Want to be an Anime Character Designer? Watch this! | kaycem on #Twitch

#shorts

[KaycemCrew]

Man I think I need to clarify some things because some of the comments on here are 😬😬😬
Firstly, I've worked professionally both as an animator and as a character designer but you should still take what I say with a grain salt~
With that being said, let's talk:
- some of you are confusing illustrations/manga with ACTUAL animated productions! The large majority of any of your favorite anime/cartoons will always look different from the original source material because they serve completely different purposes.
- for those that say "well my favorite anime had a lot of details", I highly encourage you to look up the character model sheets for your favorite shows and you'll find that all these "details" actually come not from line work but from effective lighting/shadow/composting effects
- last but not least, I'm not saying that less is better. What I'm saying is that as an artist, we should be more intentional with our designs because sometimes all those extra details don't actually serve a purpose. A great example of this is with action packed anime. When a character is running, doing backflips, or any high mobility movement, does it matter if the character has 2 lines of folds for the sleeve or 10 when the viewer won't even see a fraction of a second of it?

Anyways, I hope this clears some things up. There's a few more things I could address but I'll save that for another video lol
I genuinely appreciate ALL the views and comments~

[monkeyojacko]

actually a great point and I do notice this when it comes to animation

[Welsed]

I love when the cell shading does all the work, and the animator can spend more time on the actions of said elements rather than the minutiae of every little detail.

[evenaxin]

As an animator I'll say, folds like that can be added or removed as motion is happening.

[fishleaf]

It's okay to add folds. It's not considered part of the design. We don't animate with the folds IN the design, it still depends on the pose/movement.

[dad_hoc]

my dad was a scriptwriter for stage and screen, and he always described his work as functional work; your "think about who is utilizing your design" reminded me of that. Character design, in the same way of a script, is a tool first and foremost, and you have to make sure the tool is fit for the hundreds of applications it'll have for other artists down the production chain. Great short man!

[familysamow]

Rezero is great way of showing simplification of animation. Its simple but doesnt take away from the story.

[kennykwong]

As a viewer thise extra lines really sell the art for me.

[coleburns]

Baki is a masterful demonstration of this concept. The animators are Constantly juggling the level of detail for each character based on what's needed for a particular shot. So for a close up, a character will have like Waves of muscles and sweat drops drawn in, but when they're further away or not the focus of a scene the designs become more streamlined so the animators can actually get the shots finished.

Plus theres that scene in invincible where they list off a bunch of animation techniques to save time and money

[otbaht]

makes me think of ouran highschool host club where the artist said originally she was going to do the ties checkered diamond shape, but eventually went basically with just one line straight down the middle.

she was so glad she did that because once it was greenlit, she realized how much extra hassle that would have been to put on every tie of every student wearing it.

[djcrumrine]

THANK YOU!!! Thank you for communicating this to future designers

[just_dias]

My brother and i had to reckon with this when we started character designs for our comics, since we would be drawing characters over and over. We were forced to simplify for our own good

[trooperscientists]

I made concept art for a 3d character the other day. Pumped it full of detail. Now another friend asked me for some designs, but he's a 2d animator and quite new to the craft, so I gotta pull back and make some designs that are simple enough for him. It's always a balance act.

[angelserenade]

I do agree that less is more, but sometimes, these tiny details can be irresistible or hard to avoid, and for some it can be an "eye-candy" or subjective.

That's why old animes from 80s, 90s, early 2000s hits differently for me. I like the overly detailed look of the characters, but if I will try to redraw them, I hate these details to the bone😅

[skygard]

What do I do when I'm making new character designs for myself is I'll make a couple basic mock-ups, then one or two highly detailed ones, because even though most of the time I'll be drawing the simpler versions knowing what the detailed ones look like helping me figure out how this person moves and how their clothes fit.

[skye]

True, I did notice that most anime have a more simplified lines unless the scene focuses on it for whatever reason, then they would put in more details.

[Nothingseehr]

Your content has been so monumentally helpful. The fact that it’s free is insane.

[johnb]

This is a thing in the trades that engineers don’t think about. They’ll make some over complicated intricate design and the guy who has to make that thing exist or work on it will go “how the fuck am I supposed to do that”

Keep it clean keep it simple trust the next person to get it

[analogies]

This is the one thing I really dislike about character design particularly in western animation. I feel like while it’s understandable and cost effective to be considerate of details and line economy for this very reason you mention, I ultimately find it artistically stifling. I think in the past, especially in Japanese animation there seemed to be an embrace for detail and while I’m sure that slowed down the process considerably, artists were able to push the boundaries of the artform and bring it into new and interesting territory. Now I know there’s a benefit to having limitations as it can force you to come up with more creative solutions, I feel like it’s more to do with time and money and the choice to simplify starts to feel really flat, boring, and more a circumstantial characteristic of western animation than a truly artistic one that’s based out genuine aesthetic interest

[BarakielArts]

Me telling my clients the more details in an animation the harder it is to animate