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	eag 2004-03-16 10:06 pm UTC (link)
	Anyone who needs more than a page of text to explain what's going on in their picture seems to be missing the point of making a point through art. draws a grapefruit Now see, this here grapefruit represents Texas, where grapefruits are sometimes grown. I'm making a political statement about anime. The grapefruit was first domesticated in... (Reply to this)(Thread)

irk
2004-03-16 10:11 pm UTC (link)

The original post didn't have the explanation there.

Wow, I didn't expect anyone would notice this. But now that people have noticed it and you're curious as to what I actually meant by it, I might as well reveal the mystery.

Most of the explanation is a lot of backstory for DA that apparently some DAers needed because they somehow missed the whole issue as it sailed right over their heads.

I think those that would get it at all would get it without any explanation whatsoever, those who wouldn't get it probably couldn't understand even if the artist wrote a novel...

nn; But as an anime artist there, I liked reading the long description in sort of a "hell yeah" sense; it was nice to see someone else vent about an issue that's been grating me and others.

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	eiviiaru 2004-03-16 10:09 pm UTC (link)
	I'm honestly not sure which is funnier: the semi-lame attempt at a political statement, which I'm still not entirely sure that I grok, except that the box is crucial... or all the people going "this is great!!11!1eleventyone but could u plz post a version w/o teh box?!" (Reply to this)(Thread)

	irk 2004-03-16 10:12 pm UTC (link)
	And because of this massive anti-anime bias, many good and respected artists won't even look twice at a picture that resembles anime. So this picture is saying, "This is not an anime girl. Look at it again." It's also saying, "This is not an anime girl, so you can't move it to another category." (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

eiviiaru
2004-03-16 10:38 pm UTC (link)

Well, I think I grok the basic idea (and agree wholeheartedly with what he's protesting, insofar as I get DA policies), but I'm not entirely sure the protest is as effective as it could be. It probably doesn't help that, IMHO, there are lots of distracting stylistic elements, to the point that I'm not sure I'd look at the picture as an anime girl even were the face uncovered.

So... yeah. Maybe I'm being an idiot.

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irk
2004-03-16 11:00 pm UTC (link)

Heh, one could debate the usefulness of this as a political protest at all, considering the method it's taking up. I don't think it'll do anything directly...though it's certainly helping raise more irate anime artist voices in accord, which might eventually culminate in something. Maybe.

I think without the title, though, it really doesn't work as an anime protest and becomes a nudity censorship protest.

I still actually look at her as an anime girl, though, because of the damn hair he picked for the piece.

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	els_chan 2004-03-17 04:35 pm UTC (link)
	Major icon love. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	smo 2004-03-17 06:15 pm UTC (link)
	Icon love seconded. Xellos rocks my world. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	shoiryu 2004-03-16 10:29 pm UTC (link)
	I think I'd like to marry that guy. DA's anime policy is the fucking dumbest thing. I think his picture makes a fine point. (Reply to this)

mariagoner
2004-03-16 10:31 pm UTC (link)

Hell, at least the golden-ish background is pretty.

And as for anime art itself... it can be beautiful. Really complex, beautiful, intricate, awe-inspiring-- for example, see almost anything by Hayao Miyazaki. But I find that all too often, every single character seems to look the same (with a few minor differences, such as eye and hair color, hair style, amount of scarring, etc.) so the quality of it drops a great deal when it focuses on the human form.

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irk
2004-03-16 10:48 pm UTC (link)

*shruggle* I could say the same for Marvel art and such - since both it and anime are styles specifically developed for drawing over and over and over in sequence, it's natural that they'd develop into a "template" form. Because it's a utilitarian style/medium, you're going to get a lot of same-ness overall. If I draw Lina outside of Slayers style, all of a sudden she doesn't automagically look like Lina. She looks like a red-eyed red-head with long wavy hair and fluffy bangs.

But that's what cartooning styles are FOR, and I find that a lot of anime-style artists who are on places on DeviantArt and who aren't, you know, actually in the industry, usually are prepping for side-projects where that template nature is still very, very useful and maybe even necessary. Since a lot of them are planning comics and such.

Other than that...drawing in anime style achieves the same thing that other simplified styles do - it makes a character that's iconic and can be related to by a lot of different people...and also DRAWN by a lot of different people. When you're in a specific art community that revolves around drawing other people's characters and other people drawing your characters, that last part is very important.

And in the end, it really depends on what you're expressing - if I want to express Xelloss shaking maracas, I'm going to draw Xelloss shaking maracas, and it's going to probably look just like a template anime version of Xelloss, only shaking maracas. If I want to express random costume design, I'll probably draw a random generic anime head on a generic female body and then pay heavy, heavy attention to the outfit I'm rendering. If I want to express intense emotion, then it just depends on whether my hands end up drawing general anime triangle noses or realistic noses, or biggish eyes or normalish eyes. There's nothing I control at that point, I'm just DRAWING, and there's nothing that can really dictate whether I'm going to use template convenience to convey a statement or I REALLY FEEL LIKE DRAWING A NOSE. And sometimes, you know, I really feel like drawing a nose.

And sometimes it really just depends on the skill level of an artist - I didn't draw any realish noses until I learned to, and until then it was all triangle triangle triangle because that was simple enough. The reason anime has triangle noses in the first place, though, is because noses are tough to draw over and over especially when turning a face this way and that, so triangles make the motion so much easier.

And I will just talk and talk and talk until somebody just pries me away from this goddamn keybo-

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hansbekhart
2004-03-19 07:37 am UTC (link)

I second that ... I'm a fashion design major, and we use templates because why waste a lot of time drawing a nude fashion figure or making up proportions (which are really different, obviously, from actual people proportions) when we're drawing thirty or fifty designs so that we can edit it down into a cohesive collection? There's nothing wrong with taking the easy way out. **puts away her Slytherin hat**

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mariagoner
2004-03-16 10:35 pm UTC (link)

Oh, and one more thing. Is it just me, or does anyone else think the anime guy is, in and of himself, kind of... creepy?

I was casually flipping through his art porfolio, when I realized how many of his nude or semi-nude drawings seemed to feature prepubescent figures. And when I realized how many pant-less pictures of Edward from Cowboy Bebop he seemed to enjoy drawing. And when I realized he had written rambling explanations for almost every one of those drawings, stating none of them were young girls per say and Edward wasn't really pantless. And that's when I began to slowly back away...

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irk
2004-03-16 11:03 pm UTC (link)

I looked for it, and I looked for it real hard because I'm really familiar with the creepy pedophile genre of anime artists [dude, when will I be able to use THAT sentence again?], but he's got enough art of other subjects, or art of girls that don't look 12, that I think it's just because he actually draws breasts at a not-collossal size. Which is so freaking rare that I will embrace it. Hesitantly.

Just in case this turns out to be a bad touch.

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mariagoner
2004-03-17 05:10 am UTC (link)

The girls he draw look incredibly prepubescent to me. It's not the small boobs--- I understand grown women don't always have Maxim-laddie-style hooters. It's their baby faces, kiddish expressions, scrawny, small bodies and... just everything screams kiddie porn to me.

See:
http://images.deviantart.com/i/2003/38/c/7/A_Little_Hal_to_Hold_You.jpg
http://images.deviantart.com/large/indyart/anime/Remind_me_again_why_I_do_this.jpg
http://tn1.deviantart.com/100/large/indyart/anime/Another_Naked_Catgirl.jpg

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	panthea 2004-03-17 04:12 pm UTC (link)
	Hmm... I think that's just the nature of anime art, really. Everyone looks young, especially the girls. I actually really like the first one. Sexxeh. And she, at least, has body definition (albeit scrawny body definition) one wouldn't see in a prepubescent. But that's just me. (Reply to this)(Parent)

iczer6
2004-03-17 03:43 am UTC (link)

I was casually flipping through his art porfolio, when I realized how many of his nude or semi-nude drawings seemed to feature prepubescent figures. And when I realized how many pant-less pictures of Edward from Cowboy Bebop he seemed to enjoy drawing.

Really? I saw a few pics of Yuffie but none of Ed. And the pics I saw seemed to be more cute than anything else.

[Also I believe that Ed doesn't wear pants in the show, she usually wears what looks like spandex shorts.]

But then again DeviantART hates me and won't load half the time so I could be wrong.

Icz

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mariagoner
2004-03-17 05:13 am UTC (link)

Behold the horror that is pantless Ed!

http://www.deviantart.com/view/684065/

And what the artist says about it:

She does seem a little too tall... here's the reason. The sketch I made for that pic of Ed didn't go down as far as the painting did, so when I drew it on the painting I had to extend her body a bit more. I didn't wanna draw her pants on because I thought it would throw the picture off, having somethin dark down there. But now it looks hentaiish :\ It was unintentional, but.. that's the way it is. Also, her shirt disappears to the right of her arm. Oops

Unintentionally hentaish, eh? Like he couldn't slap on a pair of pants on the poor girl AFTER he realized that?

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iczer6
2004-03-17 05:19 am UTC (link)

Unintentionally hentaish, eh? Like he couldn't slap on a pair of pants on the poor girl AFTER he realized that?

I'm really not seeing the perversion here. I think he has a point, dark colors would throw off the image.

Plus it's not a sexually charged image IMO, I don't think he intended it to be wank material.

I think you're reading a bit too much into it, his ramblings don't seem creepy or weird to me at all.

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	mariagoner 2004-03-17 05:23 am UTC (link)
	Eh, his pics are still teh yucky to me. You'd think I'd be hardened after watching the TWS_community in action but... child porn rubs me the wrong way. Personal opinion, I guess. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	iczer6 2004-03-17 05:25 am UTC (link)
	I can understand that, just keep in mind that they are fictional characters, and IMO I don't think any of his images are pornographic. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	feenix 2004-03-16 11:45 pm UTC (link)
	Hell-fucking-yeah. I mean, I'm more of the "exploding glass" school myself, but I'm totally in agreement with him. If DA wants the pretentious arteests, they should either ban anime altogether or stop fucking wanking about it. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	smo 2004-03-17 02:00 am UTC (link)
	But if they stopped wanking, what would we have left to mock? Won't someone PLEASE think of the F_Wers? sob (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	feenix 2004-03-17 05:11 am UTC (link)
	Let's see... FAP, Gaia, Cassandra Claire, [SHE WHO SHALL NOT BE NAMED (oh wait, we can't mock her)], HP fandom, Grobanites, tinhats, the colorbar fad, Aja/Ivy (OTP!), Orlando Bloom fangirls, and did I mention HP fans? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	smo 2004-03-17 04:33 pm UTC (link)
	Hey, don't forget anime wank! X/1999 alone could keep us going until 2099. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	(Anonymous) 2004-03-17 05:12 pm UTC (link)
	And by the end of the season there's sure to be some sort of reality-tv wank, probably out of AI. ~Naienko (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	smo 2004-03-17 06:16 pm UTC (link)
	Oh, but there already is! AI even has its own tinhats! (Reply to this)(Parent)

	garlicbug 2004-03-17 03:40 pm UTC (link)
	If DA wants the pretentious arteests, they should either ban anime altogether or stop fucking wanking about it. Please may I bear your children? Going off on a tangent, did Jark ever make it onto fandom_wank? That 'I'm A Cool Deviant Because...' deviation and the three journal entries and numerous comments it spawned are certainly worthy. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	redwarrior 2004-03-17 02:02 am UTC (link)
	I like the political statement... But the pedophilia scares me. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	julia 2004-03-17 06:27 am UTC (link)
	nods He just seems a little too fond of the nude young-ish girl-types but he does have a little something going for him with the statement.. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	people, people who need fanart people to look like people, are the luckiest people in the world (Anonymous) 2004-03-18 02:01 am UTC (link)
	DA's anti-anime policies I can get behind this. (Reply to this)