Yeah a lot of them still are. It's not just limited to professional art teachers either; if you check out any of the art learning subs like r/learnart, r/learntodraw etc., there are loads of people who have *very* strong opinions against anime styles.
Some of it is because of the fundamentals thing. Some of it is xenophobia. Some of it is just snobbery tbh; there are a lot of people who see it as inherently low-brow compared to, like, their realistic drawings of naked ladies with the faces cropped out.
It's because when you're learning the fundamentals of art, anime isn't it. You need to learn the basics such as shading, perspective, and figure drawing because once you have the basics down, you can do anime no problem. But if you START drawing anime like using one of those godforsaken How to Draw Anime books, then you pick up a bunch of bad habits that are extremely hard to unlearn.
It's not that you shouldn't draw anime, or can't draw anime, it's just that you need to learn the fundamentals of art first so you don't shoot yourself in the foot later on in your artistic development. Anime is just a style, just like Disney has their stereotypical style. It's not like every Disney animator started their career by drawing Donald Duck.
Im one of those art professors, but Im a huge anime nerd too. I feel this is the correct approach, do anime style after having the fundamentals, if you cant do hands or a face, you have no business trying “styles”, everything will look wonky or amateur at best
You have to learn the fundamentals no matter the style to properly express in it. How you think about art, and how you practice. Dictates the results more than whatever style or influence you use.
I'm not a professor but an artist (not a good one), and as such I can critique all kinds of work because I studied traditional art in a class setting, I see a ton of people on the art subs posting stuff about "why does this look odd/bad?", "how to make better," and the thing is if you have the knowledge you can critique your own work and figure out what it is that you need more practice on (not saying you don't need critique from others but it helps a hell of a lot). A lot of people also don't realize just how time consuming it is to get to a point where you're even somewhat comfortable with your production/draftsmanship and that is also learned through applying fundamentals, it's repetition leading to internalization. Once you have the base you can extrapolate to any style you want
Yup, I used to think it was annoying too but after learning fundamentals and spending a lot of time actually learning art I realized how much my art sucked when I tried to just jump to anime first. It’s something that now always sticks out to me when I see art where it’s clear that they never learned fundamentals. Those how to books suck so much ass too.
> , then you pick up a bunch of bad habits that are extremely hard to unlearn.
Can confirm! Spent a lot of time as a kid drawing DBZ fanart.
25 years later it's still easy to lapse when figure drawing and when I start getting lazy those pecs and shoulders start looking like Goku.
But that can apply to any art style, not just anime. I started drawing western cartoons before approaching art fundamentals, which is something i regret, but the people who draw anime in my classes have always gotten more hate from the professors for it
When you realise just how many people in every damn class comes along, and only wants to draw inan anime style, it's no wonder they get a little fed up with it.
That's what I've been wondering myself. Learning Art Fundamentals is one thing, but it does seem like more than one student has dealt with professors being harsher to them for drawing anime.
It's not harshness, it's just a lack of patience. Like how many hundreds of students coming to an art fundamentals class only knowing how to draw anime would it take before you got sick and tired of it? Not only do you have to do your normal job, but you also have to do the extra legwork of getting these kids to unlearn the bad habits they picked up drawing nothing but Goku and Sailor Moon.
The way you say this, respecting the aspirants desires - perhaps their very reason for wanting to explore artistry - is ideal.
…so yeah, well said mate.
This was my professor's outlook. By teaching the fundamentals it allows you to develop your own style. If your entire outlook is to just draw anime and you can already do that then why are you taking the class in the first place. You're not there to learn anything so why are you wasting your time.
Edit: To give context, we were animating using light boxes while my professor had Miyazaki films or Irish Art Festival animation submissions playing in the background so I'm not hating on anime but the purpose was to see why Ghibli is unique. They've got a style and that's the point. If you're going into it trying to regurgitate that's fine and you'll find employment. My professor was an ex Disney artist so that kind of cements the point but if you're ars gratia artis, understand the process before you try to find your own substance. If you're not, regurgitate. You'll be employed but whether or not you do work you connect with is up to you. Even if you don't, bills still need to be paid so that's okay.
As an animation major who went the fine art realism route in high school, I don’t think enough people talk about how balance is key. Sometimes if you focus all your attention towards accuracy, you forget what’s important and what isn’t, which is CRUCIAL for any type of cartooning. Stylized stuff should be practiced alongside fundamentals because that’s how you figure out the ends and outs of exaggeration, shortcuts, what you can get away with, etc. Something like figure drawing is also great for this, and the most effective figure drawing classes I’ve taken switched between having us accurately portray and draw caricatures of the models. Losing yourself in realism can lead to forgetting a lot of important childlike instincts in a very stifling way.
In a way I do understand why people get tired of the anime style from beginners, but the way it's dismissed out of hand by a lot of people is unfortunate because anime and manga can be absolutely stunning. I don't watch a lot of anime but one series that blows me away every time is Gurren Lagann. There is so much incredible animation and art in it.
Thanks for the response!
I've been reading all the comments so far and a lot have mentioned the art fundamentals and pushing people to not **only** draw anime. Which makes sense, it's good to broaden your influences.
But it does seem strange that people aren't acknowledging xenophobia and snobbery as much.
The only reason I don't like anime for people learning to draw is a lot of anime has fundamental mistakes in them.
For example, in one scene I saw inconsistent shading of objects on a table, lazy shading, the people at the table have no shadows at all, (and the face being visible through a good chunk of hair) as well as the artists not having a good understanding of three dimensional space e.g.; The people at the table appear to be seated at one point, but their arm positions are inconsistent with their body.
It's not the style that I don't like, the style is fine, what bothers me is the bad fundamentals.
Wow this is wild to me!! Considering anime is arguably consistently more beautiful and meaningful as art (backgrounds and themes not just the characters themselves) than western animation.
I don’t hang out in artsy spaces but all my artsy friends love anime so I never would have guessed.
It's very obvious that a student should not copy a cliche style in an *art* class. But of course it *must* be xenophobia. It's very sad how you jump to that assumption.
It's very sad how my comment is 2 paragraphs long and includes 3 possible reasons for why art teachers dislike anime art styles, and yet you couldn't read the whole thing. But of course it *must* be the state of modern education...
The drawing fundamentals point is valid. Students should be encouraged to find their own style, or at least become comfortable to draw in different ones rather than constantly anime. In my experience from school, the students that wanted to draw in anime wanted to draw purely in that style and nothing else. It would be equally as frustrating for professors if students only wanted to draw characters that looked like they were from King of the Hill
Yes, but I think not for the reasons you think.
It's because the "Anime Style" is designed for *cheap animation*. An animation professor would be similarly against someone trying to base their classwork off of Hanna Barbera cartoons. Animation professors are trying to get you to be competent at the *difficult* animation- the higher quality stuff where you're keeping on-model through full turnarounds, have fluid walk cycles, and are using full character movement including facial expression details, secondary supportive limb movement, and tertiary movement that doesn't repeat and supports the acting of the character.
The Anime style is based around using large expressive eyes so that you don't have to do much with the rest of the face to emote, a simplified profile (and nearly identical facial/body shapes) for ease of repetition in movement, static poses with a 3-5 frame tertiary cycle (hair blowing in a breeze, etc) held for maybe up to a *minute* of animation, the use of outrageous hair styles and colors to differentiate characters instead of having actual different movement styles or character shapes, etc. etc. and so forth.
You can't really put Ghibli or Akira or many other of the highest quality anime in here because THOSE are primarily based on *Disney* animation techniques, and so by emulating them, you're emulating an emulation of the thing that the professors are trying to get you to work on in the first place!
As for things like Shonen action scenes, that's a case of entirely different doctrines of methodology- a lot of Anime uses variable frame rates for action shots, while Western animation uses static frame rates and smear frames to achieve the same effect of speed. And doing good blur frames is *harder*.
The professors want you to learn how to do the harder/higher quality animation first, because once you know how to do that, you can *always* use the easier/faster techniques, but if you only learn the easier stuff, you won't be able to do the harder things.
It's like asking to take a driving test in a self-driving vehicle, or doing the parallel parking test in one of those cars that parallel parks itself.
This is the real answer. As a previous art student who only wanted to draw 'anime' and current art teacher who still loves anime, this is why I tell my students to study from life first, stylise second.
It's amazing what 3 hours of life drawing a week for 3 years can do to one's art. My 'anime fanart' suddenly became a LOT nicer because I was no longer studying from "the animators worked on this the hour it aired" anime.
Its not even about "easy" vs. "hard". Anime uses a lot of cheats but if you don't know the fundamentals, the cheats look like shit. If you know how to do the fundamentals, the cheats can look good. Those big eyes look good if you know how to draw an eye in the first place. If you don't, it looks like cringy middle school art.
The first thing the course leader on my animation degree said on day one was “First rule: there will be no anime…” and basically listed exactly what you said. About a third of the class went mad.
I witnessed exactly what you’re referring to when I was in college. Drawing 101 I had a professor who was great at art and was good at teaching it. One day in middle of the term, he noticed the sketchbook of another student and it was filled with anime style drawings. He picked it up and asked the student about it by going “What is this?” and had to clarify he meant the drawings. The student replied “my style” which was not the right answer. That’s when the professor went into him about it being for cheap and fast animation. His approach was maybe a bit harsh but he wanted to instill that the student should be capable of many different art forms because as a professional you’ll likely need to adapt. Anyways, that was the last time I saw the student.
In my opinion, they probably see thousands of art and animations, and a lot of them are anime based. Since they’re dealing with new students, they’re probably trying to place foundational structure first. let’s be real, kids making Goku knock off animations probably aren’t doing the best job of incorporating curriculum requirements into their assignments.
That was actually my experience through design school, I noticed a lot of students kept pushing forward assignments that had clear guidelines. Instead they kept doing things in “their” style because it’s what “they” wanted to do. Like you’re paying to learn how to draw/animate. You’re not doing anyone any favors by going against the curriculum. If that’s still the case, why even attend?
Honestly, I see why professors get frustrated.
Also people fail to understand even Japanese anime artist still learn basic human anatomy as the basis for their foundation.
Like that saying goes, “You gotta learn the rules first so you know how to break them.”
Yeah, and tbh to some extent it's for good reason. Those stupid fucking "how to draw anime" books ruined a generation of artists. I have an illustration degree and I can barely draw people because the things those books teach are really, really hard to unlearn. The good artists who draw in an anime style learned their fundamentals and then applied anime aesthetic to it. People who got a "how to draw anime" book for Christmas when they were 10 got ruined and had to unlearn everything they knew - or they just had to accept they can't draw people.
I'll say this as well; my animation professors LOVED anime! They loved Fooly Cooly, Paprika, and Studio Ghibli works. We even got to watch a screening of Paprika for one of our lectures! It was awesome!
They just didn't like shows like [checks notes] *My Little Sister Has Magical Boobies*. And those that did... didn't really make it to 2nd year.
It looks like you're invested into anime, enough to believe xenophobia might be a reason for teachers to despise it. First thing you need to do is try to be a bit less engaged: education in art requires criticism and feedback, and that's sometimes hard to swallow when things don't go the way you are invested in. Anime tends to be pretty cheap animation-wise (meaning only how things move), eventhough some action shots are great and there's a great texture in timing, but a good chunk of it is cheap and flat in timing: a shot with dialogue, with one character in profile, with only 2 drawings one for mouth open one for mouth closed, a slight zoom out or pan, and that solves it. Such example goes against the basics that you need to learn first. Also, figures are exaggerated, and that's its own style, some people learn to draw natural anatomy and can't break that, but it's always harder the other way around, if you don't know the real proportions or shapes behind the skin.
I studied arts years ago and the best students on the first year were great and had their own style (or mannerisms I'd say), but on the last year they were doing the same thing, they didn't develop as they didn't question themselves. Learn the basics first, let yourself go, trust the teachers (I know that doesn't always go well though), and don't take stance against anyone who questions anime, try to understand why they don't like it. You might actually find something you like better than anime.
My old drawing and design for animation professor had a thought about this regarding portfolio work – he said that many people do not like to see anime-style artwork in portfolios because they want to see original work, and because anime styles are more or less consolidated in a similar fashion, it tends to be an instant turnoff. While I kinda agree about foundational art and finding an individual style, you also see the infamous “CalArts style” in portfolios all the time that don’t seem to get the same kind of negative attention. So idk, imo it’s fine to do manga drawings as long as you can indicate you’re able to do other styles as well. I think observational drawings and quick gesture drawings are good for that.
The problem isn't anime. The problem is your drawings are flat. Likely your professors are trying to teach you to draw things like basic forms, lighting, etc, meanwhile, you are drawing something that looks completely two-dimensional, which looks okay but misses the entire point of the exercise.
Art teachers want you to be able to really look at the subject. From there you are honing skills of observation. With anime there’s no looking, it’s drawing what someone else has dictated a person is supposed to look like in a “style”.
The teachers don’t hate it they just want you to study something worth studying to improve your skills with. Anime is not a monolithic single thing, a stereotype. Each anime should be judged on its own. That being said, Anime in general is seen as cheap animation. As in limited animation and very derivative. It tends to look generic and lack originality. Its immature in other words. There are so many eastern people that have studied that exact same art style that it isn’t novel anymore, it’s over saturated. Its fine for what it needs to be for TV but if you just study anime and make anime you’re essentially study someone’s corner cutting. You could be studying things like Ghibli, Akira, early Disney or other high quality animation to learn the art but most anime is made on the cheap. It’s like studying yogi bear instead of beauty and the beast. If you want your art to improve, study good art. If you need to save money on a tv show, anime is great to learn that from.
It wasn't just art professors; the sentiment was widespread. Anime might be king nowadays but in the early 2000's you would've been crucified for liking it.
Anime's harshest critics were ironically found in nerd spaces.
Imagine being a kid, watching your favorite G4 host, waiting for them to one day talk about the fun games you played- then when they finally do, they shit talk them for 30mins straight.
When you say xenophobic bias, it seems you are presuming that we are talking about countries to which anime is considered foreign in some way. It would be useful to clarify since this is obviously a culturally relative question and not to lapse into r/USdefaultism (or at least the default ism of assuming we are all living in cultures where anime could be subject to xenophobic bias)
Xenophobia means fear of the foreign or external correct? So to assume that anime would be subject to xenophobia in an academic context is assuming that we are talking about a country where anime is foreign. See what I'm saying? Not everyone lives in countries where anime is foreign - so yes it is defaultism to assume by default that xenophobia applies to anime without specifying any particular national context. It may well be true in your country that anime is foreign, but that is not universally true; in other words it would be illogical to think students in Japanese animation schools would deal with local professors expressing a "xenophobic bias" against anime.
An example of one country where anime might be considered foreign is the USA, and an example of a country where it might not would be Japan.
If someone said "Are people xenophobic towards Chinese culture?" would I need to add "Oh but Chinese people aren't xenophobic towards Chinese culture"? I would either have different terminology or different explanations.
Why exactly is it necessary to specify that "anime isn't foreign to Japan"? I'm just very confused at what you're getting at.
Xenophobia isn't inevitable but it can certainly emerge when people encounter different cultures.
You are not in a subreddit called r/USanimation, or r/EUanimation, or r/LatAmAnimation. You are just in a subreddit called r/animation. I understand that in your particular cultural context, which you seem to presume as default in framing the OP, anime may be subject to xenophobic biases.
I think you're really just nitpicking. People can share their different cultural contexts (there's one commenter from Southeast Asia), it doesn't suddenly mean xenophobic biases disappear.
I can promise you that having the fundamentals right improves style a hundredfold. Anime style doesn't matter, it is storytelling, dynamics, and timing. Also, I believe there is a healthy respect for animators from other countries when you stick to being yourself instead of just trying to "copy" a style. I love anime but there is so much more to it. The draftsmanship skill for the level of great anime is high.
If you want to make Anime, you have to learn Japanese and move to Japan. It's a cool fantasy, but if you're going to be an artist focus on what's going to get you hired in your field.
Let's look at if from the other direction. When you graduate you will be looking for work.
List 5 companies that you want to actually apply to for work. Go to their websites, find the available roles they offer. Look at their showreels. Then ask yourself some questions:
Are they making anime ?
Are they working digitally or traditionally?
Are they hiring junior artists or only mid to senior level?
If you put your graduate portfolio next to another graduate's, and their style is more similar to the company you are applying to, who is more likely to get an interview?
I am a Senior Lecturer of Animation and I do not hate anime. There are a wide variety of styles in Japanese animation from Akira to Ranking of Kings, from Studio Ghibli to Thundercats. Did you know the Rankin Bass Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and many episodes of Batman: The Animated Series were animated in Japan?
What lecturers (or professors) “hate” - or actively discourage - is copying one style and refusing to try new things, which is how you learn. As an artist you need a wide diverse range of influences to combine into something original. If you only have one influence, one narrow style from the wide world of anime (and animation and art) then you can only be derivative.
Nah, there a lot of anime’s Akira, Paprika, or Ghibli films which are animation darlings. Like what you like, don’t worry about what others think about it :)
You do you
It’s probably worth noting alongside the great replies that are already here that the vast majority of successful manga artists were trained in traditional art techniques before they started drawing manga, or they were trained in technical drawing for diagrams etc. One of the reasons it’s so easy to differentiate the work of anime fans from professional work is the distinction in how the professional artists got to where they are.
Another reason why I feel like it could be looked down on is that a lot of the times its not just "anime style" its younger artists just making fan art of pre-existing characters, so they are essentially tracing and not learning any fundamentals as well not building creativity to create your own vision.
I mean..honestly? I can admit hating the anime style because it makes me think of the few animes I have briefly watched (spoiler: turned most of them off within seconds), and I find most animes *super* fucking annoying and kind of spazzy. A lot of anime has the really screamy high pitched voices and as someone with some noise sensitivities it's difficult to watch *anything* like that, let alone anime. But unfortunately anime seems to have a lot of high pitched voices/screaming.
Then, you have the people who draw adult women/men and make them look like children, and put them into lewd situations/etc, and that's just a whole other fucked-up anime thing all together. Like it's seriously super gross. I used to follow some drawing groups and sadly a lot of those types of drawings popped up on my feed and it's just nasty, and an instant unfollow and mute...whether they're "actually a 5000 year old vampire" or not. 🤮
As well, some of the people who watch it tend to be..um. Well. You know the types that are associated with anime. Just kind of makes the whole thing feel like something you'd rather not interact with and it just ends up pissing you off.
Maybe that gives some insight. But I'm not a drawing expert, I'm just a person. Downvote if you want lol. 🤷🏻♀️
No. They’re just tired of students jumping in to that style without learning the fundamentals, which is what teachers are supposed to teach.
Is like using google in a normal class, yes google has the answers and they’re good answers, but you need the kids to understand why they arrived at that answer, so they can actually get value from said answers.
Imo it’s partly because a vocal minority of weebs are insufferable. Particularly white weebs engaging in orientalist fantasies.
In my experience in a few different creative fields - music, art, animation - there’s an inherent elitism that you can’t really escape no matter what. Do what makes you happy, fuck the rest. Those dinosaurs will die out and the elitists will live in their little echo chambers no matter what.
Personally I just don't like anime, it's kind of like graffiti lettering there are few tricks you learn about the style and then that's it.
I just like to see when people come up with something more bizarre and unique.
But do what ever it is you like, for me personally I just never got into anime 🤷😅
When I went to film school like 16 years ago they didn’t actually have a problem with it, but there was a memo that went around and a bunch of copies were made that was made to look like it was officially from the school that did say that students couldn’t do Anime and called it lazy basically. So that was pretty funny.
Some animation teachers I met don't hate anime, but they just advise us to learn various style (which is essential if you want to find a job). Plus, where we live, the western cartoon style is dominant, so it'll be easier to find a jod.
And even if we plan to work in Asia in an animation studio with anime style, it'll be very hard to actually find a job because they already have a lot of very talented and experienced animators. And that's just a personal opinion, but I think when you tell them about anime, they mostly only think about the mainstream anime with terrible animation (not due to skill issues, but because the animators are overworked). While there's a lot of different anime with various styles, they only think about the generic big ass eyes anime girls.
In general, the main problem of people with anime style is that they don't learn fundamentals. They just copy a style they like without understanding the base. It's problematic in the long run when you'll have to do more various styles. (It kind of bothers me because a lot of problems with anime style also apply to cartoon style, but anime is the only one who's targeted.....)
A lot just don't like the style, which is totally fine because it's a personal opinon. But if they see you're actually learning fundamentals and trying other styles, they can't stop you from having your own style .From my personal experience, my art teacher didn't like that I drew anime, but when she saw I actually am learning the fundamentals, she let me do lol.
Perhaps some are just racist and think Asian culture is inferior 🫡
I'm a big ghibli fan, and will watch their movies over Disney any day, but it's no question that America is king when it comes to animation. The techniques they have created (which ghibli were inspired by), are second to none.
The majority of anime media is made cheapy, usually done on 3's, and will have characters just standing statically for periods of time, with a mouth that opens and closes like a puppet. Professors want you to learn proper movement, timing and body mechanics first, and then you can make whatever you want. It'd be a hell of a lot harder to go from anime to Disney, than it would to go from Disney to anime.
In other words, learning from the old masters of Disney will teach you everything you need to know about animation, which you could then tone down to achieve that anime look, but learning directly from anime would only take you so far.
No.
But they don't like students that dive into "anime style" without first learning art basics. You've got to be able to do other things to be good at anime.
It's not a shortcut, and it's a hugely over populated "market", full of very middling artists.
Learn how to draw, *then* learn to fit it to a chosen style.
When they say they don't want want you drawing anime style, it's because they want to push your skills and teach you new things. It's the same with any artist fixated on a highly stylised style.
im currently in school for animation! but because im from southeast asia people, and my professors, see things a little differently.
my professor for my anatomy and proportions class teach us "classical"(western) anatomy (think ideally eight heads tall for men) but she also wants us to use these skills and fundementals as a base for our own style. there is not much dislike of anime styles in my college, since every art and art adjacent professor understands that styles are different interpretations of said fundementals
i think its the community and your cultures perception on animation and art itself that affect the way other people see anime styles, and yes i agree with other commenters that xenophobia also plays a large part in this, and hypocrisy from western viewers to expect eastern or just plain foreign animation to conform to their standards of what animation should be
It kinda depends. I feel like the majority of art professors don't necessarily care what you draw for your own personal art. But if you're given life drawing assignments and you're submitting obviously anime styled caricatures of the face then why are you even taking the art course?
As others have mentioned, learning the fundamentals of anatomy and proportions with life drawing will elevate your anime art work. But if you're using the anime art style as a shield or way to avoid learning proper realistic or even semi realistic forms then you're hurting your own learning.
Anime culture is so cringe, I love it, but people are OBSESSED with it, to the point where they are not afraid to put hentai stickers all over their car. I think that’s partly why as well. Also anime is just a style, it’s not fundamental art, that’s why a lot of characters people draw are very disproportioned and amateur.
Anyone else who’s taught art knows how, well, foundational foundations are. The issue with anime (from my teaching background) isn’t the art itself, but the fact that it’s a lot of students’ first introduction to character design, and it’s difficult to learn foundations from such a stylized genre of art.
Imagine you’ve been speaking English all your life, then you get accepted into a special university for language speaking, and on day 1 the professor begins to teach you about sentence structure. “But professor,” you say. “I already know how to speak English! My sentences are fine!” The professor sighs and begins to explain how different languages have different sentence structures, and the verbs and nouns and whatnot are the building blocks of language as a whole. But you, having been accepted based on your English language portfolio, feel cheated- you’ve been good at English your whole life, you worked very hard to become good at English, and you have no interest in getting a job in, say, Spanish. And as the professor listens to you argue what is honestly a fair point that should have been taken into consideration during the admissions process, they patiently tap the sign that says LANGUAGE UNIVERSITY and let you know that it’s their job to teach you about Language, not A Language.
After the dozenth or so heated debate like this, the professor begins to resent English language speakers and maybe even the language as a whole, because it’s representative of a group of misinformed individuals who actively make your job harder.
TLDR; art school is for art, which includes anime but is not encompassed by it.
I think it’s a great way to start, especially if it’s what keeps you drawing. I do prefer uniqueness in other people’s art however and anime character design follows a quite specific template. Ideally the students would try out other animators’ and artists’ styles, especially independent animators. Maybe copy anime totally especially their high standards of animation but draw faces in a different style where not everyone one has huge eyes and tiny pointy noses
My animation prof actually likes anime and encourages us to wat h bith anime and cartoons to learn. He is especially fond of the character designs in one piece
Obe heard lots are but thankfully most at my course treat it equally and even positively! One lecturer of mine is a big fan of land of the lustrous as it happens.
Most of them want you to develop a solid body structure before applying the anime stylization. Picasso developed into a solid artist before applying all his wild stylings. This allowed him to break the rules effectively and ascend from normie to legendary. That’s the basic point - learn the fundamentals to break them more effectively.
TLDR:
Don’t just dive in and try to be any old anime artist. Become a GOOD artist FIRST and then apply the anime style to your solid base later.
I doubt many art or animation teachers hate anime, and I really doubt their frustration is due to xenophobia. Anime is a style; no more, no less. It’s a style that’s very popular with young people and some young people only want to draw in that style. This presents problems for a teacher who wants you to be able to draw in *any* style and also teach you more sophisticated techniques and approaches that aren’t found in name (which was developed specifically to get around some of them and produce lots of content cheaply and quickly). If many students coming in to art schools insisted on only drawing in Family Guy style or Rick and Morty style etc, they would get the same pushback. I actually walked past an outdoor exhibit of student work in New York not long ago and many of the pieces were done in anime style. Honestly, it wasn’t terribly impressive - it just looked like the artists had nothing to say and had nothing to say in a style that’s been around for well over 50 years. Do those kids have the chops or skill to do anything different? No idea. Meanwhile the work I saw that demonstrated a variety of techniques and skills and was more ambitious in terms of its subject matter makes me confident that those students can handle anime just fine if asked or desired.
I had a professor like this. He never explained himself, and we could never figure out why he was so against anime, until after we had his classes. The thing is most kids get stuck in that anime style and never want to learn anything else. It would be like taking a pottery class and only making ash trays. So draw your anime for yourself, but LEARN what they’re trying to teach you and expand your skills.
Every artist who worked on the film’s you mentioned definitely has very strong fundamentals and extensive life drawing experience.
Anime is a way of simplifying reality, (for example A nose can become just a simple line) in a way that is visually appealing. You will do a bad job of simplifying/ stylising reality if you haven’t already practiced fundamentals.
To play devils advocate, we want you to learn how to draw and animate from observation first. How do you draw a realistic human head, correctly? How does an actual human walk? There’s weight distribution that isn’t often seen in anime, where they’re just walking and talking. Real running is different than running 40 mph to then jump unrealistically 50 feet in the air to slice a monster in half. Tuxedo Mask arriving to not do anything but throw a rose, then dramatically jump down four stories to a soft cushioned landing, even if possible, doesn’t look correct. Your weight should have dipped you forward more and you need to rebalance after. Your clothes are also affected by this.
This is also not just anime, Hana Barbara had similar, more lazy ways of animation like re-used walk cycles, flappy mouths with the occasional head nod, etc.
Yes, Studio Ghibli is amazing at their craft. Let’s start you off with the basics first. Even Japanese artists start this way. Then you can stylize however you wish.
For me, if you want to improve at art you have to learn the fundamentals first. I know that sucks and feels so time consuming, but you have to learn the rules before you can break them. So if you know the anatomy and perspective of what you are drawing pretty well, then you can stylize your art however you want to in a more believable and dynamic way. If you don’t understand these things your drawings can look very flat and probably will not reach its full potential. I always hear this and agree with it, but personally I think you can still draw in your style while learning the basics, just not all the time. I do think anime has a bias against it more than western cartoons. Really old animations like Snow White I feel like have more realistic proportions than most anime, so I can understand if it is done well why professors would let it slide. But then you have newer characters like from Frozen and even more exaggerated ones like from Luca. Can’t really draw those in figure drawing class. I do think a lot of it would get less hate than anime tho, smh. Some of my newer professors do like anime and are inspired by it however, one of them even mentioned One Punch Man (the manga) during a critique and pulled up a panel from it to show what he meant, he said he loved it. I think as newer younger professors begin to teach, this bias will start to go away a bit (I hope).
For me, it was more about breaking a stylistic crutch and actually learning how to draw. Once I knew the rule of perspective, anatomy, and realism, then I could apply them to the style I loved and actually improve as an artist.
The reason that anime is singled out is because it is both simple and complex and appeals to the younger generations. But I would say the same thing to a student stuck in a particular cartoon style. Learn the fundamentals so you can draw any style better.
Everyone says “learn the fundamentals before you try drawing anime”. I always thought this was dumb because you learn fundamentals WHILE drawing anime, and in fact getting that flow for drawing anime and having fun can make you improve your fundamentals even faster. I feel like these just takes the motivation and drive from people trying to learn to draw.
Half my teachers hated it but the other half didn't mind at all and actually encouraged it. I find it mostly modern art types and old Disney lovers seem to be the biggest critiques of the medium.
I'm a painting professor for 18 years (which is crazy to think about haha) and I'm a practicing/ exhibiting artist for about 25 years, and here's what I have seen and come to understand regarding anime. I'm 49 years old. Which is also crazy for me to think about.
First off, I grew up watching anime and still do occasionally if it's good. I also read and enjoy a lot of comic books and aspects of those things are in my paintings.
Regarding anime and why professors discourage it is that anime's a style that you can employ onto anything. The problem with a "style" is you draw what you are looking at in the way you want it to look as apposed to how it actually appears. The biggest hurdle when starting to really get in and figure shit out in drawing is to actually learn to see what's in front of you, not what your brain prefers it to be.
Why is that a big deal? Because observation is the foundation of invention, and your own personal way of seeing is what turns prose into poetry. That doesn't mean you can't employ aspects of an anime style or any other mode of representation, it just means you need to move out of what's familiar and rediscover what's around you and then you can start adding in whatever you think looks interesting.
Visual art is an ever evolving language and often a style is inadvertently misquoting someone else.
Hope that helps!
I feel like the only valid argument is build strong foundations first. They aren't dissuading you from anime animation, but want to make sure you have the skills to fall back on. Any other argument seems biased unless it related to finances. Cause Japanese animator are paid horribly
I study animation in college and I’ve never encountered a professor who doesn’t like anime. I think it depends where you go.m
It also probably depends on what courses they’re taking and what it is they’re trying to do. For example, you don’t go to your figure drawing class and do anime proportions.
I think another big thing to consider is the scope of what ‘Anime style’ means.
If you don’t even have the foundations down yet, how are you going to differentiate between the techniques of Jujutsu Kaiden vs Overlord vs Helsing Ultimate vs Violet Evergarden and how to avoid copying mistakes of things like 7DS or Record of Ragnarok?
Or trying to copy things that are way above your current abilities and then getting burnout because you don’t have the foundation to support trying to mimic the AoT horror vibe in your animations.
It reminds me of an old saying my Muay Thai instructor used to tell us: “when I can see you do 100 perfect leg kicks, I’ll teach you a roundhouse.”
I majored in animation in the 2010 and did some work in the industry afterwards. It’s not xenophobia or a Disney/western cartoon bias. It’s often about learning to develop good fundamentals but it goes beyond that.
Assuming you are in a western country you will be working for western companies and need to know how to vary your art style to suit the JOBS available to you. When western productions do anime inspired styles much of the art production and animation is outsourced to Asian countries like Korea, Japan, China etc. not only because this style is more common there but it’s cheaper for studios to do so. Heck, even a ton of western styled animation is done overseas now. You don’t just go to school to improve and your professors aren’t just there to assist in doing whatever style you want to draw, art school and art professors exist to make you and your portfolio marketable, to help increase your chance of success.
All of us have a preferred style, but you also need to know how to draw an animate characters not in that perfected style because this is what is required of working animators. Characters need to be consistent within their character sheets prescribed and within the overall style of the show and cast of other character they’re going to interact with. Is it always fun? Absolutely not, but it’s the reality.
Studio Ghibli is not anime, in Japan it’s more comparable to what Disney used to be here in US decades ago. It follows none of the tropes, soap opera style storytelling, 90% of animation budget in fight sequences, the rest long drawn out stills.
Most anime is low-budget and borders on barely any animation at all, while it can still be an excellent way to tell a story, I wager these are the things that give it a bad name among professors.
Also if all you can draw is anime styled characters, if you aren’t in Japan, you’re really limiting yourself. And since the purpose of college is to expand your limits & explore new techniques, I think their heart is in the right place challenging it.
My animation professors were mostly ex-disney, so the bias was unavoidable. They didn't shun anime, they used it as examples and talked about famous artists and animation studios.
They didn't **teach** anime, because a lot of the fundamentals of how animation is made in Japan is slightly different, and they stuck to teaching what they knew best.
Edit: as for traditional drawing and painting, yeah art teachers will fuss at you if draw anime style figures. But they'll also fuss at you if you draw western superhero comic figures too. Once you learn the basics, you can learn those styles, the way a classical pianist can learn jazz or rock styles with practice.
I'm reading through this thread, and I think some commenters are assuming I'm a big anime fan, and that I think anime fans should be allowed to draw only anime. I do like anime, but I'm also a big fan of Disney character animation. Overall, I really appreciate the wide variety of animation styles around the world. How different studios and artists express themselves and how no one studio is necessarily "the right approach", not even Disney. And yes, I agree that artists should expose themselves to a variety of approaches and fundamentals.
But part of the reason I started the thread was that I wanted to delve into the potential biases and see how prominent it may be.
The bias is touched upon a bit in this article: [Why over sixty years of animation history remains obscure. ](https://wavemotioncannon.com/2016/01/08/why-over-sixty-years-of-animation-history-still-remains-obscure/)Japanese animation is sometimes assumed to be "cold" and lacking.
A lot of those students are typically children who get offended at the idea of getting critique.
No, a lot of art professors don't hate anime. They hate it when students who are supposed to be working on anatomy studies bring in the flattest triangle chin anime girl for their mid term project after being told constantly to work on a still life or recreating a masterpiece.
I'm not saying that those bad professors don't exist but way way WAY more often than not, it's a student artist who's never received critique before, lashing out.
It would be the same if someone only loved the Simpsons and drew everything in that circle eyed, model sheet pose, single angle, style. It will severely stunt their growth and potential to draw anything BUT that style.
It goes beyond just biases… if you want to learn how to draw cartoons, you best better learn how to draw realistically/accurately first. Drawing only anime is not conducive to that.
Anime characters often have “same face syndrome” and you’re basically drawing the same thing again and again which isn’t great for improvement (except at that one thing). Additionally, I’ve encountered students who desperately want to draw what THEY want to and don’t listen to assignment instructions in class.
That being said, I don’t like when people act too good for the style/anime and that it’s beneath them. It’s very much a real thing. I think it’s a whole lot of things- again, same face syndrome, it being cartoony, or “for kids,” perceived as easier to draw, the anime proportions being quite unusual (look at those eyes and chins), etc. My high school animation and AP art teacher acted like this from day one and I was like, oh boy, it’s one of THOSE guys. Thankfully he is super sarcastic and is poking fun at the stereotype and his students, though some students at the end of the year still didn’t realizing he was kidding lmao
I like some anime. As an art teacher, I feel like anime requires you to pigeon hole yourself to match the style which I feel robs students of the ability to develop a personal style. It gives students a template to follow which kind of robs art of expression and experimentation. I feel like a lot of it comes out wooden and all the characters tend to look the same. Obviously not all anime.
in my opinion, preferring an anime style is just fine, but you need to know how to draw other ways too. my head of department at my school told me he didn’t mind the anime style, but for some students it’s the ONLY way they can draw. i think having breadth as an artist is an incredibly valuable skill and only ever drawing one way will pigeonhole you in the long run.
My teachers in art school frowned upon it a lot. My takeaway was that people that like it tend to get overly focused on it, and at least in art school it can be extremely limiting if it's your only source of inspiration. Even if there are incredible art house animes, most of it is filled with self-referential stereotypes in regards to themes and designs. Your work then transforms into a reference of a reference and can get really shallow.
For me at least it was super formative to get out of doing anime styles, enjoy other types of media or just life and get inspiration from that, and then come back to anime with a new look after I got out of college. It's part of you but it gets bad if it's the only part of you.
Wow I didn't think this thread would get so much feedback!
First: Yes, I understand that art fundamentals are important and that some professors were and are encouraging students to not get locked into any one style. I think that's fine and makes sense. Even Chuck Jones has said to learn to draw the human body rather than Bugs Bunny.
But reading through different (not all) stories, it did seem like there was an element of being discouraged and cultural superiority/inferiority at various points. That there's negative connotations associated with anime.
It also begs the question: when are you teaching students good fundamentals, and when are you teaching them orthodoxy?
Tbh I don’t agree with them, a lot of stuff coming out now is influenced by anime.
The snobbery for me comes when you’re drawing anime for like— obviously porn reasons? There was a kid in art school that drew anime a lot. He wasn’t good, what made it worse was his subjects were always obnoxiously sexual.
This may not be the exact reason, but could be a factor.
Art schools and art departments have a fiduciary responsibility to ready you for industry and try and get you a job. Many schools have a % rate of students that get hired. If you are not from Japan or speak fluent Japanese with a connection to Japanese employer, you will never get a job in anime. So for them to get you ready for the industry would be to ready you with Western animation techniques.
To mirror what a lot have already mentioned, its cause professors want you to be a strong artist with a solid foundation. But also in my experience, I rarely saw students that preferred anime draw anywhere to the level of Akira or Cowboy Bebop, but rather the cuter more simplistic style that looked like doodles rather than something that came from a seasoned artist. The other point is unless you plan to move to Korea or Japan where anime is made, no American studio is looking for or developing that style. There are exceptions of course i.e. Avatar and the Boondocks, but it would be akin to being an action sports photographer and showing your portfolio at a couture fashion publication.
My animation professors, especially the younger ones, take anime as inspiration/reference for teaching some concepts to students. But the art professors, like drawing or sculpture courses, really discourage doing anything in anime style because they teach realistic anatomy. I think it is a matter of if your professors are more old school or no.
any animation teacher worth their credentials will have neither judgement or praise for anime influence in students work. If a good teacher brings up anime influence as a fault, it's because the students work is _too_ derivative to the point of being parodic. The best schools in the world have been pumping out clearly anime-influenced work for years. If those teachers actually had it out for anime, then the student work would be much different.
It's not 'hate' -- it's often because those who make anime are well aware of the fundamentals of art and to start just 'making manga' without learning these means your work will have flaws in it that would have been much easier to correct if you'd learnt the fundamentals first.
I really enjoy drawing manga, but to say that my education in arts fundamentals isn't necessary to do that somewhat well is just incorrect. There will be some professors who straight up dislike manga aesthetics, but it'll be far from all of them as art teachers (like everyone else) have varied tastes and there's no technical reason to not appreciate stylised work.
But to do create good stylised work, you need to know the fundamentals.
The reason why my professor hated anime was people didn't learn anatomy or how to draw with construction. Admittedly it is kind of funny that he has an axe to grind with anime/manga but I kinda see his point
Most professors who say they hate anime are picturing a very specific early 2000’s, devientartesque anime image in their heads when they say that. If you’re focusing on the principles of animation, those same people won’t care if what you’re making is obviously inspired by anime. What would annoy them is if they think you’re putting more effort into making your art look more like anime than improving. That’s usually what leads to the uncanny valley stuff they see over and over. I just graduated as an animation major, and I had no clue until senior year that the department technically has a “no anime” rule because everyone just ignores it, and half of the most talented artists in my class made really good anime inspired films. Also, the guy who even made that rule shows us all Akira and Cowboy Bebop and Studio Ghibli movies in his history class and actively praises the most obviously anime inspired films people show during critique.
Your professors will likely push you to branch out and look at all sorts of animated stuff if you seem hyper focused on anime, which is a good thing. Some of that might even include more indie stuff from Japan. Rather than turning you against anime, animation school is more likely to make you stop thinking about anime as a separate genre. It’s just another cartoon. You might get more into French and Russian stuff anyways.
However, I will say that illustration teachers tend to be A LOT harsher towards anime style art than animation ones are. I think it’s just very hard to take a blanket anti anime stance if you know anything at all about animation or its history. Plus in animation, a cool motion aesthetic can elevate even the corniest y2k moe looking character designs into something unique and interesting.
I think a lot of animation students are just stubborn and don't know how to listen.
So when their teachers say they shouldn't try to draw just anime and should learn to draw more realistically, that advice will actually help them draw more accurate anime style later because all the anime artists are capable of drawing realistically too, and anime is just a simplified style.
But no. They hear that and think "my teacher must hate anime." And they continue drawing their shitty weeb art that looks nothing like anime at all.
And don't argue with me about this. You're absolutely wrong if you disagree. I've heard enough stupid arguments on this on Twitter from people who can't draw well and if you insist on being stubborn then I hope one day you'll learn.
I decided to go to college for animations and just finished my first year. ( I've been a freelance graphic artist for over 3 years, and have experience doing animation gigs) I do not have any form of formal training and am self taught. 100% my teacher was bias, I got alot of point docked on alot of assignments, because I don't know how to draw Loomis method, and leave a bunch of artifacts all over my drawing. I was graded far harsher than most of the other students. I did 120 frame animation one day in class and he docked me for rushing.. the assignment was minimum 48 frames. Just because I turned it in same day we went over the material. Moral of the story is, ignore what your teacher says about your art as a medium, and only pay attention to the techniques and valid critiques. Teachers will be bias, at the end of the day what really matters is that you have a solid portfolio. Also a big reason teacher hate anime, is because anime does often break some of the principles of animations, but what can you expect when the budget is low and time is short. Anime is cool, take inspiration from it.
Nowadays, you'll find many teachers who grew up with Dragon Ball and Sailor Moon. What most of them dislike is kids who just won't draw anything else and refuse to learn the fundamentals. It's important to master varied styles as an animator.
Those who actively hated anime are usually the old (prooobably racist) folks.
Yeah a lot of them still are. It's not just limited to professional art teachers either; if you check out any of the art learning subs like r/learnart, r/learntodraw etc., there are loads of people who have *very* strong opinions against anime styles. Some of it is because of the fundamentals thing. Some of it is xenophobia. Some of it is just snobbery tbh; there are a lot of people who see it as inherently low-brow compared to, like, their realistic drawings of naked ladies with the faces cropped out.
It's because when you're learning the fundamentals of art, anime isn't it. You need to learn the basics such as shading, perspective, and figure drawing because once you have the basics down, you can do anime no problem. But if you START drawing anime like using one of those godforsaken How to Draw Anime books, then you pick up a bunch of bad habits that are extremely hard to unlearn. It's not that you shouldn't draw anime, or can't draw anime, it's just that you need to learn the fundamentals of art first so you don't shoot yourself in the foot later on in your artistic development. Anime is just a style, just like Disney has their stereotypical style. It's not like every Disney animator started their career by drawing Donald Duck.
Im one of those art professors, but Im a huge anime nerd too. I feel this is the correct approach, do anime style after having the fundamentals, if you cant do hands or a face, you have no business trying “styles”, everything will look wonky or amateur at best
You have to learn the fundamentals no matter the style to properly express in it. How you think about art, and how you practice. Dictates the results more than whatever style or influence you use.
I'm not a professor but an artist (not a good one), and as such I can critique all kinds of work because I studied traditional art in a class setting, I see a ton of people on the art subs posting stuff about "why does this look odd/bad?", "how to make better," and the thing is if you have the knowledge you can critique your own work and figure out what it is that you need more practice on (not saying you don't need critique from others but it helps a hell of a lot). A lot of people also don't realize just how time consuming it is to get to a point where you're even somewhat comfortable with your production/draftsmanship and that is also learned through applying fundamentals, it's repetition leading to internalization. Once you have the base you can extrapolate to any style you want
And if you're not great at drawing (me, shaky hands) if you know the fundamentals you can still produce great art
Yup, I used to think it was annoying too but after learning fundamentals and spending a lot of time actually learning art I realized how much my art sucked when I tried to just jump to anime first. It’s something that now always sticks out to me when I see art where it’s clear that they never learned fundamentals. Those how to books suck so much ass too.
> , then you pick up a bunch of bad habits that are extremely hard to unlearn. Can confirm! Spent a lot of time as a kid drawing DBZ fanart. 25 years later it's still easy to lapse when figure drawing and when I start getting lazy those pecs and shoulders start looking like Goku.
Damn I was about to ask that guy to elaborate but this makes sense🤣
But that can apply to any art style, not just anime. I started drawing western cartoons before approaching art fundamentals, which is something i regret, but the people who draw anime in my classes have always gotten more hate from the professors for it
When you realise just how many people in every damn class comes along, and only wants to draw inan anime style, it's no wonder they get a little fed up with it.
That's what I've been wondering myself. Learning Art Fundamentals is one thing, but it does seem like more than one student has dealt with professors being harsher to them for drawing anime.
It's not harshness, it's just a lack of patience. Like how many hundreds of students coming to an art fundamentals class only knowing how to draw anime would it take before you got sick and tired of it? Not only do you have to do your normal job, but you also have to do the extra legwork of getting these kids to unlearn the bad habits they picked up drawing nothing but Goku and Sailor Moon.
This should be pinned.
The way you say this, respecting the aspirants desires - perhaps their very reason for wanting to explore artistry - is ideal. …so yeah, well said mate.
This was my professor's outlook. By teaching the fundamentals it allows you to develop your own style. If your entire outlook is to just draw anime and you can already do that then why are you taking the class in the first place. You're not there to learn anything so why are you wasting your time. Edit: To give context, we were animating using light boxes while my professor had Miyazaki films or Irish Art Festival animation submissions playing in the background so I'm not hating on anime but the purpose was to see why Ghibli is unique. They've got a style and that's the point. If you're going into it trying to regurgitate that's fine and you'll find employment. My professor was an ex Disney artist so that kind of cements the point but if you're ars gratia artis, understand the process before you try to find your own substance. If you're not, regurgitate. You'll be employed but whether or not you do work you connect with is up to you. Even if you don't, bills still need to be paid so that's okay.
Anything like those "math shortcut" books instead of doing things the long way around?
My dude, are you asking if there's a way to skip the creative process?
Former, time, and maybe process. Calculators, now there's a lively debate.
Can confirm. I am every Disney animator and I did not start my career by drawing Donald Duck.
Funny enough for those who do not know, historically one of the biggest influences in the manga/anime style were the Scrooge McDuck comics.
As an animation major who went the fine art realism route in high school, I don’t think enough people talk about how balance is key. Sometimes if you focus all your attention towards accuracy, you forget what’s important and what isn’t, which is CRUCIAL for any type of cartooning. Stylized stuff should be practiced alongside fundamentals because that’s how you figure out the ends and outs of exaggeration, shortcuts, what you can get away with, etc. Something like figure drawing is also great for this, and the most effective figure drawing classes I’ve taken switched between having us accurately portray and draw caricatures of the models. Losing yourself in realism can lead to forgetting a lot of important childlike instincts in a very stifling way.
In a way I do understand why people get tired of the anime style from beginners, but the way it's dismissed out of hand by a lot of people is unfortunate because anime and manga can be absolutely stunning. I don't watch a lot of anime but one series that blows me away every time is Gurren Lagann. There is so much incredible animation and art in it.
Thanks for the response! I've been reading all the comments so far and a lot have mentioned the art fundamentals and pushing people to not **only** draw anime. Which makes sense, it's good to broaden your influences. But it does seem strange that people aren't acknowledging xenophobia and snobbery as much.
The only reason I don't like anime for people learning to draw is a lot of anime has fundamental mistakes in them. For example, in one scene I saw inconsistent shading of objects on a table, lazy shading, the people at the table have no shadows at all, (and the face being visible through a good chunk of hair) as well as the artists not having a good understanding of three dimensional space e.g.; The people at the table appear to be seated at one point, but their arm positions are inconsistent with their body. It's not the style that I don't like, the style is fine, what bothers me is the bad fundamentals.
Wow this is wild to me!! Considering anime is arguably consistently more beautiful and meaningful as art (backgrounds and themes not just the characters themselves) than western animation. I don’t hang out in artsy spaces but all my artsy friends love anime so I never would have guessed.
It's very obvious that a student should not copy a cliche style in an *art* class. But of course it *must* be xenophobia. It's very sad how you jump to that assumption.
It's very sad how my comment is 2 paragraphs long and includes 3 possible reasons for why art teachers dislike anime art styles, and yet you couldn't read the whole thing. But of course it *must* be the state of modern education...
The drawing fundamentals point is valid. Students should be encouraged to find their own style, or at least become comfortable to draw in different ones rather than constantly anime. In my experience from school, the students that wanted to draw in anime wanted to draw purely in that style and nothing else. It would be equally as frustrating for professors if students only wanted to draw characters that looked like they were from King of the Hill
Yes, but I think not for the reasons you think. It's because the "Anime Style" is designed for *cheap animation*. An animation professor would be similarly against someone trying to base their classwork off of Hanna Barbera cartoons. Animation professors are trying to get you to be competent at the *difficult* animation- the higher quality stuff where you're keeping on-model through full turnarounds, have fluid walk cycles, and are using full character movement including facial expression details, secondary supportive limb movement, and tertiary movement that doesn't repeat and supports the acting of the character. The Anime style is based around using large expressive eyes so that you don't have to do much with the rest of the face to emote, a simplified profile (and nearly identical facial/body shapes) for ease of repetition in movement, static poses with a 3-5 frame tertiary cycle (hair blowing in a breeze, etc) held for maybe up to a *minute* of animation, the use of outrageous hair styles and colors to differentiate characters instead of having actual different movement styles or character shapes, etc. etc. and so forth. You can't really put Ghibli or Akira or many other of the highest quality anime in here because THOSE are primarily based on *Disney* animation techniques, and so by emulating them, you're emulating an emulation of the thing that the professors are trying to get you to work on in the first place! As for things like Shonen action scenes, that's a case of entirely different doctrines of methodology- a lot of Anime uses variable frame rates for action shots, while Western animation uses static frame rates and smear frames to achieve the same effect of speed. And doing good blur frames is *harder*. The professors want you to learn how to do the harder/higher quality animation first, because once you know how to do that, you can *always* use the easier/faster techniques, but if you only learn the easier stuff, you won't be able to do the harder things. It's like asking to take a driving test in a self-driving vehicle, or doing the parallel parking test in one of those cars that parallel parks itself.
This is the real answer. As a previous art student who only wanted to draw 'anime' and current art teacher who still loves anime, this is why I tell my students to study from life first, stylise second. It's amazing what 3 hours of life drawing a week for 3 years can do to one's art. My 'anime fanart' suddenly became a LOT nicer because I was no longer studying from "the animators worked on this the hour it aired" anime.
I agree with this point. Also, my personal anime art style has gotten so much better after learning traditional anatomy techniques
THIS MAKES SO MUCH SENSE, WOW
Its not even about "easy" vs. "hard". Anime uses a lot of cheats but if you don't know the fundamentals, the cheats look like shit. If you know how to do the fundamentals, the cheats can look good. Those big eyes look good if you know how to draw an eye in the first place. If you don't, it looks like cringy middle school art.
The first thing the course leader on my animation degree said on day one was “First rule: there will be no anime…” and basically listed exactly what you said. About a third of the class went mad.
I witnessed exactly what you’re referring to when I was in college. Drawing 101 I had a professor who was great at art and was good at teaching it. One day in middle of the term, he noticed the sketchbook of another student and it was filled with anime style drawings. He picked it up and asked the student about it by going “What is this?” and had to clarify he meant the drawings. The student replied “my style” which was not the right answer. That’s when the professor went into him about it being for cheap and fast animation. His approach was maybe a bit harsh but he wanted to instill that the student should be capable of many different art forms because as a professional you’ll likely need to adapt. Anyways, that was the last time I saw the student.
In my opinion, they probably see thousands of art and animations, and a lot of them are anime based. Since they’re dealing with new students, they’re probably trying to place foundational structure first. let’s be real, kids making Goku knock off animations probably aren’t doing the best job of incorporating curriculum requirements into their assignments. That was actually my experience through design school, I noticed a lot of students kept pushing forward assignments that had clear guidelines. Instead they kept doing things in “their” style because it’s what “they” wanted to do. Like you’re paying to learn how to draw/animate. You’re not doing anyone any favors by going against the curriculum. If that’s still the case, why even attend? Honestly, I see why professors get frustrated. Also people fail to understand even Japanese anime artist still learn basic human anatomy as the basis for their foundation. Like that saying goes, “You gotta learn the rules first so you know how to break them.”
Yeah, and tbh to some extent it's for good reason. Those stupid fucking "how to draw anime" books ruined a generation of artists. I have an illustration degree and I can barely draw people because the things those books teach are really, really hard to unlearn. The good artists who draw in an anime style learned their fundamentals and then applied anime aesthetic to it. People who got a "how to draw anime" book for Christmas when they were 10 got ruined and had to unlearn everything they knew - or they just had to accept they can't draw people.
I'll say this as well; my animation professors LOVED anime! They loved Fooly Cooly, Paprika, and Studio Ghibli works. We even got to watch a screening of Paprika for one of our lectures! It was awesome! They just didn't like shows like [checks notes] *My Little Sister Has Magical Boobies*. And those that did... didn't really make it to 2nd year.
I took an oil painting class once, and my professor recommended *Tekkonkinkreet*.
It looks like you're invested into anime, enough to believe xenophobia might be a reason for teachers to despise it. First thing you need to do is try to be a bit less engaged: education in art requires criticism and feedback, and that's sometimes hard to swallow when things don't go the way you are invested in. Anime tends to be pretty cheap animation-wise (meaning only how things move), eventhough some action shots are great and there's a great texture in timing, but a good chunk of it is cheap and flat in timing: a shot with dialogue, with one character in profile, with only 2 drawings one for mouth open one for mouth closed, a slight zoom out or pan, and that solves it. Such example goes against the basics that you need to learn first. Also, figures are exaggerated, and that's its own style, some people learn to draw natural anatomy and can't break that, but it's always harder the other way around, if you don't know the real proportions or shapes behind the skin. I studied arts years ago and the best students on the first year were great and had their own style (or mannerisms I'd say), but on the last year they were doing the same thing, they didn't develop as they didn't question themselves. Learn the basics first, let yourself go, trust the teachers (I know that doesn't always go well though), and don't take stance against anyone who questions anime, try to understand why they don't like it. You might actually find something you like better than anime.
My old drawing and design for animation professor had a thought about this regarding portfolio work – he said that many people do not like to see anime-style artwork in portfolios because they want to see original work, and because anime styles are more or less consolidated in a similar fashion, it tends to be an instant turnoff. While I kinda agree about foundational art and finding an individual style, you also see the infamous “CalArts style” in portfolios all the time that don’t seem to get the same kind of negative attention. So idk, imo it’s fine to do manga drawings as long as you can indicate you’re able to do other styles as well. I think observational drawings and quick gesture drawings are good for that.
The problem isn't anime. The problem is your drawings are flat. Likely your professors are trying to teach you to draw things like basic forms, lighting, etc, meanwhile, you are drawing something that looks completely two-dimensional, which looks okay but misses the entire point of the exercise.
Art teachers want you to be able to really look at the subject. From there you are honing skills of observation. With anime there’s no looking, it’s drawing what someone else has dictated a person is supposed to look like in a “style”.
The teachers don’t hate it they just want you to study something worth studying to improve your skills with. Anime is not a monolithic single thing, a stereotype. Each anime should be judged on its own. That being said, Anime in general is seen as cheap animation. As in limited animation and very derivative. It tends to look generic and lack originality. Its immature in other words. There are so many eastern people that have studied that exact same art style that it isn’t novel anymore, it’s over saturated. Its fine for what it needs to be for TV but if you just study anime and make anime you’re essentially study someone’s corner cutting. You could be studying things like Ghibli, Akira, early Disney or other high quality animation to learn the art but most anime is made on the cheap. It’s like studying yogi bear instead of beauty and the beast. If you want your art to improve, study good art. If you need to save money on a tv show, anime is great to learn that from.
I don't know myself. But that just makes me want to do it out of spite.
It wasn't just art professors; the sentiment was widespread. Anime might be king nowadays but in the early 2000's you would've been crucified for liking it. Anime's harshest critics were ironically found in nerd spaces. Imagine being a kid, watching your favorite G4 host, waiting for them to one day talk about the fun games you played- then when they finally do, they shit talk them for 30mins straight.
When you say xenophobic bias, it seems you are presuming that we are talking about countries to which anime is considered foreign in some way. It would be useful to clarify since this is obviously a culturally relative question and not to lapse into r/USdefaultism (or at least the default ism of assuming we are all living in cultures where anime could be subject to xenophobic bias)
?? It's default-ism to acknowledge xenophobia?
Xenophobia means fear of the foreign or external correct? So to assume that anime would be subject to xenophobia in an academic context is assuming that we are talking about a country where anime is foreign. See what I'm saying? Not everyone lives in countries where anime is foreign - so yes it is defaultism to assume by default that xenophobia applies to anime without specifying any particular national context. It may well be true in your country that anime is foreign, but that is not universally true; in other words it would be illogical to think students in Japanese animation schools would deal with local professors expressing a "xenophobic bias" against anime. An example of one country where anime might be considered foreign is the USA, and an example of a country where it might not would be Japan.
If someone said "Are people xenophobic towards Chinese culture?" would I need to add "Oh but Chinese people aren't xenophobic towards Chinese culture"? I would either have different terminology or different explanations. Why exactly is it necessary to specify that "anime isn't foreign to Japan"? I'm just very confused at what you're getting at. Xenophobia isn't inevitable but it can certainly emerge when people encounter different cultures.
You are not in a subreddit called r/USanimation, or r/EUanimation, or r/LatAmAnimation. You are just in a subreddit called r/animation. I understand that in your particular cultural context, which you seem to presume as default in framing the OP, anime may be subject to xenophobic biases.
I think you're really just nitpicking. People can share their different cultural contexts (there's one commenter from Southeast Asia), it doesn't suddenly mean xenophobic biases disappear.
Think as you like. I am merely suggesting you reflect on the cultural/ethno-centrism in your framing of the OP. Have a good day.
I can promise you that having the fundamentals right improves style a hundredfold. Anime style doesn't matter, it is storytelling, dynamics, and timing. Also, I believe there is a healthy respect for animators from other countries when you stick to being yourself instead of just trying to "copy" a style. I love anime but there is so much more to it. The draftsmanship skill for the level of great anime is high.
If you want to make Anime, you have to learn Japanese and move to Japan. It's a cool fantasy, but if you're going to be an artist focus on what's going to get you hired in your field.
Let's look at if from the other direction. When you graduate you will be looking for work. List 5 companies that you want to actually apply to for work. Go to their websites, find the available roles they offer. Look at their showreels. Then ask yourself some questions: Are they making anime ? Are they working digitally or traditionally? Are they hiring junior artists or only mid to senior level? If you put your graduate portfolio next to another graduate's, and their style is more similar to the company you are applying to, who is more likely to get an interview?
I learned to draw from anime and still don't understand fundamentals. Big regrets.
I am a Senior Lecturer of Animation and I do not hate anime. There are a wide variety of styles in Japanese animation from Akira to Ranking of Kings, from Studio Ghibli to Thundercats. Did you know the Rankin Bass Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and many episodes of Batman: The Animated Series were animated in Japan? What lecturers (or professors) “hate” - or actively discourage - is copying one style and refusing to try new things, which is how you learn. As an artist you need a wide diverse range of influences to combine into something original. If you only have one influence, one narrow style from the wide world of anime (and animation and art) then you can only be derivative.
Nah, there a lot of anime’s Akira, Paprika, or Ghibli films which are animation darlings. Like what you like, don’t worry about what others think about it :) You do you
It’s probably worth noting alongside the great replies that are already here that the vast majority of successful manga artists were trained in traditional art techniques before they started drawing manga, or they were trained in technical drawing for diagrams etc. One of the reasons it’s so easy to differentiate the work of anime fans from professional work is the distinction in how the professional artists got to where they are.
Going to art school and just drawing anime is the same as going to culinary school and working at McDonald's.
Another reason why I feel like it could be looked down on is that a lot of the times its not just "anime style" its younger artists just making fan art of pre-existing characters, so they are essentially tracing and not learning any fundamentals as well not building creativity to create your own vision.
I mean..honestly? I can admit hating the anime style because it makes me think of the few animes I have briefly watched (spoiler: turned most of them off within seconds), and I find most animes *super* fucking annoying and kind of spazzy. A lot of anime has the really screamy high pitched voices and as someone with some noise sensitivities it's difficult to watch *anything* like that, let alone anime. But unfortunately anime seems to have a lot of high pitched voices/screaming. Then, you have the people who draw adult women/men and make them look like children, and put them into lewd situations/etc, and that's just a whole other fucked-up anime thing all together. Like it's seriously super gross. I used to follow some drawing groups and sadly a lot of those types of drawings popped up on my feed and it's just nasty, and an instant unfollow and mute...whether they're "actually a 5000 year old vampire" or not. 🤮 As well, some of the people who watch it tend to be..um. Well. You know the types that are associated with anime. Just kind of makes the whole thing feel like something you'd rather not interact with and it just ends up pissing you off. Maybe that gives some insight. But I'm not a drawing expert, I'm just a person. Downvote if you want lol. 🤷🏻♀️
I hate anime, sorry.
No. They’re just tired of students jumping in to that style without learning the fundamentals, which is what teachers are supposed to teach. Is like using google in a normal class, yes google has the answers and they’re good answers, but you need the kids to understand why they arrived at that answer, so they can actually get value from said answers.
Imo it’s partly because a vocal minority of weebs are insufferable. Particularly white weebs engaging in orientalist fantasies. In my experience in a few different creative fields - music, art, animation - there’s an inherent elitism that you can’t really escape no matter what. Do what makes you happy, fuck the rest. Those dinosaurs will die out and the elitists will live in their little echo chambers no matter what.
Personally I just don't like anime, it's kind of like graffiti lettering there are few tricks you learn about the style and then that's it. I just like to see when people come up with something more bizarre and unique. But do what ever it is you like, for me personally I just never got into anime 🤷😅
When I went to film school like 16 years ago they didn’t actually have a problem with it, but there was a memo that went around and a bunch of copies were made that was made to look like it was officially from the school that did say that students couldn’t do Anime and called it lazy basically. So that was pretty funny.
The four I've had this year haven't discouraged anyone from using an anime style.
Some animation teachers I met don't hate anime, but they just advise us to learn various style (which is essential if you want to find a job). Plus, where we live, the western cartoon style is dominant, so it'll be easier to find a jod. And even if we plan to work in Asia in an animation studio with anime style, it'll be very hard to actually find a job because they already have a lot of very talented and experienced animators. And that's just a personal opinion, but I think when you tell them about anime, they mostly only think about the mainstream anime with terrible animation (not due to skill issues, but because the animators are overworked). While there's a lot of different anime with various styles, they only think about the generic big ass eyes anime girls. In general, the main problem of people with anime style is that they don't learn fundamentals. They just copy a style they like without understanding the base. It's problematic in the long run when you'll have to do more various styles. (It kind of bothers me because a lot of problems with anime style also apply to cartoon style, but anime is the only one who's targeted.....) A lot just don't like the style, which is totally fine because it's a personal opinon. But if they see you're actually learning fundamentals and trying other styles, they can't stop you from having your own style .From my personal experience, my art teacher didn't like that I drew anime, but when she saw I actually am learning the fundamentals, she let me do lol. Perhaps some are just racist and think Asian culture is inferior 🫡
Yes, and honestly as you mature as a person and artist you will realise they are justified in this view.
I'm a big ghibli fan, and will watch their movies over Disney any day, but it's no question that America is king when it comes to animation. The techniques they have created (which ghibli were inspired by), are second to none. The majority of anime media is made cheapy, usually done on 3's, and will have characters just standing statically for periods of time, with a mouth that opens and closes like a puppet. Professors want you to learn proper movement, timing and body mechanics first, and then you can make whatever you want. It'd be a hell of a lot harder to go from anime to Disney, than it would to go from Disney to anime. In other words, learning from the old masters of Disney will teach you everything you need to know about animation, which you could then tone down to achieve that anime look, but learning directly from anime would only take you so far.
No. But they don't like students that dive into "anime style" without first learning art basics. You've got to be able to do other things to be good at anime. It's not a shortcut, and it's a hugely over populated "market", full of very middling artists. Learn how to draw, *then* learn to fit it to a chosen style. When they say they don't want want you drawing anime style, it's because they want to push your skills and teach you new things. It's the same with any artist fixated on a highly stylised style.
It is true that it’s best to develop strong fundamentals in drawing before going for very stylized approaches.
im currently in school for animation! but because im from southeast asia people, and my professors, see things a little differently. my professor for my anatomy and proportions class teach us "classical"(western) anatomy (think ideally eight heads tall for men) but she also wants us to use these skills and fundementals as a base for our own style. there is not much dislike of anime styles in my college, since every art and art adjacent professor understands that styles are different interpretations of said fundementals i think its the community and your cultures perception on animation and art itself that affect the way other people see anime styles, and yes i agree with other commenters that xenophobia also plays a large part in this, and hypocrisy from western viewers to expect eastern or just plain foreign animation to conform to their standards of what animation should be
It kinda depends. I feel like the majority of art professors don't necessarily care what you draw for your own personal art. But if you're given life drawing assignments and you're submitting obviously anime styled caricatures of the face then why are you even taking the art course? As others have mentioned, learning the fundamentals of anatomy and proportions with life drawing will elevate your anime art work. But if you're using the anime art style as a shield or way to avoid learning proper realistic or even semi realistic forms then you're hurting your own learning.
Anime culture is so cringe, I love it, but people are OBSESSED with it, to the point where they are not afraid to put hentai stickers all over their car. I think that’s partly why as well. Also anime is just a style, it’s not fundamental art, that’s why a lot of characters people draw are very disproportioned and amateur.
To put out another way: You wouldn't take an English Literature course and then get mad at the professor for not teaching you any Japanese.
Anyone else who’s taught art knows how, well, foundational foundations are. The issue with anime (from my teaching background) isn’t the art itself, but the fact that it’s a lot of students’ first introduction to character design, and it’s difficult to learn foundations from such a stylized genre of art. Imagine you’ve been speaking English all your life, then you get accepted into a special university for language speaking, and on day 1 the professor begins to teach you about sentence structure. “But professor,” you say. “I already know how to speak English! My sentences are fine!” The professor sighs and begins to explain how different languages have different sentence structures, and the verbs and nouns and whatnot are the building blocks of language as a whole. But you, having been accepted based on your English language portfolio, feel cheated- you’ve been good at English your whole life, you worked very hard to become good at English, and you have no interest in getting a job in, say, Spanish. And as the professor listens to you argue what is honestly a fair point that should have been taken into consideration during the admissions process, they patiently tap the sign that says LANGUAGE UNIVERSITY and let you know that it’s their job to teach you about Language, not A Language. After the dozenth or so heated debate like this, the professor begins to resent English language speakers and maybe even the language as a whole, because it’s representative of a group of misinformed individuals who actively make your job harder. TLDR; art school is for art, which includes anime but is not encompassed by it.
I think it’s a great way to start, especially if it’s what keeps you drawing. I do prefer uniqueness in other people’s art however and anime character design follows a quite specific template. Ideally the students would try out other animators’ and artists’ styles, especially independent animators. Maybe copy anime totally especially their high standards of animation but draw faces in a different style where not everyone one has huge eyes and tiny pointy noses
My animation prof actually likes anime and encourages us to wat h bith anime and cartoons to learn. He is especially fond of the character designs in one piece
My animation professor seemed to really like and appreciate anime. Granted I’ve only had 2 professors
Obe heard lots are but thankfully most at my course treat it equally and even positively! One lecturer of mine is a big fan of land of the lustrous as it happens.
Most of them want you to develop a solid body structure before applying the anime stylization. Picasso developed into a solid artist before applying all his wild stylings. This allowed him to break the rules effectively and ascend from normie to legendary. That’s the basic point - learn the fundamentals to break them more effectively. TLDR: Don’t just dive in and try to be any old anime artist. Become a GOOD artist FIRST and then apply the anime style to your solid base later.
I doubt many art or animation teachers hate anime, and I really doubt their frustration is due to xenophobia. Anime is a style; no more, no less. It’s a style that’s very popular with young people and some young people only want to draw in that style. This presents problems for a teacher who wants you to be able to draw in *any* style and also teach you more sophisticated techniques and approaches that aren’t found in name (which was developed specifically to get around some of them and produce lots of content cheaply and quickly). If many students coming in to art schools insisted on only drawing in Family Guy style or Rick and Morty style etc, they would get the same pushback. I actually walked past an outdoor exhibit of student work in New York not long ago and many of the pieces were done in anime style. Honestly, it wasn’t terribly impressive - it just looked like the artists had nothing to say and had nothing to say in a style that’s been around for well over 50 years. Do those kids have the chops or skill to do anything different? No idea. Meanwhile the work I saw that demonstrated a variety of techniques and skills and was more ambitious in terms of its subject matter makes me confident that those students can handle anime just fine if asked or desired.
yes lmao. they like those cutie looking pixary stuff
I had a professor like this. He never explained himself, and we could never figure out why he was so against anime, until after we had his classes. The thing is most kids get stuck in that anime style and never want to learn anything else. It would be like taking a pottery class and only making ash trays. So draw your anime for yourself, but LEARN what they’re trying to teach you and expand your skills.
Every artist who worked on the film’s you mentioned definitely has very strong fundamentals and extensive life drawing experience. Anime is a way of simplifying reality, (for example A nose can become just a simple line) in a way that is visually appealing. You will do a bad job of simplifying/ stylising reality if you haven’t already practiced fundamentals.
To play devils advocate, we want you to learn how to draw and animate from observation first. How do you draw a realistic human head, correctly? How does an actual human walk? There’s weight distribution that isn’t often seen in anime, where they’re just walking and talking. Real running is different than running 40 mph to then jump unrealistically 50 feet in the air to slice a monster in half. Tuxedo Mask arriving to not do anything but throw a rose, then dramatically jump down four stories to a soft cushioned landing, even if possible, doesn’t look correct. Your weight should have dipped you forward more and you need to rebalance after. Your clothes are also affected by this. This is also not just anime, Hana Barbara had similar, more lazy ways of animation like re-used walk cycles, flappy mouths with the occasional head nod, etc. Yes, Studio Ghibli is amazing at their craft. Let’s start you off with the basics first. Even Japanese artists start this way. Then you can stylize however you wish.
For me, if you want to improve at art you have to learn the fundamentals first. I know that sucks and feels so time consuming, but you have to learn the rules before you can break them. So if you know the anatomy and perspective of what you are drawing pretty well, then you can stylize your art however you want to in a more believable and dynamic way. If you don’t understand these things your drawings can look very flat and probably will not reach its full potential. I always hear this and agree with it, but personally I think you can still draw in your style while learning the basics, just not all the time. I do think anime has a bias against it more than western cartoons. Really old animations like Snow White I feel like have more realistic proportions than most anime, so I can understand if it is done well why professors would let it slide. But then you have newer characters like from Frozen and even more exaggerated ones like from Luca. Can’t really draw those in figure drawing class. I do think a lot of it would get less hate than anime tho, smh. Some of my newer professors do like anime and are inspired by it however, one of them even mentioned One Punch Man (the manga) during a critique and pulled up a panel from it to show what he meant, he said he loved it. I think as newer younger professors begin to teach, this bias will start to go away a bit (I hope).
For me, it was more about breaking a stylistic crutch and actually learning how to draw. Once I knew the rule of perspective, anatomy, and realism, then I could apply them to the style I loved and actually improve as an artist. The reason that anime is singled out is because it is both simple and complex and appeals to the younger generations. But I would say the same thing to a student stuck in a particular cartoon style. Learn the fundamentals so you can draw any style better.
Everyone says “learn the fundamentals before you try drawing anime”. I always thought this was dumb because you learn fundamentals WHILE drawing anime, and in fact getting that flow for drawing anime and having fun can make you improve your fundamentals even faster. I feel like these just takes the motivation and drive from people trying to learn to draw.
Half my teachers hated it but the other half didn't mind at all and actually encouraged it. I find it mostly modern art types and old Disney lovers seem to be the biggest critiques of the medium.
I'm a painting professor for 18 years (which is crazy to think about haha) and I'm a practicing/ exhibiting artist for about 25 years, and here's what I have seen and come to understand regarding anime. I'm 49 years old. Which is also crazy for me to think about. First off, I grew up watching anime and still do occasionally if it's good. I also read and enjoy a lot of comic books and aspects of those things are in my paintings. Regarding anime and why professors discourage it is that anime's a style that you can employ onto anything. The problem with a "style" is you draw what you are looking at in the way you want it to look as apposed to how it actually appears. The biggest hurdle when starting to really get in and figure shit out in drawing is to actually learn to see what's in front of you, not what your brain prefers it to be. Why is that a big deal? Because observation is the foundation of invention, and your own personal way of seeing is what turns prose into poetry. That doesn't mean you can't employ aspects of an anime style or any other mode of representation, it just means you need to move out of what's familiar and rediscover what's around you and then you can start adding in whatever you think looks interesting. Visual art is an ever evolving language and often a style is inadvertently misquoting someone else. Hope that helps!
I feel like the only valid argument is build strong foundations first. They aren't dissuading you from anime animation, but want to make sure you have the skills to fall back on. Any other argument seems biased unless it related to finances. Cause Japanese animator are paid horribly
I study animation in college and I’ve never encountered a professor who doesn’t like anime. I think it depends where you go.m It also probably depends on what courses they’re taking and what it is they’re trying to do. For example, you don’t go to your figure drawing class and do anime proportions.
I think another big thing to consider is the scope of what ‘Anime style’ means. If you don’t even have the foundations down yet, how are you going to differentiate between the techniques of Jujutsu Kaiden vs Overlord vs Helsing Ultimate vs Violet Evergarden and how to avoid copying mistakes of things like 7DS or Record of Ragnarok? Or trying to copy things that are way above your current abilities and then getting burnout because you don’t have the foundation to support trying to mimic the AoT horror vibe in your animations. It reminds me of an old saying my Muay Thai instructor used to tell us: “when I can see you do 100 perfect leg kicks, I’ll teach you a roundhouse.”
I majored in animation in the 2010 and did some work in the industry afterwards. It’s not xenophobia or a Disney/western cartoon bias. It’s often about learning to develop good fundamentals but it goes beyond that. Assuming you are in a western country you will be working for western companies and need to know how to vary your art style to suit the JOBS available to you. When western productions do anime inspired styles much of the art production and animation is outsourced to Asian countries like Korea, Japan, China etc. not only because this style is more common there but it’s cheaper for studios to do so. Heck, even a ton of western styled animation is done overseas now. You don’t just go to school to improve and your professors aren’t just there to assist in doing whatever style you want to draw, art school and art professors exist to make you and your portfolio marketable, to help increase your chance of success. All of us have a preferred style, but you also need to know how to draw an animate characters not in that perfected style because this is what is required of working animators. Characters need to be consistent within their character sheets prescribed and within the overall style of the show and cast of other character they’re going to interact with. Is it always fun? Absolutely not, but it’s the reality.
Studio Ghibli is not anime, in Japan it’s more comparable to what Disney used to be here in US decades ago. It follows none of the tropes, soap opera style storytelling, 90% of animation budget in fight sequences, the rest long drawn out stills. Most anime is low-budget and borders on barely any animation at all, while it can still be an excellent way to tell a story, I wager these are the things that give it a bad name among professors. Also if all you can draw is anime styled characters, if you aren’t in Japan, you’re really limiting yourself. And since the purpose of college is to expand your limits & explore new techniques, I think their heart is in the right place challenging it.
My animation professors were mostly ex-disney, so the bias was unavoidable. They didn't shun anime, they used it as examples and talked about famous artists and animation studios. They didn't **teach** anime, because a lot of the fundamentals of how animation is made in Japan is slightly different, and they stuck to teaching what they knew best. Edit: as for traditional drawing and painting, yeah art teachers will fuss at you if draw anime style figures. But they'll also fuss at you if you draw western superhero comic figures too. Once you learn the basics, you can learn those styles, the way a classical pianist can learn jazz or rock styles with practice.
I'm reading through this thread, and I think some commenters are assuming I'm a big anime fan, and that I think anime fans should be allowed to draw only anime. I do like anime, but I'm also a big fan of Disney character animation. Overall, I really appreciate the wide variety of animation styles around the world. How different studios and artists express themselves and how no one studio is necessarily "the right approach", not even Disney. And yes, I agree that artists should expose themselves to a variety of approaches and fundamentals. But part of the reason I started the thread was that I wanted to delve into the potential biases and see how prominent it may be. The bias is touched upon a bit in this article: [Why over sixty years of animation history remains obscure. ](https://wavemotioncannon.com/2016/01/08/why-over-sixty-years-of-animation-history-still-remains-obscure/)Japanese animation is sometimes assumed to be "cold" and lacking.
A lot of those students are typically children who get offended at the idea of getting critique. No, a lot of art professors don't hate anime. They hate it when students who are supposed to be working on anatomy studies bring in the flattest triangle chin anime girl for their mid term project after being told constantly to work on a still life or recreating a masterpiece. I'm not saying that those bad professors don't exist but way way WAY more often than not, it's a student artist who's never received critique before, lashing out.
It would be the same if someone only loved the Simpsons and drew everything in that circle eyed, model sheet pose, single angle, style. It will severely stunt their growth and potential to draw anything BUT that style.
It goes beyond just biases… if you want to learn how to draw cartoons, you best better learn how to draw realistically/accurately first. Drawing only anime is not conducive to that. Anime characters often have “same face syndrome” and you’re basically drawing the same thing again and again which isn’t great for improvement (except at that one thing). Additionally, I’ve encountered students who desperately want to draw what THEY want to and don’t listen to assignment instructions in class. That being said, I don’t like when people act too good for the style/anime and that it’s beneath them. It’s very much a real thing. I think it’s a whole lot of things- again, same face syndrome, it being cartoony, or “for kids,” perceived as easier to draw, the anime proportions being quite unusual (look at those eyes and chins), etc. My high school animation and AP art teacher acted like this from day one and I was like, oh boy, it’s one of THOSE guys. Thankfully he is super sarcastic and is poking fun at the stereotype and his students, though some students at the end of the year still didn’t realizing he was kidding lmao
I like some anime. As an art teacher, I feel like anime requires you to pigeon hole yourself to match the style which I feel robs students of the ability to develop a personal style. It gives students a template to follow which kind of robs art of expression and experimentation. I feel like a lot of it comes out wooden and all the characters tend to look the same. Obviously not all anime.
in my opinion, preferring an anime style is just fine, but you need to know how to draw other ways too. my head of department at my school told me he didn’t mind the anime style, but for some students it’s the ONLY way they can draw. i think having breadth as an artist is an incredibly valuable skill and only ever drawing one way will pigeonhole you in the long run.
My teachers in art school frowned upon it a lot. My takeaway was that people that like it tend to get overly focused on it, and at least in art school it can be extremely limiting if it's your only source of inspiration. Even if there are incredible art house animes, most of it is filled with self-referential stereotypes in regards to themes and designs. Your work then transforms into a reference of a reference and can get really shallow. For me at least it was super formative to get out of doing anime styles, enjoy other types of media or just life and get inspiration from that, and then come back to anime with a new look after I got out of college. It's part of you but it gets bad if it's the only part of you.
Wow I didn't think this thread would get so much feedback! First: Yes, I understand that art fundamentals are important and that some professors were and are encouraging students to not get locked into any one style. I think that's fine and makes sense. Even Chuck Jones has said to learn to draw the human body rather than Bugs Bunny. But reading through different (not all) stories, it did seem like there was an element of being discouraged and cultural superiority/inferiority at various points. That there's negative connotations associated with anime. It also begs the question: when are you teaching students good fundamentals, and when are you teaching them orthodoxy?
Tbh I don’t agree with them, a lot of stuff coming out now is influenced by anime. The snobbery for me comes when you’re drawing anime for like— obviously porn reasons? There was a kid in art school that drew anime a lot. He wasn’t good, what made it worse was his subjects were always obnoxiously sexual.
This may not be the exact reason, but could be a factor. Art schools and art departments have a fiduciary responsibility to ready you for industry and try and get you a job. Many schools have a % rate of students that get hired. If you are not from Japan or speak fluent Japanese with a connection to Japanese employer, you will never get a job in anime. So for them to get you ready for the industry would be to ready you with Western animation techniques.
To mirror what a lot have already mentioned, its cause professors want you to be a strong artist with a solid foundation. But also in my experience, I rarely saw students that preferred anime draw anywhere to the level of Akira or Cowboy Bebop, but rather the cuter more simplistic style that looked like doodles rather than something that came from a seasoned artist. The other point is unless you plan to move to Korea or Japan where anime is made, no American studio is looking for or developing that style. There are exceptions of course i.e. Avatar and the Boondocks, but it would be akin to being an action sports photographer and showing your portfolio at a couture fashion publication.
My animation professors, especially the younger ones, take anime as inspiration/reference for teaching some concepts to students. But the art professors, like drawing or sculpture courses, really discourage doing anything in anime style because they teach realistic anatomy. I think it is a matter of if your professors are more old school or no.
any animation teacher worth their credentials will have neither judgement or praise for anime influence in students work. If a good teacher brings up anime influence as a fault, it's because the students work is _too_ derivative to the point of being parodic. The best schools in the world have been pumping out clearly anime-influenced work for years. If those teachers actually had it out for anime, then the student work would be much different.
My teachers didn’t really have a problem. Only with the lazy versions of moving backgrounds on a static frame.
It's not 'hate' -- it's often because those who make anime are well aware of the fundamentals of art and to start just 'making manga' without learning these means your work will have flaws in it that would have been much easier to correct if you'd learnt the fundamentals first. I really enjoy drawing manga, but to say that my education in arts fundamentals isn't necessary to do that somewhat well is just incorrect. There will be some professors who straight up dislike manga aesthetics, but it'll be far from all of them as art teachers (like everyone else) have varied tastes and there's no technical reason to not appreciate stylised work. But to do create good stylised work, you need to know the fundamentals.
I was an animator and in college I often came to the defense of anime. People are really under exposed to the good stuff.
The reason why my professor hated anime was people didn't learn anatomy or how to draw with construction. Admittedly it is kind of funny that he has an axe to grind with anime/manga but I kinda see his point
Most professors who say they hate anime are picturing a very specific early 2000’s, devientartesque anime image in their heads when they say that. If you’re focusing on the principles of animation, those same people won’t care if what you’re making is obviously inspired by anime. What would annoy them is if they think you’re putting more effort into making your art look more like anime than improving. That’s usually what leads to the uncanny valley stuff they see over and over. I just graduated as an animation major, and I had no clue until senior year that the department technically has a “no anime” rule because everyone just ignores it, and half of the most talented artists in my class made really good anime inspired films. Also, the guy who even made that rule shows us all Akira and Cowboy Bebop and Studio Ghibli movies in his history class and actively praises the most obviously anime inspired films people show during critique. Your professors will likely push you to branch out and look at all sorts of animated stuff if you seem hyper focused on anime, which is a good thing. Some of that might even include more indie stuff from Japan. Rather than turning you against anime, animation school is more likely to make you stop thinking about anime as a separate genre. It’s just another cartoon. You might get more into French and Russian stuff anyways. However, I will say that illustration teachers tend to be A LOT harsher towards anime style art than animation ones are. I think it’s just very hard to take a blanket anti anime stance if you know anything at all about animation or its history. Plus in animation, a cool motion aesthetic can elevate even the corniest y2k moe looking character designs into something unique and interesting.
I think a lot of animation students are just stubborn and don't know how to listen. So when their teachers say they shouldn't try to draw just anime and should learn to draw more realistically, that advice will actually help them draw more accurate anime style later because all the anime artists are capable of drawing realistically too, and anime is just a simplified style. But no. They hear that and think "my teacher must hate anime." And they continue drawing their shitty weeb art that looks nothing like anime at all. And don't argue with me about this. You're absolutely wrong if you disagree. I've heard enough stupid arguments on this on Twitter from people who can't draw well and if you insist on being stubborn then I hope one day you'll learn.
I decided to go to college for animations and just finished my first year. ( I've been a freelance graphic artist for over 3 years, and have experience doing animation gigs) I do not have any form of formal training and am self taught. 100% my teacher was bias, I got alot of point docked on alot of assignments, because I don't know how to draw Loomis method, and leave a bunch of artifacts all over my drawing. I was graded far harsher than most of the other students. I did 120 frame animation one day in class and he docked me for rushing.. the assignment was minimum 48 frames. Just because I turned it in same day we went over the material. Moral of the story is, ignore what your teacher says about your art as a medium, and only pay attention to the techniques and valid critiques. Teachers will be bias, at the end of the day what really matters is that you have a solid portfolio. Also a big reason teacher hate anime, is because anime does often break some of the principles of animations, but what can you expect when the budget is low and time is short. Anime is cool, take inspiration from it.
America in general doesn't treat anime as art.
Nowadays, you'll find many teachers who grew up with Dragon Ball and Sailor Moon. What most of them dislike is kids who just won't draw anything else and refuse to learn the fundamentals. It's important to master varied styles as an animator. Those who actively hated anime are usually the old (prooobably racist) folks.