ISBN: 0-8230-0158-X
$19.95
"Draw authentic Japanese animation" is the header on the back of the
book. As someone who likes to doodle manga style characters (though
I seldom have the time these days) I enjoy books that can give any
tips on how to improve. (and let me nick decent poses!)
So, Christopher Hart gives us his lessons in how to draw anime. Alarm
bells started to ring when I heard that it wasn't a Japanese artist
providing the instruction - authentic Japanese animation would surely
be drawn by the Japanese after all..? Mr Hart's qualifications for
being able to draw Japanese art include attending a Disney animation
course and working on Blondie (a famous comic strip).
My resume includes working for Pedigree and Whiskas as a designer,
but that doesn't mean I could tell you how to make Pet food...
Anyway, the book contains some good, general hints - how to draw hands,
body positions and how to draw perspectives.
However, much of the book is overshadowed by some very basic errors
for the format.
To start, the book is extremely general. If you want to know how to
draw an "anime spaceship", there's a page with an anime spaceship
on it. Fine, except there's only one drawing (of each generic type),
which means we see the finished product, and none of the steps leading
up to how it was finished. It doesn't look particularly Japanese in
style either and on top of all that its not very well drawn. Worse
still, the narrative to accompany it says nothing about the construction
of the drawing, how to start or what methods to employ when designing
one. The same is true of much of the rest of the book, and we end
up with something that seems content to show you pictures and let
you make of them what you will. Unfortunately you can just buy a comic
and do the same, (from an actual Japanese artist too!)
What disappoints most is that there are pages when Mr Hart's artistic
skill really does shine through, but these are pencil sketches rather
than colour illustrations, but the narrative is just as bad - I'd
happily pay money for more of these sketches than the colour renderings,
which look far more like Warner Brothers cartoons (Batman Beyond,
Justice League) than any anime I've seen of late.
The basic style of the drawings here is really inexcusable. Perhaps
cartoons were this simple back in the 70's, but things have moved
on - the appeal of anime and manga for me and many others was the
unique designs and complexity of the animation and backgrounds - neither
of these are present here, and as such it looks more like a cash in
than a serious guide. Compare what's here to, say, Read Or Die, and
you'll see what I'm talking about.
What we have here is a bunch of averagely drawn pictures, no offers
of any meaningful instruction where its most needed and a few extras
to make the book look wide ranging - why would I need to know how
to offer a Japanese person a business card in order to draw a cute
girl in an action pose? It smacks of 'filler' to me, and I'm genuinely
sad to say that the book practically misleads people on what constitutes
anime styling.
So my advice? Buy one of the "How to Draw" Manga guides (they're split
into genre/topic, eg Bishoujo) by Hikaru Hayashi - they have far more
to say, include guest pages from well known practitioners and contain
many different styles) - I'd suggest that before Watson-Guptill publish
another of these books, they buy one too and get a feel for what they're
up against.
3/10 - Gains points for some solid grounding in drawing, and loses
the rest on failing to convince me that anything else here is particularly
relevant to Japanese animation.
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