BEYOND TV SAFETY

—by Scott Frazier

I am often accosted at conventions by people with portfolios and asked to look at them. I'm always happy to do this. A lot of the time the art is by fans who have never drawn much of anything before but they are so obsessed with anime that they want to draw in a similar style. As often, the people want me to evaluate their portfolios and tell them what chance they would have of getting a position in an animation company.
I will explain some common problems through the evaluation of some fan art. If anybody is willing for me to critique their art on these pages I will be more than willing to do so fairly. (Except for this first guy.) If you wish to remain anonymous then that's OK too.
This is some rather old art that appeared in a fan club newsletter. The images here are (ab)used with the permission and full understanding of the artist who wishes to remain anonymous.

Original Gall Force
Image

There is no title for the image but for those who don't know or don't remember the characters are from the first GALLFORCE OVA which was released in 1985. Original character designs were by Sonoda Kenichi. As far as I have able to determine this is not traced or copied from any existing illustrations in magazines or anything.

Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication.
—Rebecca West

First, let me point out that because anime/manga style is so foreign to most Westerners it takes more than copying a bunch of images in books to be able to work in it. The best an artist can do is work with various styles and evolve his or her own style as soon as possible. One should also keep in mind that this style is nice to work in for pleasure and a hobby but should one wish to become a professional illustrator, comic artist or animator it is best to study a variety of styles, not just anime. Although it may sound strange, someone wanting to work in the Japanese industry should not show up with a portfolio of anime/manga style images. Companies will want an artist that can work in styles different from what they have extensive access to and a westerner who can draw in an anime style but has nothing else to offer is merely a curiosity.
Whether working in an anime/manga style will increase the chances of working in the US comics or animation industry is unknown to me.
So the bottom line is: do this to enjoy it. If you want to get serious then you better start by studying life drawing, croquis and dessin. A study of Rembrandt and Matisse will yield better results than copying all of Rumiko Takahashi's illustrations.

Copies, Creativity and Originality

Art is either plagiarism or revolution.
—Paul Gauguin

The most common problem with fan art is that it is all too often copied from images in magazines, books, LD covers or manga. This is an important way of learning and polishing a style however a copy is not suitable to put in an art show or in a portfolio as it is not the original work of the artist. Work that is done as part of a team is likewise not material for an art show. In a portfolio, it shows that the person can work as a member of a team and can be valuable. Clearly label what part of the work you did.
Copying an image and changing certain elements is not original work either. If you copy a RANMA manga cover but change the colors from red to yellow, it is not art, despite what Andy Warhol might have said. Plato (and Schopenhauer) believed that objects in the physical world are just shadows of objects in the ideal, or perfect, world – archetypes – and that all creations of humans are representations of experiences that are imitations of the universal forms. This doesn't mean that copying a Takeuchi Naoko illustration is OK because you're just describing the same universal form. (There are those who would argue that the perfect world outside human consciousness doesn't include Sailor Moon.)
A person evaluating your portfolio wants to see originality. They want to know that you can stand by yourself and are a creator rather than a tracer. There are hordes of tracers out there we could give jobs to but we would much rather hire someone who can make a difference. "Artistic" is defined as showing imagination and skill.

Composition

In the final analysis, a drawing simply is no longer a drawing, no matter how self-sufficient its execution may be. It is a symbol, and the more profoundly the imaginary lines of projection meet higher dimensions, the better.
—Paul Klee

One of the most important parts of art is the composition. Composition is the arrangement of artistic parts so as to form a unified whole, the juxtaposition of elements, i.e. the girl, the cat and the background.

This is dull

This has something interesting going on.

The original GALLFORCE image here had a severe perspective problem. I sketched out the basic shapes of the characters and got this.

Not only are the bodies pretty deformed, they are all out of perspective to each other. In fact it's as if they are all standing side by side and somehow occupying the same space. There is no sense of where their feet are in relation to each other and where they are standing in 3D space. I used MetaCreations' Poser to place the characters in new positions in 3D. I also adjusted their poses to be a little less off-balance but they are still kind of strange.

Small version of original Gal Force image

The 3D image appears as if shot through a telephoto lens, i.e. there is no depth of field. It's closer to the original but in comparison to the images below looks rather boring.

This is the same image as if shot with a standard lens. Perspective, especially when dealing with an image with more than one element is extremely important. This image is not only more interesting to look at but a lot more dynamic than the one with no depth of field.

Pull the camera back a ways and here are the characters' full bodies in 3D space.

Here are the same figures from various angles. See how Patty's (the green one's) pose really is weird? I left it this way throughout the project to show how one element can damage the whole.