Anime people ;)

[Moraelin]

You know, it starts to bug me that just about any cute character is called "anime". (Edit: and just to make it clearer, I don't mean the drawing style, but the kind of faces that will get someone going "OMG, anime chick" if you post a screenshot or mod. None of them are drawn or coloured in anime style, and in fact they're not even drawn at all, they're just as rendered and shaded as anything else in a screenshot, and with the same engine and parameters at that.) So let's look at such historical "anime" paintings as...

 

Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci. Yep, small chin, bullet shaped face, small mouth, and generally a Shojo face. Fairly Shojo proportions between the head and the torso too. Really, just about all that's missing to be properly anime would be the huge eyes... which actually the Japanese copied from Disney, rather than being an invention of their own.

 

Danae With Nursemaid, by Tizian. Notice how, when you compensate for the angle, you get larger than normal eyes and a chin so narrow that could pretty much split wood. Or his Salome, another bullet-shaped "anime" face.

 

Michelangelo's Pieta and a closer look at her face. Ok, it's not a painting but a statue, and manages to actually not have a very narrow chin (though still fairly narrow), but still, perfect bullet-shaped face and all around just about as kawaiiko as you can get in someone holding the corpse of her son. Or his Madonna Of Bruges, which while having a less "anime" face per se, manages to have a torso length of considerably less than 3 head lengths, so basically he made Mary a Shojo.

 

Marriage of The Virgin by Raphael. Yep, now that's a bunch of anime chicks ;) Pay attention especially to the left-most one. And for that matter, his Sistine Madonna.

 

But, hey, guys were guys, I guess we're all perverts or something, so let's look at paintings by women:

 

Lavinia Fontana's self-portrait (1577) or for that matter, the Minerva (1613) she painted. Same deal. Exaggerated teenager features, bullet-shaped face, narrow chin, and for Minerva she actually painted pretty big eyes too. OMG, nudity too. (And probably a modded body too;))

 

Catherine de Bologna's Mary with baby, another case of a perfectly oval face, narrow nose, narrow chin, very small mouth, large-ish eyes, and generally baby features. Yep, it's "anime".

 

Mrs Kello's portrait by Esther Inglis, 1595. Yep, lookit that "anime" face.

 

Judith with the head of Holofernes by Fede Galizia, 1596, believed to be a self-portrait.

 

Self-portrait of Sofonisba Anguissola, 1554. Oval face, narrow chin, really big eyes... Picture that face with a Kozaburo haircut and you have a New Vegas Shojo face.

 

Catarina van Hemessen, Self-portrait, 1548. This one takes the cake because, well, pay attention to the proportion of the head to the body. Yep, her torso is only twice the size of her oversized head, i.e., basically she painted herself as an anime Shojo.

 

Portrait of Elisabeth I, by Levina Teerlinc, featuring a less anime face, but the same problem of a very large face in proportion to the body, i.e., shojo proportions.

 

Labille Guiard, self portrait with two pupils, 1785. Not only she manages to give herself a more bullet shaped face than, say, the pupil whose face is at the top centre (notice the difference in chin width), but actually invents the Photoshop gauss filter some two centuries before Photoshop. She actually managed to paint herself blurred.

 

Etc.

 

Basically all I'm saying is that incidentally it's not as much "anime" as the Renaissance idea of female beauty.

Edited March 3, 2012 by Moraelin

[thompsonar]

I wonder if this thread will end up just like the other "anime" thread that got locked earlier today.

 

Good points though I suppose.. didn't read it all. No one can say you didn't back up your statement that's for sure. Can't wait for the conversation though.... :unsure:

[dreamingof2004]

Its kinda goofy to try to justify junk that people don't like i don't care for anime, my little pony, or nude mods. By saying hey anime is cool because its been around since mona lisa (not that i agree lol) wont change my mind neither will nudity in my game change my mind "because its been around since the beginning of time. I don't care i don't want them in my game and obviously if someone does i also don't go insulting them as proof i still have a working account on nexus. In short do what you want don't try to justify what you do because if someone doesn't like it they won't like it no matter what you say anyway.

[gsmanners]

I'm sorry, but there's a pretty big difference between the Mona Lisa and some CLAMP abomination. To even compare the greats with modern Japanese "artists" (aside from a few like Hayao Miyazaki) is a slap in the face to the whole art world.

[Rennn]

If you can do it in fifteen minutes, it's not art. That's my general rule. It doesn't always work, but usually it does. Being a painter myself, I could do an anime painting in about ten minutes. Therefore...

 

I'm not saying it's bad, mind. I don't look down upon it or think it's stupid. I just don't think it's an art form. Now anime shows or manga comics on the other hand, those can be considered art as much as writing or any other production. But a single anime drawing that requires neither character nor skill? Not art in my opinion.

Edited March 2, 2012 by Rennn

[Moraelin]

I don't need to "justify" anything. I just don't understand what's with the obsession that everything cute is "anime" or "my little pony". I've seen characters with wider chins and narrower faces than some of those classic paintings called "anime", and really that has nothing to do with "anime", nor was it invented in Japan. Japan actually adapted that style from western animation, incidentally, as their traditional representations of women was more like

 

http://andreas.com/pixs/hok-3.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/Sanj%C5%ABrokkasen-gaku_-_4_-_Kan%C5%8D_Tan%E2%80%99y%C5%AB_-_Ise.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/Akazome_Emon.png

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/Hyakuninisshu_002.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/de/Izumi_Shikibu.png

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/Kasuga_no_tsubone.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/Tosa_Mitsuoki_001.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/Ch5_wakamurasaki.jpg

 

Etc.

 

I.e., they used to emphasize much smaller eyes, practically just narrow horizontal slits, and a very wide and round lower part of the face. The faces were closer to literally pear shaped than bullet shaped.

 

If anything, what people nowadays call "anime" faces, are really the old European beauty ideals that only really got popular in Japan as it started to get an interest in the west after WW2. So in a roundabout way, we're getting an European thing back via Japan.

 

Even the fascination with child-like features and proportions actually is a thing that exploded in Europe during the Renaissance, many centuries before Japan even heard about it.

 

Heck, even catgirls only appear in Japan very late, and reach phenomenon status even later. They got them from the west all right. And arguably Egypt beat them to it by five thousand years. Japan actually didn't use to be all that fond of cats all around, and most stories actually made them evil spirits or prone to turn into one. For furry anthro stuff they were more into Kitsune, i.e., anthro-foxes. And even the iconic non-anthropomorphic Maneki Neko as, finally, a good-luck thing associated with cats, the first evidence of it appears in 1870, after Japan had opened to the west. So, you know, even cat-girls are actually a western thing we're getting back via Japan.

[Rennn]

I do completely agree with your assessment. I've seen cute clothing mods on the Nexus that I didn't think were anime, but soon enough someone always shows up to pressure the author into putting an anime tag on it.

[Moraelin]

I'm sorry, but there's a pretty big difference between the Mona Lisa and some CLAMP abomination. To even compare the greats with modern Japanese "artists" (aside from a few like Hayao Miyazaki) is a slap in the face to the whole art world.

 

Duly noted, but also irrelevant, since I'm not comparing Leonardo with any particular Japanese artist. I'm comparing the face shape and structure in those paintings with the kind of face called "Anime" on these boards. They may not be done by a da Vinci or Raphael, but have the same face shape. Yet the same people who'd balk if you called a face in Raphael's paintings "anime", are more than liberal with calling far more western faces "anime" in mods. In fact, pretty much anything less than a male face, sooner or later someone will be calling it "anime."

 

My point is that basically if I were to spend some time in the CK and make a toon like the leftmost woman in that Raphael painting without telling anyone what it's based on, do you have any doubt that people would be calling it "anime"?

 

If you can do it in fifteen minutes, it's not art. That's my general rule. It doesn't always work, but usually it does. Being a painter myself, I could do an anime painting in about ten minutes. Therefore...

 

I'm not saying it's bad, mind. I don't look down upon it or think it's stupid. I just don't think it's an art form. Now anime shows or manga comics on the other hand, those can be considered art as much as writing or any other production. But a single anime drawing that requires neither character nor skill? Not art in my opinion.

 

Point duly noted, and it's a valid argument too. I can even agree with that.

 

But again, I'm not talking about faces in actual manga, but the kind of faces in mods that people call "anime" on this board. They have equal or sometimes higher polygon counts than Bethesda's, and usually higher quality meshes, textures and (most importantly) normals than what Bethesda ships. Clearly, not only more than 15 minutes went into making those, but more time went into some of them than Bethesda bothered putting in theirs. Bethesda for example didn't even bother smoothing the normals on the nose before shipping the game, although it was painfully obvious that it makes women have ridged noses like the Bajorans from Star Trek. So if there is a quality argument to be made, the people making those "anime" faces actually put more time and effort into their stuff.

Edited March 2, 2012 by Moraelin

[Thandal]

@Moraelin; While I sure this is all fascinating to people interested in comparative art, it has little or nothing to do with Skyrim.

 

I can move it to "The Lounge", "Druid's Garden", or even "Debates" if you'd like. Otherwise, it gets locked.

[Moraelin]

Well, it has to do with what people call "anime" in mods. I'd think that for making mods in Skyrim or posting screenshots of them, it kind of matters what art styles are acceptable and what gets lumped under "anime" or "toys" or whatever. It's starting to look to me like the only way to not offend is to pose my stuff on a woman that looks like she is 60 years old and went through 5 childbirths and a Great Depression :P And preferably is wearing something that someone washed the floor with :P

 

Mind you, it's not just Skyrim, as the same objections have been raised in Fallout 3, New Vegas or Dragon Age.

 

But, ah well, it's not THAT important, and you gotta do what you gotta do. If you think it doesn't belong here or it's better off closed, so be it.