Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Is Anime's Animation Style So Hard To Imitate?
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Brand
 Posts: 1028 |
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Reminds of me of every restaurant rescue show were almost certainly something like the French chef is cooking Italian food or some such. It's like a guarantee on those shows.
Also reminds me of an issue of Excalibur (X-men comics) that was from the 90s (I think) where there was this really awkward art style and it took me almost the whole issue to realize they were making fun of anime art style. But they were doing it so poorly it was hard to tell. Edit: This is it. Yes, this is supposed to look anime styled... I also went to an art school with an animation department (I was in for something else) but I do remember the animation teachers really disliking anime some to the point of like anger. Which is a shame, this was the mid-00s and a lot of kids coming in for animation was because they loved anime. And some of the crap teachers would tell kids that anime was basically shit. Not a great way to get students involved and loving something that is a huge time sink that is a labor of love where you generally don't make a lot of money. |
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Topgunguy
 Posts: 258 |
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The other way round has the same effect. Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt tries to look western and while it mimics it well it still has some anime-esque aesthetics to it that just can't escape a Japanese's hands. The big eyes, the limited motion, minimal blinking, the mouths flapping up and down with very little regard to how the mouth would be shaped on certain vowels and syllables and five fingers on each hand. American TV comedy animation has a weird thing for 4-fingers. What's up with that? I don't buy the whole 'bubbly features' excuse.
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Posts Sometimes
Posts: 38 |
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Accurately drawn hands are one of the toughest things to draw, and getting the movements right in animation is even harder. Going with four fingers means a lot less work, and people don't care that it looks unrealistic because characters in American animation generally don't look much like real people anyway. |
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DigitalScratch
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I suppose because it's just easier to draw and animate for that kind of style? I for sure have a much easier time drawing a four-fingered hand whenever I'm drawing chibis. I like the mixing of Western techniques with a little bit of anime influence, particularly the expressions. I find Voltron to be an amazing example of how well you can mix in and balance out both styles into a series. And the other way around is really nice too- a lot of people have pointed out that TRIGGER''s animation must have at least some Western influence. Little Witch Academia may be one of the best examples of an anime that feels like a Western cartoon in how fluid it is, at least to me. But there's only so much you can try mesh of both styles before it becomes an unfamiliar or ugly mess. There's a handful of failed Western flash animation series that have attempted to be like anime in every way but fell flat because it just didn't look or feel right. |
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AnimeLordLuis
 Posts: 1626 Location: The Borderlands of Pandora |
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I'm not the kind of guy who only likes Japanese animation and despises everything else no I love both Western and Japanese animation and yeah I'm kind of disappointed that a lot of Western animation tends to focus on 3D but thankfully there's still plenty of great 2D animation as well.
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Zin5ki
 Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
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This would be my assumption also. Fewer digits make for marginal gains in drawing time at the expense of a lessened sense of verisimilitude, a limitation that many animated franchises can happily accommodate. |
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Lord Oink
Posts: 876 |
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What does fluid have to do with American animation? Most of our stuff this day is pretty limited and stilted. You don't really see sakuga out of American animation. People should also start specifying which Western countries they are talking about. It's a bit unfair to lump America, Canada, France and other countries together when they're all doing different things. France produces some interesting experimental stuff and really shouldn't be lumped it in with the stuff you see on Cartoon Network or Teletoon. Each industry has its own methods and styles so lumping all non-Japanese animation together is a bit unfair. |
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CheezcakeMe
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In Canadian animation industry here. Do agree that our teachers did not care for anime. They didn't grow up on it and anime animation techniques are virtually useless when entering a non-Japanese animation industry. Anime is about making any given frame look pretty, while more western cartoons are more concerned about the way things move as a whole.
Also, animating in the west requires very little drawing these days. Almost everything's done via computer and programs like ToonBoom Harmony, and it's currently good enough that most people can't tell the difference between hand-drawn and computer animated anymore. Anime is still hand drawn save for a handful of those terrible cg shows that have yet to master their techniques. |
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Shiflan
 Posts: 418 |
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I can't help but wonder if part of the answer to this question is simply that many "Western" animators don't necessarily want to copy the style of anime.
Just as every musician has their own style I would think that the same thing would apply to animators as well. |
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belvadeer
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Pretty much this, plus those are cartoon humans, not real ones. Animated humans are subject to the madcap insanity of the cartoon world as much as any nonhuman critter in there. If Garfield can get his entire self stuck in a blender, then Jon can certainly get crammed into the washing machine since that's totally normal and kosher with cartoon world physics. XD |
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H. Guderian
Posts: 1255 |
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I think the people making anime-like work are copying just on the surface. "We'll have a sequence where the robot combines, like the Japanese." Yet they miss the spirit and the message of what a true Gattai sequence means. Watch an honest Super Robot show, and despite seeing the robot combine every single episode, when it combines for the final battle you stand up and shout in fiery passion.
There's a method to the Japanese madness, and I don't think the West can manage that given how the industry differs. I think the West has its own unique advantages and I wish they'd push those rather than try to be something their industry can't manage. The Japanese tried to be Western, and by giving up they invented something else. If anime stayed niche and unknown in the West at large, where would American TV animation have gone? The Animated Western movies have not been bitten by the Anime Bug and survived. Though I'm not sure how much one considers their 3D purity to be a state of surviving. |
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Jose Cruz
 Posts: 1773 Location: South America |
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I never thought there was an "anime style". Or Spirited Away, Paprika and Ping Pong the Animation are the same style now? Well, the three all display some very impressive animation but each has its own style.
The reason why Western animators cannot mimic well some of the styles used in Japan is because they lack the human capital to do so: the Japanese animation industry consists of hundreds of studios with tens of thousands of animators and hundreds of thousands of people who know how to draw Manga really well. Given Japan's Manga culture. Basically, the average Japanese high school student probably draws better than most people working at Pixar or Disney (who are mostly not specialists in drawing). If you look at Japanese animation in the 1960s such as Horus it looks more like Western animation today. More fluid but lacking in detail and physical realism. @H. Guderian, actually modern American animated films are also heavily influenced by anime. Reason is that Pixar is heavily influenced by Miyazaki (they claim to project Miyazaki movies in their studios to get inspiration, in movies like Brave they even copied Miyazaki's heroine's "hair expressions"), in fact, one might guess that many Pixar employees know more about anime than many fans. And Pixar is the center of influence in the American film animation industry.
And these teachers are showing their xenophobia and underlying racism: they are saying that "animation made by the Japanese, which happened to be 2/3 of the world's animation at the mid 2000s, is shit", so they as professionals in animation are insulting the bulk of the world's animation just because it's foreign. Pathetic and disgusting attitude. My sister is currently doing a master's in an art school and know what? Her professor's favorite movie happens to be Miyazaki's Castle of Cagliostro. I guess that people are starting to gradually lose their prejudice against foreign art. |
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EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
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And from the early 90's--Back when manga was still a niche-cult secret at comic-book stores, anime was only shown on bootleg tapes at college clubs, and everyone, even the fans, pretty much obsessed themselves with "Why are the eyes always so funny-looking?" And then the fans thought they were becoming experts on "Manga style" and "Anime style", and we got "Big Hero 6" (the print version, not the gaijin Disney version), and...(gag!)...the original Cartoon Network "Teen Titans". (You want to see culturally obnoxious damning-with-faint-cliche'ing, just TRY and sit through the "Anime styles" of Warner's direct-video "Teen Titans In Tokyo". CN couldn't do a more racist J-bash if they tried.) In short, the basic universal problem of Trying To Be Something You're (Obviously) Not. |
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Selipse
Posts: 216 |
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An example that captures really well the anime feel is Senpai Club. I'm really amazed by how on point it is even with the sometimes crude designs.
The hate for anime is really weird. I'm attending an animation school and there are teachers who actually like anime (their offices are full of manga, figurines, and the like), but they still occasionally diss "anime" styles or characteristics. There was a teacher famous for constantly making fun of anime and anime fans during class. He fervently believed that "the anime style is not art" and told stories mocking anime fans he encountered (either past students or outside school). He was actually a really good teacher, though. On the other hand, the ones who like anime but diss it really aren't. |
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EricJ2
Posts: 4016 |
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Yes, something about the style (whereas Kill La Kill was way too out-there to be compared to a Western cartoon) seemed like it was some kind of East-West "hybrid". LWA was a little too cute and crazy to be American, and definitely rooted in anime tropes, but still felt so "American" in its 24fps fluidity and speed, I kept looking at the credits to see whether some French studio or other had actually done it. (Although in LWA's case, I mean in it as a compliment, in the same way I wouldn't to Totally Spies.) |
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