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Hey!
I just posted a short piece over on my friend Philip Zeng’s blog Spark of Inspiration. Go check it out.
The MoMA Changed My Life
When I was in the 12th I went to the Museum of Modern Art for the first time, and it changed my life.
Up until I was 15 I lived in Jamaica, on the country side. There was a lot of fresh air, fresh fruits, and beautiful trees, but no museums. The only art I had ever seen was on TV or in books so my concept of art was a bunch of portrait and landscape oil paintings. I knew nothing of the new generation of art and artists and the MoMA changed that for me.
When I stepped into the MoMA for the first time in the spring of 2012 my idea of what art was got completely revamped. For the first time ever I was seeing Picassos right in front of me, close enough to touch. I saw abstract pieces, sculptures, and print. I was learning what really good art was, and I was loving it. After that trip I abandoned my ideas of becoming a doctor and decided to become a graphic designer and surround myself with as much art as possible, whether it be a painting, a really good movie or TV show, a great band, digital designs or graffiti on the side of a building.
Now I am studying Graphic Design at the New York City College of Technology and I go to museums all the time, I especially like the small museums in Chelsea NYC because they show a lot of unknown artists, and they’re mostly free entry. Also I am writing this blog analyzing the art style between cartoons and anime and I love it all. Thank God for the MoMA.
The Big Four: Characters (Part 2)
Dragon Ball, Bleach, Naruto, One Piece
These are the main characters from the big four, and you can see they look like people. Also you might notice a few things that they all have in common, that is because the illustrators are following the general guidelines for drawing anime characters. Although these guidelines are not written anywhere, most of the anime artists follow them diligently that is why most anime characters look so much alike. Humans should look like humans (except for the eyes). Anime characters are almost always way more realistic than cartoon characters. No one’s head is too big, or have short arms, or legs twice the size of their bodies. In the world of anime things look like they are supposed to look because the art style of anime is close to real life.
These four anime are unofficial standard for the art style of all anime. Even between Naruto and Bleach you can see that they are very similar, and if you should look at all anime you will see that the art takes after one or several of these four anime. Characters heads are almost always oval, eyes are a little bit large and hair is spikey. In western cartoons characters have a very wide variety of looks, people heads are the size of their whole bodies, and they have square and triangular heads. Cartoons have much more relaxed art guidelines, they not even have any guidelines because they do not have to be close to reality.
Phineas and Ferb, Powerpuff Girls, Dexter’s Laboratory
In part three of this series I will be taking a look at the worlds in which both cartoons and anime exist to spot the differences, until then check out characters from some anime and cartoons and see what differences you notice.
THE BIG FOUR: Intro (Part 1)
As you can probably tell this is going to be a series. In the next three post I will be covering the topic of “the big four”, these are the four most popular anime on the planet. Bleach, Naruto, One Piece and the Dragon Ball franchise. Every anime watcher is a fan of at least one of these anime, also for most people these anime are the only reference they have to anime art style, which makes them very important when trying to explain the art styles of anime and cartoons. In this series I will be comparing the various art styles of the four biggest anime ever to American cartoons to establish a standard for the anime and cartoon art style.
Hi.
Thanks for checking out my blog. I’ll be posting stuff for you guys to check out soon, so come back.
