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to be fair i really don't feel like neihter kenji 7 or yuzuru are "trully anime characters" as we have the "sakura" or a sakura type on each generation of main daz characters bundles, indeed the "last full anime/manga male style character was hiro 5, after that we don't had anymore "main rooster anime male character" we have some "realistic style but a full non realistic anime style was drop out from the main branch and we had only few "pa" artists exemples here and there but never a hiro 6 or hiro 7 or hiro 8 or something like that.
Point of fact - Japanese animation proportions are actually based on those of the early Disney films. When Osamu Tezuka, the legendary artist who established the "anime" aesthetic and launched both the animation and comic book industries in Japan, was growing up he dreamed of becoming a Disney animator. Instead he became a doctor, but he couldn't resist his first loves. When he started training other artists for animation, it was done using old copied versions of early Disney guides he had acquired. You want to see something really weird? Put a picture of Speed Racer next to Disney's Snow White... they could be brother and sister. Where western animation diverged from Japanese animation was when Hanna and Barbera developed a cheaper way to make animation, where the character was broken down over multiple cels with the head and torso on one layer, the mouth and eyes on two others, and then seperate cels for the legs and arms. That was widely adopted in the U.S. and lead to more simplified character designs to help hide all the multiple joins, and a style that focused far less on actual movement and more on sight gags.
Hence Yogi Bear wearing that weird collar and tie. Also, to your point, Hayao Miyazaki films in particular are extremely luxurious with their animation. There are little details that don't need to be animated, and wouldn't be in most other productions, but he puts them in there because they really make a difference.
Yeah, Yuji's great. I've had him for a bit now, but haven't really used him.
I have Sasuke, but my big quibble with him is that he has very realistic hands and feet and totally 2D eyes. The feet can be hidden most of the time, but the hands can look really freaky at times.
this is something which also bothered me for a long time and now is getting even "worse" which the famous "cal-arts" style is one of the most cheap animations styles, while we still have some "good western animations" in general i feel which some of the "good" or average animations from western are more on par with the "under-average to low" japanese animation, aside from animations movies western animations series in genereal (specially for kids) feel a lot of "cheap animations" when compared with japanase which in many cases were ashtoning even for "animated series" you do have some underbudget here and there but even that, japanese animation and style i do feel is much better than the "average western animation".
Thats very interesting.
The big diferentiation is that post-television western animation has always tended to emphasize accurate lip sych and fluid (but limited in range) motion above all else... hence, a gravitation towards simple, easy to draw characters. Whereas in Japan, most of the early shows were based on duplicating the look of existing panels of manga, and therefore evolved to emphasize dynamic posing ala Samurai films, and faking a lot of motion by moving the rostroms (the plates with the animation cels) on multiple levels, frequently substituting abstract art for detailed backgounds to further add to the effect. That was the result of the fact that Japanese animation cranes were built sideways, with the artwok being moved horizontally, rather than vertically with the art being moved up in down the manner that western ones were. Originally this was just to fit in smaller studios, but it also happened to make moving the arwork a lot easier and Japanese animation cameramen quickly found ways to create a lof a unique effects by moving different levels of art in different directions simultaneously, and that, in turn, gave anime a much greater perceived range of motion even though they were actually using fewer peices of artwork.
Thank you for this. I am so grateful that this conversation has developed into this profound and insightful discussion on anime as a genre. I just purchased the Hiro5 Pro Bundle and am very excited to begin work on some renders.
Anime of the 1980's and 90's blows Hanna-Barbarra away in quality (in most cases). Don't get me wrong, I watched a lot of their stuff, but Speed Racer. Star Blazers, Battle of the Planets, Voltron, Robotech... had better quality artwork and animation.
At that point I think it was more an issue of the subject matter that they were allowed to explore. Jonny Quest, which ran in prime time in the early sixties, still looks fantastic (especially in the recent Blu-ray release which is the first time it's been shown completely uncut since it originally ran, complete with Jonny shooting guns, bad guys getting some really brutal deaths, and some now very un-PC lined of dialog), and shows like Space Ghost, Shazzan, Herculoids, Bird Man and the Three Musketeers, weren't that far from their Japanese counterparts. We were also getting a lot of anime here as well... up until 1968, when a groups called Action for Childre's Television managed to get most broadcasters to pull shows that they considered too violent or had other objectionable content. My favorite was that the anime series Eight Man got pulled because the hero could secretly "power up" using a device camoflagued to look like a cigarette. :) After that, the Japanese stayed on the same track while the U.S. got stuff like Puffnstuff and The Archies.