I agree 100%.

Without qualification the article is nothing but fascist doctrine. There's not the one way to do things. It might be the way you and I would use, but only because of the way we work.
Think a little and you'll come up with many styles of art involving the human figure that are not enhanced in any way by drawing from life and never have been.

Why not practice realism AND manga at the same time? If drawing realistically is so painful to whomever this person is addressing, then they don't have to drop everything and learn realism.

It's like having a dinner comprised solely of broccoli. Sure, it's good for you, but you want some fun/exploration too.

ozoneocean
Without qualification the article is nothing but fascist doctrine. There's not the one way to do things. It might be the way you and I would use, but only because of the way we work.
Think a little and you'll come up with many styles of art involving the human figure that are not enhanced in any way by drawing from life and never have been.

I disagree with that. In practicing the human figure you can learn things about form and proportion that can stretch beyond drawing humans. I've had a car designer tell me that figure drawing was a big help. I think you could become a good artist without realistically studying the human figure, but you'd be sacrificing a greater potential.

And calling it "fascist" is a bit much, don't you think? The quote is simply reactionary to all the kids who think becoming an inferior copy of their favorite manga artist is good enough to make them a pro. And I think it would actually help them to follow this advice.

for most people, manga-ka or not that want to make art on the human form then yes,you really should learn how the body works. take a step or two back. it really will improve your qualitity because it'll make more sense to you instead of just copying someone else's style.

as for TOTALLY forgetting everything you've picked up from someone else, that's impossible.ESPECIALLY if you've been drawing this way for a long time.
when i used to draw manga, i was really into Akira Toriyama's stuff, when i changed my style, there were a few things that stayed without me even noticing really. probably becuase when i started doing these things, it made a lot of sense to have them there. for instance, sometimes his characters have lines under their eyes, like where the bags under the eyes are and it just seemed to add such great depth to the face, i just naturally put them there. a lot of the big leaguers DO study anatomy. that's why some things you pick up from them WILL make sense and therefore may never leave.

but if you can understand it for yourself, it will be much MUCH more useful to you. the human body is INCREDIBLY complicated. study skeletal and muscular medical posters and stuff like that, see how each muscle overlays and underlays eachother to make pullys and balls and joints. the better you understand it, the better your art will be. you style'll come into play with how you'll represent what you learned. hypothetically, it's the skin you put over the muscles.

Well, only if the person has already taken an interest in drawing/art.

If not, then why not let them draw Manga for a little while, and then work their way up to the basics. I mean, people should like drawing, not despise it, and see it as boring.

Sure, Manga is seen as the over-rated art style used in comicking, but if it's going to get someone into drawing, then why not?

Like Kirsten Gudsnuk said, why couldn't they practice both at the same time?
Nothing wrong with that.

Hawk
I disagree with that. In practicing the human figure you can learn things about form and proportion that can stretch beyond drawing humans. I've had a car designer tell me that figure drawing was a big help. I think you could become a good artist without realistically studying the human figure, but you'd be sacrificing a greater potential.

And calling it "fascist" is a bit much, don't you think? The quote is simply reactionary to all the kids who think becoming an inferior copy of their favorite manga artist is good enough to make them a pro. And I think it would actually help them to follow this advice.

I'm not calling it fascist. I said "Without qualification the article is nothing but fascist doctrine", the meaning is obvious; I'm complaining about the lack of subtlety and qualification to the view point presented there. The theme is that there is "one way to do something", that is less true in art than most fields you care to name ;)

The stuff you mention about the human figure is very nice and I practice that myself, as I've said in every post. But I'm afraid that and other types of life drawing are only applicable to a small section of artistic practice, in any field, at any level, commercial, private, whatever.

But for the purposes of simplicity, and in fairness to people without as wide an exposure I'll only address representational forms- Much art the imagery throughout time and even today, only has a broad, tangential relationship to the real world; not only is accuracy and knowledge of the real objects unneeded, it's irrelevant. This is because a lot of artistic practise IS NOT based around reality, even when seeming to reflect it.... Rather it's a kind of visual "language", in those cases you don't learn by going back to the "real thing" any more than you learn human speech by listening to monkeys or birdsong. When depictions follow a symbolic logic and codified form you can only learn by imitation, because those styles only make sense and exist because of that unbroken chain.
In fact, any variation brought about by introducing other factors is detrimental to the styles.

man... that's deep. *goes off to "What the Heck!" forum*

the style that anime is in now is simply due to deadlines. manga chapters are due in a week...thats 19 PAGES A WEEK!!!!!!!!!! that same amount of pages takes the average american comic book artist a month...so thus the simplified cartoon-ish-ness, and the decompressed stories with one or two panels per page and lots of speedlines. its a necessity. now if those artists were not doing that frenetic pace, their work would be more detailed and probably look a lot closer to comic art...thus why you often see alot of better stuff from manga-kas outside of their comic. they take their time with it.

anime is just a style, like comics. if you are just starting out with drawing, you need to learn the basics...it doesnt matter what style you say you want to draw, you need to know whats right so you can make it wrong. shortcuts only hurt you in the end.

NickGuy
the style that anime is in now is simply due to deadlines. manga chapters are due in a week...thats 19 PAGES A WEEK!!!!!!!!!!

Except there are bi-weekly and monthly magazines too. Thus, Berserk is biweekly, meanwhile Claymore is monthly.

NickGuy
that same amount of pages takes the average american comic book artist a month...so thus the simplified cartoon-ish-ness, and the decompressed stories with one or two panels per page and lots of speedlines. its a necessity.

I just checked to be sure. Akira was serialized in a weekly magazine. that's certainly NOT simplified :)

NickGuy
now if those artists were not doing that frenetic pace, their work would be more detailed and probably look a lot closer to comic art...

*resists urge to post a liefeld drawing as he doesn't want to be that evil*
Seriously though. Nothing shouts "comic art" more than Kirby, and he drew several pages a day.

NickGuy
thus why you often see alot of better stuff from manga-kas outside of their comic. they take their time with it.

I... think that goes for every kind of art? Although you can get amazing results with fast art too.

Partial agreement.

Because its only about the TECHNICAL aspect of it. Of course you gotta know the basic concepts of perspective, figure drawing, etc. before you stylize your drawing. Because before I took any formal art classes, I absolutely had no theory whatsoever about perspective and human proportions and doing action poses.

Pay attention to bottom left panel. Perspective is ALL OVER the place. I had no idea about vanishing points. Also the arms and legs look too robotic. There's no form to them.
http://www.geocities.com/bk_killer21/chapter21/killer21_7.jpg

Midpanel's perspective is off.
http://kyupol.bravepages.com/chapter44/killer44_8.JPG

In this one, my proportions are off as well as the poses look really stale.
http://www.geocities.com/bk_killerinstinct/killer19.1.gif


But on the other hand, your art can be average but you got a good story or just at the right place at the right time, you can be a success.

In this one, the perspective is off and the fight poses don't look convincing.


And in this one, for some reason I feel that the artist was feeling a little awkward and uneasy.
I know that most of you posting in this thread can draw better than that.


However, Combatron is like a comic book legend in the Philippines.

Berlin Manalaysay (the original author) improved over the years. But during the early days... his art was mediocre at best. He had a good storyline and alot of guts to get his stuff published.

Bad art is the only possible if the artist isn't really trying. I think that there is no wrong way to be an artist. Art is about expressing YOUR ideals in a way that's visable. It's your soul nobody can tell you that it's right or wrong. There are certainly different skill levels and you can increase your skill if you wish to practice these things but it is never necessary. If you are expressing what you set out to express then it's right and I would say that this person is a facist.

I'm with kyupol in that I agree with some reservations. True enough, if you learned how to draw from "How to Draw Manga" you might have the chops to cut it in a place like Deviant Art but if you're trying to be a professional you're going to have to try a bit harder. I actually have had people that were learning drawing from HtDM come up to me and ask me for advice only to promptly dismiss it because it wasn't "manga enough."
Not to say that an art style with strange anatomy or wonky perspectives can't be or isn't interesting. As long as people are trying something new and being weird in new ways I can like it. I like Warped's style because his characters have kind of strange proportions and anatomical structure, but they're so unique-looking that I really like them. Cristy Road has some really odd perspectives in a lot of her drawings but if the perspective more correct I'd think that they'd be a lot less interesting. I realize that neither of those are really "anime-style" but I hope my point comes across. Personally I'm just as bored with realism as I am with "generic manga."

patrickdevine
I'm with kyupol in that I agree with some reservations. True enough, if you learned how to draw from "How to Draw Manga" you might have the chops to cut it in a place like Deviant Art but if you're trying to be a professional you're going to have to try a bit harder. I actually have had people that were learning drawing from HtDM come up to me and ask me for advice only to promptly dismiss it because it wasn't "manga enough."
Not to say that an art style with strange anatomy or wonky perspectives can't be or isn't interesting. As long as people are trying something new and being weird in new ways I can like it. I like Warped's style because his characters have kind of strange proportions and anatomical structure, but they're so unique-looking that I really like them. Cristy Road has some really odd perspectives in a lot of her drawings but if the perspective more correct I'd think that they'd be a lot less interesting. I realize that neither of those are really "anime-style" but I hope my point comes across. Personally I'm just as bored with realism as I am with "generic manga."

I definitely agree with you here.
Proper anatomy is a great thing to learn, but if you're purposely going for out-of-whack proportions, then go right ahead! That's what I love about One Piece. The hands are too big, and the legs are too long. But it's so good! I think every comic could learn from that. Not necessarily from One Piece, but to learn how to do their own 'style'

As someone paid to give educational advice for a living, the advice block is harsh but correct IF the goal is to be the most versatile artist possible. It is, in other words, good advice to give to an art student or an experienced artist stuck in a stylistic rut, but is presupposes that the artist WANTS to become an all around versatile artist.

The reason that it is more or less good advice is that it is most likely to produce an artist capable of getting a job or landing a commission in most styles. It represents, however, a tremendous amount of hard work and nearly singleminded dedication to a goal plan that, frankly, many artistic types cannot manage.

For every one disciplined artistic type capable of following such advice through to completion and therefore benefiting tremendously there are dozens of artistic types that WILL NOT be able to do it because they do not possess the necessary self-discipline.

It's better to combine -- in this case -- the two goals. Continue to produce Japanese style while ALSO working as hard as you can to master the fundamental elements of classical western art stylings and study courses. That is, at least, a more realistic approach to offering useful advice.

patrickdevine
True enough, if you learned how to draw from "How to Draw Manga" you might have the chops to cut it in a place like Deviant Art but if you're trying to be a professional you're going to have to try a bit harder.

It's kinda funny, cause we had exactly TWO things on drawing available here.
First, the "how to draw manga" books. And second, of which I totally forgot until it popped back into my memory a minute ago, a "magazine" on drawing (no idea if you had these but you buy an issue every week or month and the first issue comes with a special binder to store the consecutive issues... I actually recall having an issue or two of that one and I remember it was a great shock to me. "Whaaat? they want me to draw caricatures of real people? No way I can draw anything that realistic... these exercises are BORING" and I never really got anything out of that :(

Oh well, kinda hard to break a lifelong habit of drawing from imagination :D

Still, if you know the rules, you can break them more effectively.

Ryuthehedgewolf
I definitely agree with you here.
Proper anatomy is a great thing to learn, but if you're purposely going for out-of-whack proportions, then go right ahead! That's what I love about One Piece. The hands are too big, and the legs are too long. But it's so good! I think every comic could learn from that. Not necessarily from One Piece, but to learn how to do their own 'style'

Oda's work is so amazing! I don't consider him to be a "manga" artist in the tradition sense anyway. I mean he doesn't draw like a Japanese person and he rarely uses screentone. Let's think about this has anybody ever seen Matt Groening's actual artwork. He's a really terrible cartoonist but he's created two of the most popular cartoons out there.

Warpedwenger
Bad art is the only possible if the artist isn't really trying. I think that there is no wrong way to be an artist. Art is about expressing YOUR ideals in a way that's visable. It's your soul nobody can tell you that it's right or wrong. There are certainly different skill levels and you can increase your skill if you wish to practice these things but it is never necessary. If you are expressing what you set out to express then it's right and I would say that this person is a facist.

i agree in so many ways with you

we're talking about art, unlike math, physics and other similar disciplines, art's meaning and works are subjective, art's main nature lies in the communicative spectrum, so the best concept you could compare art with would be language, both art and language are methods used to express ideas, or any sort of systematized concepts which group together to become a solid entity, that's how these kinds of things work, even when they can be classified, deconstructed and experimented with, they cannot be encased within the scientific method and thus become flexible, for example, language has been studied and treated with the help of sciences like grammar,linguistics and semiotics, according to most studies these disciplines have made during the past century, language can be subject to some rigid and straight rules to secure it's pureness regarding it's origins and proper use of concepts according to these laws, but that's not the way things progress, the randomness of events or mere circumstantial changes on even a specific or small word can change the course of language over the years, so that's how the natural process of language evolution and transformation occurs.

art is subject to those very same processes, sure you can apply as rigid (not bad by any means) concepts as physics, anatomy, light, perspective and such, but you're not defining art by doing this, neither systematize it, you are merely creating guidelines for the use and reproduction of a certain technique, yes, realism (or as i prefer to call it reality, due to realism being the reproduction of reality) was the base for many, if not most of the world's first attempts in the execution of art, but it was not the reproduction of that reality what defined art, but rather the mere fact of the execution of his characteristics.

to sum up everything:

* Art its a subjective concept (hence the existence of dadaism)
* It's laws are subjective
* It's use , it's nature and definition are decided by those who make it.

so then, i must say realism would sure help some people (if not most people) in their development of certain art skills, but it won't be the only way for people to improve, the manga phenomenon and its artistic repercussions (mainly in the number of adepts) are similar in nature to the internet's language, yeah, both might deviate in some way from the established parameters, but that doesn't mean it's members are less of an artist or speaker than it's "correct" counterparts.

Even though my comics are more of the manga-style variety, I totally agree with this article. It's especially true if you're wanting to work professionally somewhere in the art field; it'll be hard for you to land a job with a portfolio filled with nothing but anime-styled art. If manga is your personal style, then that's fine, but you also need a solid foundation in "realism" to make your art all the more better.

Of course, that's not to say that if you don't draw manga-style, then you don't have to worry about your art being stupid and amateur. (Rob Liefeld, I'm talking to you.)

Warpedwenger

Ryuthehedgewolf
I definitely agree with you here.
Proper anatomy is a great thing to learn, but if you're purposely going for out-of-whack proportions, then go right ahead! That's what I love about One Piece. The hands are too big, and the legs are too long. But it's so good! I think every comic could learn from that. Not necessarily from One Piece, but to learn how to do their own 'style'

Oda's work is so amazing! I don't consider him to be a "manga" artist in the tradition sense anyway. I mean he doesn't draw like a Japanese person and he rarely uses screentone. Let's think about this has anybody ever seen Matt Groening's actual artwork. He's a really terrible cartoonist but he's created two of the most popular cartoons out there.

Oh I'm not saying by any means that Oda's work is bad. I love his artwork! I'm just saying, that he has his own kind of 'style' for anatomy. It's out-of-whack, but it looks great!

I think I have seen some of Matt Groening's artwork. It's not very good :P

If someone directed that towards me to spite them I would show them my best realistic painting. It is a weak argument to say you haven't fully mastered anatomy, value/light, perspective, color theory, composition so stop experimenting.

As for my personal philosophy and what I teach my students: I agree 100%. In fact, that sounds like somethin' that would come out of my mouth, minus the specific references to manga.

I used to be of the "Whatever! I'll do what I want!" camp. I just wanted to draw comics and cartoons. I thought realism was boring. I still think it's boring, but knowing how to do it has made the stuff I like doing 300% better. Sure, I don't need to know correct anatomy or perspective or other stuff that make up the foundations of drawing- and I might make some pretty cool-lookin' art that way (that is, if I was the type to make cool-lookin' art at all). But I'd rather have the option of doing so or not.

But folks are free to take that kind of advice or not, and it ain't necessarily a recipe for success or the only road to bein' a skilled artist.