CAA: Christian Anime Alliance

Ok.. so yesterday I went to hang this Scholastic Art show. IT was fun, but while I was there, I never see animesque pieces win anything at all. (With the exception of a Vash pic that won honorable mention last year, but it was rendered well enough to look realistic.

So.. I guess my question is.. Do any of you guys know of any ART places that will look at an anime piece and judge it well?

Because around her..animesque drawings aren't really accepted as "GOOD" or "Original." but more as "Copying" and "Unoriginal."

In fact, my art teacher and I once got in a HUGE debate about whether drawing anime was original or not. (heh..he won.. >.> <.< )

Just curious...because I live in a pretty conservative state..so maybe that is a factor. *shrugs*

Pretty much everywhere I've been, anime and anime style art has been deemed to be without merit. My art professor at college was of the same mind - he graded anime-style artwork (we had several students in class who did anime style art) much more critically than others, and often he didn't have time for them at all. He would often simply suggest that the students spend more time doing something "original". I was one of his more favorite students, because the vast majority of my stuff was not anime style, and yet when I did one piece of anime art, that same one got the same treatment as the rest - "Oh, comic book art, huh?"

If you're serious about art, unfortunately you're going to have to accept that anime-style art gets no recognition. Fan art gets even less, and is even scorned in many professional circles. Unfortunately, that's just the way it is for American artists.

I think it's because anime isn't considered fine art, but cartooning. Sure, it takes skill and practice, however, it is so stylized as to often not be realistic. particularily anime faces. Anime noses and eyes lean more toward symbolism than realistic depiction. While I'd wager most proffesional anime artists can draw realistically (non anime) American academics frown on the idea of people learning to draw by using anime because it is so extremely stylized and symbolic in nature.

well, I see where art critics come from. Anime, when you look at it's basics, is pretty plain and very static from series to series.

Nevermind the fact that, in order to be recogized as "anime" it has to look a lot like all the others, adopting similar style and distingishing features. In some ways, it is copying (especially if it's fanart of a pre-existing character)

I believe it's due to the fact that it's unrealilistic, but it's my only style of drawing....the only thing I can draw like the real thing is a tree...with charcoal of course.

I got a lot of the same criticisms in my art classes, although I never really thought it was fair to say that the anime-style drawings were "unorginal" on the grounds that they were following a particular school of art. Any good artist will tell you to mooch or imitate or "copy" another artist's style, especially someone consider a master. Besides, when it comes down to it...if you make a photo realistic tree and I splash paint on my canvas and call it a tree....neither of us are really more or less correct in our interpretations of it. No matter how good it is, it will NEVER be a real tree. I think if you're serious about art, don't take criticism personally, blame it on their different sense of aesthetics and don't let it bother you.

well, I left my complaining about it behind me 2 years ago. LOL I believe that My Teacher is right.. If I ever want to go anywhere with my art I NEED to learn realism as well. (nevermind the fact that I want to be a cartoonist/comic author) But I am also considering Art Education as well.. I want to be known as that "Crazy Art Teacher" down the hall you know? LOL!

ANYWAY!. >.> <.< I agree, as awesome as it could be to see anime get more recognition, it's really stylized. (Although, I love drawing it, I have seen this as well.)

My Art Teacher made a very good point (though at the time It really ticked me off, lol!) He told me that if he did a google search on anything, he would find anime pictures that would like like other pictures...

Yeah, I wasn't complaining I was just wondering.

You don't have to just learn realism, you have to learn flexibility and designing your own style.

That's what many art professors have against anime style art, especially in their 101 class students - it encourages a surprising amount of rigidity in your art. If you round the chin, proportion the bodies, make the eyes more natural-shaped and use more natural hair styles, is it anime style anymore? If you apply avante-garde or art-deco techniques to the picture, create it in a traditional media such as oil paints and take it in an entirely different direction than 2-D media, is it anime style anymore?

Part of what art school teaches you is how to learn the rules of art so that you can break them once you master them. It teaches you to move away from the pencil and paper and into found objects and fingers. It teaches you to re-think how you see the world so that you can see it through the eyes of an artist.

If you go into an art museum and walk down their halls of Japanese artists, very little of the art resembles anime style art. The Japanese, like all other cultures, have distinctive art styles but even in their "art" they are not restricted to the rigidity of anime and manga art.

Take this for what it's worth: the opinion of a guy who is an amateur writer and composer, but NOT an amateur artist. If there is value in it, it's because I'm coming at the question from outside the discipline.
You are not drawing Anime (Manga) style to please your Art Teacher. You are doing it for your own goals. What you learn in the Art class needs to feed your art. Right now, you are trying to use your art to feed the Art class.
Many very good Rock musicians have seriously studied Classical music. They did NOT walk in and attempt to perform Rock in those classes. They worked on Classical. This is considerably before your time, but Pat Benatar was actually studying Opera when she began her professional career.
You need to look at your Art class the same way. Someone mentioned that all they could draw (non-Anime style) was a tree. Well that is a start, and I bet their Anime trees are better for it. But I bet their Anime people would be better with a good handle on Realistic people.
Miyazaki and Shinkai both get tremendous mileage out of reaching beyond "Cartoons". So do such masterpieces as "Now and Then, Here and There" or "Noir". They are ultimately "Anime" in style, but no one actually familiar with these works could argue that they "lack originality."

You draw what you love. Its what you know.