| Bruce Lewis draws Western-style art in his job as a commercial illustrator,
but he also has studied the manga style of drawing in his previous jobs
as artist on the Robotech and Star Blazers comics. Lewis has studied the
differences between the way comics and manga are drawn, and he's found
that it goes beyond the superficial. |
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| Lewis demonstrated the differences at his AWA panel on Sunday. First,
a typical American-style comic face: jutting jaw, small eyes, prominent
cheekbones and anatomically proportional features. This face could be the
prototype for dozens of 20th-century comic book heroes. |
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| Then a manga-style face with large eyes, stylized eyebrows, small,
vestigial nose, sloping jaw and tiny mouth. The pattern can be seen in
male and female faces drawn in Japan. Both the American and Japanese drawings
are recognizable as faces, but the differences are clear. What Lewis noted
is that the differences are more than a matter of style - they're the differences
between Western and Eastern cultures. |
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| Lewis uses the phrase "abstraction versus depiction" to explain the
difference. American comics try for a nearly-literal rendition of characters
as they would appear in the real world, he said. Japanese manga tell the
stories of their characters in their faces. "The eyes are a symbol of the
inner character," said Lewis. "The face is more of an easel - a blank canvas
for the expression of emotions." In manga, the smaller eyes typical to
American comics are reserved for villians. What Lewis didn't mention, but
is obvious through a close examination of faces, is that manga artists
have stylized their Asian facial features in their drawings. Yu Watase,
for example, looks very much like the characters she draws - from the shape
of her head to long legs and arms (Watase is unusually tall). |
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| Now that the manga style is fashionable in part of the comics subculture,
some comics artists are trying to incorporate that style into books intended
for a mainstream audience. Lewis said he's not impressed with those efforts,
because it tends to only graft large eyes on Western bodies and heads.
"You have to think in Japanese, almost, to draw a manga comic. Otherwise
it'll look stupid," Lewis said. And, while some Americans say that manga
and anime characters look alike because of the big eyes, Lewis said American
comics characters tend to look the same to manga readers because of the
small eyes. |
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