the simpson's has the privilege of having the demand to use as many resources as it needs.

Yep, they have hordes of asian communist slaves.

Anime doesn't really do a lot for me, tbh. I thought Akira was cool when I first saw it in the early 90s, but most of the stuff I've seen since doesn't really match that level of detail and the "big eyes" thing is just plain creepy IMO.

[quote name='way2lazy2care' timestamp='1310591217' post='4835002']
the simpson's has the privilege of having the demand to use as many resources as it needs.

Yep, they have hordes of asian communist slaves.
[/quote]
rofl. I've never seen that one before.

The Simpsons and Bob's Burgers I believe are both hand drawn.

If you watch newer episodes they'll randomly rotate the screen showing their 3D graphics. I'm pretty sure it's all digital now. Maybe they export the coloring though since that sounds tedious.

I used to watch anime a lot and was at one point very fond of the art style. I used to draw everything in that style.

Then I saw it everywhere and started to get sick of it. I pretty much can't stand it any more. The best anime style in my opinion is the least "anime" in a way. Realistic proportions and as little of the anime tropes as possible (extreme expressions, huge sweat drops, veins on the head, you know where I'm going with this).

The actual animation is even more annoying to me with the prolonged sessions of standing still with only a single thing moving in a scene at a time. The detail gets in the way of it in this case when it becomes too expensive to animate it properly.

To each their own though.

American animations mainly focus on graphical output which tries to dress up a shallow story with no emotional depth, they do not generate emotions, but they try to impose them especially through exaggerated gestics. While watching them, many times I ended up with forced laughs or smiles (the scene somehow forces me to laugh, but there's nothing funny, like in those sitcoms that have background laughs just to tell you that you are supposed to laugh there). They are easy to watch and are mainly for kids and because of that everyone thinks animations = childish.

Japanese anime are on the other side of the coin, although in the recent years their graphical technology has greatly improved, their primary target is to generate emotions and the pictures are just a way for the viewer to get inside the artist's mind. The so called "big eyes" are the perfect example of that, the eyes are the mirror of the soul and making them bigger allows them to express emotions much easier. Usually kids have larger eyes than adults to express their emotional sensibility.

Anime is much more than simple animated cartoons, it's a form of art and therefore it can be much harder to digest and you need to be open to the story, egocentric and biased people will find hard to understand what the artist is trying to communicate and they will judge everything by their own understanding, ruining the big picture for themselves (same thing as putting ketchup in everything they eat).

The first thing that amazed me when I discovered anime is the absence of rules, the freedom of art, you can find many anime that will probably never be allowed to be aired in some western countries.

American animations mainly focus on graphical output which tries to dress up a shallow story with no emotional depth, they do not generate emotions, but they try to impose them especially through exaggerated gestics. While watching them, many times I ended up with forced laughs or smiles (the scene somehow forces me to laugh, but there's nothing funny, like in those sitcoms that have background laughs just to tell you that you are supposed to laugh there). They are easy to watch and are mainly for kids and because of that everyone thinks animations = childish.

Which american animation are you referring to? Most of the disney films have huge amounts of emotional depth; significantly more than many anime's I've seen.

American animations mainly focus on graphical output which tries to dress up a shallow story with no emotional depth, they do not generate emotions, but they try to impose them especially through exaggerated gestics. While watching them, many times I ended up with forced laughs or smiles (the scene somehow forces me to laugh, but there's nothing funny, like in those sitcoms that have background laughs just to tell you that you are supposed to laugh there). They are easy to watch and are mainly for kids and because of that everyone thinks animations = childish.

Ever seen Futurama? I could argue that is an emotional show with much better character development than most Animes. Then again if you compare it against like Family Guy which is really just there for the comedy then yeah you're not going to find much emotion. On the other hand the Simpson's has some classic emotional moments if you look for them.

Ever seen Futurama? I could argue that is an emotional show with much better character development than most Animes. Then again if you compare it against like Family Guy which is really just there for the comedy then yeah you're not going to find much emotion. On the other hand the Simpson's has some classic emotional moments if you look for them.

The holophoner episodes are actually some of the most emotional animation I've seen. :[

significantly more than many anime's I've seen.

You probably need to see better Anime then ;)

I used to play some japanese rpgs when I was younger, I loved the story, the visuals and so on. It wasn't untill I was older that I realised it was pretty much anime (I had anime/manga assosiated with weirdos and obsessivess even though I didn't really know what it was). Now I love anime, some are not so good but I've seen some really great ones. I miss those old games I used to play. I bought Recettear not so long ago because I thought the style looked great. I've played it quite a bit and enjoy it.

Anyway, I do really like the style but it just wouldn't be the same without all the other Japanese influence that goes with it.

Any artist capable enough to draw manga should be capable enough to develop their own style. Nothing exists in a vacuum, we all communicate both explicitly through shared language and implicitly through shared culture. Every element of an artist's style communicates something, it's the nature of art. Thus, choosing to use the manga style is also consciously choosing to associate ones work with other manga and its culture; in other words, you cannot disassociate the good from the bad, they are fundamentally linked.


Don't want your work to be associated with manga culture? Don't draw manga. There is nothing inherent to the style that accounts for the good qualities you have assigned to it. It's all in the skill of the artist, which will come through regardless of style.