1. #1

    Is it true American art education disdain and/or even discourage anime style?

    Just been reading about this. A student was even suspended for drawing Japanese style animation

    https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDr...nd_artist_who/

    Like would anyone here know? It's be interesting.

  2. #2
    When I was in high school my art teacher discouraged anime style in his classes. I mean he flat out said you can't do it in his class.

    Which is fine because they probably wouldn't teach it properly so no one would improve. Which is the important part. A good artist should be able to adapt to that stuff anyway, and anything you do that is making you better is going to reflect on everything you do.

  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by HitRefresh View Post
    When I was in high school my art teacher discouraged anime style in his classes. I mean he flat out said you can't do it in his class.

    Which is fine because they probably wouldn't teach it properly so no one would improve. Which is the important part. A good artist should be able to adapt to that stuff anyway, and anything you do that is making you better is going to reflect on everything you do.
    that's informative. Thank you.

  4. #4
    Do you have a source that isn't reddit? I can't be arsed to make sense of that. I literally can't get past of the retarded thread title.

    /r/Socialism bans 3 year contributor and artist who drew their banner, after learning she has drawn sfw pictures of girls with cat ears. people infuriated. Orwell weeps.
    Otherwise I call bollocks.

  5. #5
    japanese people draw in different styles too.

    when you learn art you need to go through the basics. copying anyone's stylized technique is counter-productive, but i think that anime is particularly popular to draw reference from. but it definitely follows that if your instructor was trained primarily in western techniques, you'll focus on western techniques. you can't teach what you don't know.

  6. #6
    "Japanese" anime style is actually just the disney style that the japanese adapted cause they liked it. If you look at traditional japanese art it looks nothing like anime style. I do not understand why anyone would have disdain for cartoon drawings, thinking they dont have any value when it comes to art education. Unless you're trying to learn realism.

  7. #7
    Actually, in a rare example of useful comments here, post 7 is spot on. Of all the things in the world Donald Duck comics were the inspiration of the creator of Astro, the father of manga style.

  8. #8
    It is discouraged in any respectable art institute. It's not because teachers don't like it, it's because anime style doesn't help you learn more difficult aspects of drawing. I was watching some documentary on this topic the other day, and evidently its the same story in Japan as well.
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  9. #9
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  10. #10
    I can't say it's encouraged in Asian art schools either. I went to Chinese and Russian (not Asian, obv) art schools, not for a degree, just for personal development.

    Ofc there's people who coach others to draw in this style, but in general almost everywhere in the world art education is kinda similar: you learn the basics, various tropes and techniques, how to do certain things efficiently, which quite often may be not really obvious.

    Major difference is that you tend to learn more about local known artists of the past and present, for instance, in China you tend to learn a lot about artists like Tang Yin, Yue Minjun, in Russia you're taught about Repin and Levitan.

    It allows you to build foundation, then you start deviating from "standard" practices, you create or adopt an art style and then keep honing it.
    Last edited by ls-; 2017-09-14 at 06:08 AM.

  11. #11
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    Its a generally unliked artstyle that is not very compatible with Western art and culture.

    I remember a guy showing his art portfolio when appkying for a graphic design position and it was 99% anime... Thats not what a commercial business wants and he didnt get the job.

    Develop yourself in what does work and whats actually aought after instead. Keep your niche hobbies for yourself.

  12. #12
    It is pretty unpopular in the west in general I'd say. I think the two main reasons are that the teachers/professors don't know much about it so they can't really help in any way, and more importantly going to school for art is about teaching the basics and fundamentals. The anime style isn't basic or fundamental to the vast majority of art, and as such isn't really useful or important. I imagine if you had a portfolio full of anime art that wouldn't really count for anything, that being said if you had a diverse portfolio with one or maybe two anime styled pieces I doubt anyone would hold it against you.

  13. #13
    Rather than copying a preexisting art style, art teachers encourage you to develop your own style. That's at least one reason.
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  14. #14
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    The point of art classes -- especially if you're studying on a higher level -- is to learn other styles and mediums, to push yourself to improve, and to develop your own style. Anime isn't going to help you learn realistic human forms, for example, or landscapes, or colour theory, or whatever. If you're attached to one particular type of art and sticking to that, you're not really doing any of that. You have to go outside of what you can already do and push to learn things you don't already know. There is a cap on how much you can improve as an artist if you're only doing one thing and never going outside your comfort zone.

    It doesn't really help that most people who are drawing anime at that level are mostly just copying someone else's anime style and not really expanding the genre or doing their own take on it. They are mostly just mimicing their particular favourite.

    It isn't inherently to do with being anime or any sort of problems with anime as an art form, it's just that anime is very popular so it just ends up getting the most attention because its the thing a lot of students are hooked on. I'm sure if something else was all the rage, you'd see that discouraged too.


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  15. #15



    Teachers always forbid fun things.

    Avatar the Last Airbender was done in the anime style. At least its the style they were aiming for.
    .

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  16. #16
    Merely a Setback Kaleredar's Avatar
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    From an artist, here's why they don't teach the "anime style:"

    And I don't come from a hippy dippy "paint how you feel" artist background. I come from a "photorealist painting and rendering" artistic background.

    1) Inaccurate anatomy. To an artist, proper anatomical drawing is everything. EVERYTHING. If you can draw anatomy correctly, you can change it to draw whatever you want. This is important for character design and animation. If a character doesn't make sense anatomically, you cannot animate it.

    You think Characters like Mickey Mouse or the Looney tunes were drawn without thought of construction or anatomy? You'd be dead wrong. Many of the great animators of old were exceptional draftsmen.

    You think something like THIS could be animated free-hand, without proper knowledge of human anatomy? Tracking those deltoids, biceps, and hands moving in perspective is exceptionally difficult.



    And don't even get me started on hand gestures like this.



    Look at this concept sketch for Tarzan by Glenn Keane. Every muscle in place, despite the character being exceptionally stylized.




    People who copy anime (and art books on how to draw anime that I've seen) usually have little to no regard for anatomy. If something has no anatomy, it can't exist in space. And if you don't know how to draw things in space, even if you aren't an animator... you're severely hindered by what you can draw.

    CONVERSELY, people who LEARN anatomy and how to draw humans in a realistic manner can later adapt that style TO anime if they so choose, with the requisite understanding of how the parts underneath work. But you learn the foundations first. And if you're going to art school, that's usually what you want to be learning.


    2) It's derivative. "Anime artists" often copy anime by tracing or by mimetic drawing. The issue with this is that it carries no understanding of what's going on underneath, going back to anatomy. And really well done anime (Studio Ghibli comes to mind) DO take into account things like anatomy. But people taking a tertiary glance at them and going "gee I want to draw like that, lemme copy the lines!" aren't seeing that through the stylization. So people are copying poorly informed copies of poorly informed copies, never gleaning the understanding of why the original material was great, because it's lost beneath the layers of stylization.


    That's why anime is "disdained" by art teachers. At least, any worth their salt. It's a trap for students.


    You don't learn to do stylized art first. You learn to do things realistically so you can have an understanding to inform stylization. Stylizing things should be a conscious choice, rather than because you simply can't draw or paint any other way.


    Case in point, Pablo Picasso was known for his cubist and otherwise minamalist artworks, but many people don't know he was an exceptional painter as well. His cubism and reductive artworks were informed by his understanding of the world and an application of skill, not a lack of skill.

    I mean, lots of people look at this and go "man I could do that, Picasso was a hack!"



    ...without knowing Picasso was fully capable of doing works like this:

    Last edited by Kaleredar; 2017-09-14 at 08:51 AM.
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  17. #17
    I have no experience with art education in America or otherwise so somebody correct me here, but I would've thought the point was to learn the fundamentals, form, history, and technique of art. Why the hell would you do that to learn how to draw anime?

    That's not a slam against anime. Anyone who's seen my drawings can tell you it's not fine art either. But it's a bit like getting a culinary arts degree in order to make pot noodles. Once you understand the basics, drawing in that style is just a bit of practice and maybe watching some hentai for "reference".
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