anime art

anime art

Exploring the Evolution of Anime Art: A Comprehensive Study

1. Introduction to Anime Art

Anime is a unique style of animation that has been popular in Japan since the 1960s. It is characterized by its rich and colorful art and its fantastical interwoven plots. The commercial success of anime in Japan and the enormous global demand for this type of audiovisual production has resulted in a commodification process that has led this style of animation to develop typological and aesthetic variations that are never too far from commercial imperatives. But, as evidenced by the existence of local variations such as manga or the varieties of cosplay, it is possible to produce original and exclusive animes reflecting the specificities of particular societies.

Despite the worldwide fame that anime has gained through different styles and genres, little attention has been dedicated to the artistic evolution of anime, especially when studying global tendencies in its production and the work of the best-known illustrators. This paper surveys the main styles and trends that have marked the evolution of anime with a particular focus on those works and illustrators of contemporary anime with a greater influence in the artistic and narrative construction of the communicative text. The stylistic exploration conducted here is accompanied by a more exhaustive semiotic analysis. In this context, the art contributes to the understanding of the work and its context and also provides a recollection of visual resources for further study. The analysis is built upon two parameters: color and line, which are the most significant resources in the construction of anime style.

2. Historical Development of Anime Art

The PROMISE research project, which covers postwar Japanese animation released in theaters, has accumulated valuable data. The database contains over 7,400 short films and feature-length movies by over 3,000 creators. This archive is valuable as, to date, the comparison of the work is based mainly on the critic’s memory and published sources. However, the database mainly contains numerical research results or plots of films, lacking detailed descriptions of the nature of the animations or the technical visual features. However, the researchers lack comprehensive technical analysis. Although researchers have exploited the database in some studies, the focus is not on the changing characteristics of animation art. It is interesting to analyze the style of anime art in terms of visual effects.

The anime culture was established about 90 years ago when films and comic strips became popular in Japan. Since then, the technical innovation and creative efforts of Japanese animators have produced diverse types of anime. The design of characters has also evolved significantly. A few historical surveys provide overviews of the historical developments of anime films, animations, and character designs. The study of artworks contributes to our understanding of the trend in anime art, but we lack an analysis of the comprehensive results of production. Loyer et al. (2008) analyzed the trend of artistic styles of character designs in anime works in the 2000s. They found an increase in the complexity of character designs, highlighting the trend of the times.

3. Characteristics and Styles in Anime Art

Characteristics of anime include characters with very round and clean designs, and the dynamic display of emotions. This sense of design has a huge number of roots, with the design taking thousands of years to develop and has constantly evolved over the ages. All manners of historical, cultural, religious, and artistic phenomena of the world have left a dent on not only its development, but a massive number of base characters. Character design is by far the most important element, as no matter what, it will outline the entirety of the work as it is the character that will carry both plot and cinematographic capabilities. It is important to note that if this is the most important element, the design phase is not a purely cosmetic part of the work, as it truly is the main foundational phase of the work, being responsible for the seed of the story and everything else.

4. Influence of Technology on Anime Art

With the complexity of narrative and characterization becoming not as important to attract viewers from other countries, the interaction of visual elements (e.g., environment, action, and dialogue background) within the show has taken a higher priority, leading creators to pay significant attention to the detailing and complexity of backgrounds (e.g., robots, backgrounds, and explosions). As anime has a low rate of survival in Western countries, creating an animation based on complex illustrations mainly using hand drawing will increase the budget required. Such an increase in cost results in difficulties to sustain existing or new animation projects due to the low final profit. To resolve this financial issue, creators are forced to change the way an animation is made by revising the techniques applied to create a more visually appealing animation at lower costs, leading to the arrival of a completely different evolution of anime works. In this section, we explore the possible impact of technology on anime art based on available annotations provided by the corresponding team that produced each anime.

Technological advances have been widely accepted as a significant force that drives economies and societies. The development of various media and tools has eased a lot of human activities and processes. Art is among the aspects that can be highly impacted by technology, thanks to the numerous tools that can be utilized to create and express artists’ minds. Similar to other art forms, anime has seen considerable changes in the way it is produced. As revealed in recent anime shows, the influence of advanced technology on anime art is apparent. Besides the changing narrative and themes that reflect current societal issues, the way the overlapping still pictures are handled and the complexity of visuals convey distinct epochs of anime depiction.

5. Case Studies and Analysis of Prominent Anime Artists

We first collected information about the artists from different sources and used keywords to find their well-known works. We then used the internet to gather these works. We then conducted an analysis on the work and comments about the works surrounding the artists. During our case studies, we conducted interviews with a few of the artists to ensure accuracy. Our case studies extend the analysis of the anime genre to the artist level. This knowledge will be beneficial to the anime creators and cartoonists.

We perform a comprehensive study of the prominent anime artists in the anime genre, where we also trace the historical evolution of this genre. Bishoujo (female characters in anime) were adopted from old forms of painting or wood-cutting in Japan. Kisho created the first bishoujo, which pioneered today’s bishoujo. Shigenori Soejima used an approach where he first painted the background image before continuously adding features until he generated a bishoujo. For Hirohiko Araki, he co-designed the characters to be bishoujo. Yutaka Minowa utilized an approach which first generated the front view and then by following that with further asymmetric rotations of the image, he generated a bishoujo. For Yutapon Kubanoi, he used the cross-layer example-based synthesis technique to co-generate a group of bishoujo. Kei employed an approach where she exploited saliency and symmetry together with the human face. Mamoru Nagano used an approach which combined Japanese style with science fiction, which was a real breakthrough. Hajime Sorayama was the first to successfully combine female characters with mechanical parts to render them as high-tech women.