Kazuto
Nakazawa informed anime fans about the nature of character design, then he
entertained them by turning them into anime characters. The designer of the
El-Hazard characters has also drawn characters for the forthcoming Quentin
Tarentino movie Kill Bill, so he's studied both U.S. and Japanese character
design. There's still a gap between the two schools of art, something
he demonstrated by drawing anime and comic versions of the same character.
"While American characters are designed to look cute, Japanese characters
are designed to look pretty," Nakazawa said. Drawing a Disney-style character
on the left, he said "If an Japanese character designer submitted this, the
client would not approve - even wth the same face line you want sharper features,"
and he demonstrated with the anime-style face on the right. Nakazawa said
Japanese clients want characters that look better in stills, while American
studios want designs that look better when they move.
So
how are anime characters designed? Nakazawa said he makes his characters
out of parts, one facial feature at a time. "The director has a good idea
of how the characters should look, and he tells the character deisgner in
words how the character should look. But, there's an upper limit to the variation
of characters one person can come up with. You go around combining various
features - the face, the nose, the hair lines - and combine them in montages
to come up with the characters for a typical show. You need to come up without
about 100 character designs but I'm capable of coming up with only 10 characters, so it's up for me to disassemble and recombine the character features to
make the director think I'm capable of coming up with the various character
designs."
To prove his point, Nakazawa invited
the fans at his panel to come to the front of the room and have him sketch
them as anime characters. On the spot he rendered them in the anime style,
making up the personalities that they would have in the show that he was
pretending to design. "Animation characters need to be set to motion," he
said. "Even if you want to put a lot of detail into the design, it becomes
impossible if you put in too much detail - the designer has to simplify the
characters." Do some of the differences in American and Japanese design come
because of the difference in facial structure and anatomy between the Japanese
and American people? "I think that is a very plausible explanation," replied
Nakazawa. "I'd say that your average Japanese has shorter limbs...and there
are certain nice cosplayers walking around that make a pitty patter in my
heart."
Kazuto
Nakazawa informed anime fans about the nature of character design, then he
entertained them by turning them into anime characters. The designer of the
El-Hazard characters has also drawn characters for the forthcoming Quentin
Tarentino movie Kill Bill, so he's studied both U.S. and Japanese character
design. There's still a gap between the two schools of art, something
he demonstrated by drawing anime and comic versions of the same character.
"While American characters are designed to look cute, Japanese characters
are designed to look pretty," Nakazawa said. Drawing a Disney-style character
on the left, he said "If an Japanese character designer submitted this, the
client would not approve - even wth the same face line you want sharper features,"
and he demonstrated with the anime-style face on the right. Nakazawa said
Japanese clients want characters that look better in stills, while American
studios want designs that look better when they move.
So
how are anime characters designed? Nakazawa said he makes his characters
out of parts, one facial feature at a time. "The director has a good idea
of how the characters should look, and he tells the character deisgner in
words how the character should look. But, there's an upper limit to the variation
of characters one person can come up with. You go around combining various
features - the face, the nose, the hair lines - and combine them in montages
to come up with the characters for a typical show. You need to come up without
about 100 character designs but I'm capable of coming up with only 10 characters, so it's up for me to disassemble and recombine the character features to
make the director think I'm capable of coming up with the various character
designs."
