Rusty Banana Forge

There’s another effect that anime craze has had on some artists here in the Metro. It has to do with the term “character design.” Check if you believe this statement:

Character design is the illustration and manipulation of an entity’s body height, type, facial features, personal effects.

That statement is true, but it definition of character design is bound and incomplete. Don’t let an adherence (or worse, an obsession) with the Japanese anime style (I will use manga and anime interchangeably) make this statement become the whole truth!! There is a danger that the Pinoy artist limits him/herself to character design in one particular visual language - that of anime.

This is not to say that classical Pinoy comic book artists or those who illustrate for Marvel/DC are free of this danger. Oh no. If they just HAVE to start a head as an egg and ONLY as an egg, how far would they go in designing 100 characters for Dexter’s Laboratory or even Tintin? It’s really about design, and not just drawing things in the right place.

Okay, what follows is common sense: There are worlds where certain anime character designs can exist in, there are others where only character designs taken directly from real life would work. Still others can only be populated by caricatures, loony cartoons, or only scribbles designed to portray people. Every world is different. The decision to mix the characters from two different worlds (like in Space Jam, Kingdom Hearts, Who Framed Roger Rabbit.) had better be integral to the story. Otherwise, it would make very little design sense.

Now think about it. Here in the Philippines, the Japanese anime style (even the Pinoy anime style) is a big deal. Most kids who want to learn drawing during summer want to draw ANIME for crying out loud!! Sure you teach them how to construct characters with the basic shapes, but these kids are only intent on building anime characters with them (the rest are doing superheroes)!! Their parents should really get them a stack of children’s books before it’s too late. If they grow up and all they’re good for is designing anime and Marvel/DC characters, what a foolish state Filipino character design will be in the future!

Has character design in the Philippines evolved just as graphic design has? No. It’s way behind. Day after day companies are looking for graphic designers. Graphic design in Metro Manila has slowly grown more sophisticated. The fact that more and more graphic designers are being highlighted as celebrities, is very telling. Soon we city dwellers are going to GET graphic design. “Graphic design CAN be sophisticated,” we will say to ourselves, “it is a necessity.” In spite of this, there are still also-rans who will still call themselves as “graphic designers”.

Character design is in for much worse than graphic design. You can bet some of those kids who took up anime drawing workshops are going to start calling themselves “character designers,” when they reach their 20s… even when they can’t draw real people like real people. When “character designer” becomes an official company position, you can bet there’ll be a lot of posers, and most of them will be drawing in the Japanese manga style.

It’s rather painful to see such artists detoxify themselves of anime through life drawing (a character designer’s ultimate source). It’s not uncommon to find that their drawings of life have been warped by their anime devotion. I’ve seen it in a few of my colleagues’ works: big eyes, pointy chins, disproportionally long limbs, and heads too big for the torsos. It ain’t pretty, but MAN - it’s necessary! More so in the US where character design is very sophisticated.

In my opinion a more accurate definition of “Character Design” would be “the art of creating and illustrating all essential visual characteristics and personal effects of an entity, towards a specific personality, role, and purpose within a particular stylistic context.”

In summary, just because one draws characters exceptionally well doesn’t make one an exceptional character designer. And secondly, any obsessed anime artist has to be careful to avoid pigeonholing themselves into a particular stylistic context (even in just one popular anime style) in order to adapt themselves to a larger scope of character design (and subsequent work opportunities.)