Silk Strands

The title of this update is Italian for "The Sweet New Style". While, in the origional context, it is a reference to a specific dialect of Italian, I'm using it to stand for Anime. Now, the anime style of art is fairly new as far as art goes. It's only been around in it's current form since the 60's or 70's. Video games are also fairly new. They've only been around since the 70's, and have only become complex works of art in the past 10 years. Perhaps it is due to this, or perhaps it is due to both being nurtured in Japan, but more and more it is clear that Anime and RPGs are irrevocably tied- from anime artists (Akira Toriyama for one) who do some work for video games, to common plotlines, and character archetypes.

As a result of this, anime is easily the most popular style used in fanart. The only problem is that many amateur anime artists don't realize that to be a good anime artist, you have to hone your skills in more traditional art techniques. Contour, perspective, proportion, shading- all of these are integral parts of the anime style, and neglecting them just because they seem dull, unneccesary, or overly traditional or formal, is foolhardy. When you bake a cake, you don't just wave your hand, and create a cake. You have to take some time, follow the recipe, add the ingredients. Yes, it takes more time than just sitting down and drawing, but I guarantee that a person will improve immensely as an artist by observing foreshortening, color relations, the effects of lighting, distance, and angle on the appearance of a subject, and so forth, wether they are concentrating on traditional still-lifes, or chibi anime. No matter how stylized a subject is, you can tell if there isn't a knowledge of the basics of art behind it.

Many people might be taking this to mean that if you don't take formalized art classes, you can't be a good artist. While art classes certainly do help (especially by showing you approaches to specific things that you might not have thought of on your own), they aren't necessary for good art. Many great artists didn't take a single art class in their lives. Observation is the key. When you go to work, or school, or to the store, take a look at the people around you. Observe their hands, their faces, the relation of their height to the size of their head, where their arms end when they're relaxed at their sides, the position of the eyes relative to the nose, the ears, the whole face. What makes a great artist isn't some ephermal quality called "talent", it's the skill of observation. Talent means nothing if there isn't a good eye and a firm grasp of the basics to go with it.