#i need fanart of them in this pose SO BAD BUT I CAN'T EVEN DRAW STICK FIGURES PROPERLY | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

astraltrickster · 7 months

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Maybe it's just everything around me being so deadly serious in a way I don't have the energy to get into nor the power to do anything about online but I feel like swinging a bat at a more local and immediately actionable hornet's nest so here we go-

There are two things in leftist/feminist media critique we NEED to get better about tackling without letting it take us in horrible counterproductive directions.

One: The way breast size is used as visual shorthand for maturity/attitude/sexual openness, and how that plays into the male gaze (which - 101 level reminder to reject what radfems have told you, this is a film critique term that has to do primarily with framing conventions, NOT some kind of mystical Objectification Beam that emanates from men's eyes, okay? okay). Namely, we need to learn to acknowledge that this visual shorthand is a thing and criticize it WITHOUT implying that it's fair or based in reality.

What do I mean by "implying that it's fair or based in reality?" I mean the way that the first thing many people do to humanize a canonically badly objectified female character is not to change up the art style to give her room for her organs, not to put her in a more natural pose in a less idealized setting, not even to frame her in a way that's more inclined to draw the eye to her face rather than her breasts, but to reduce her bust size. To call large breasts "unrealistic". As someone who had...multiple friends who were pretty well-endowed by middle school, I need to tell you - this attitude did NOT help them, it just got them called sluts and "distractions".

We need to be able to criticize it when male characters are allowed to have multiple body types (however idealized they still may be), but women's bodies are only differentiated by bust size, and yes, that IS treated as shorthand for something. We need to be able to discuss how large breasts have long been visual shorthand for maturity and sexuality, and small breasts have long been visual shorthand for innocence. We...may need to tell some character designers, especially non-tit-having ones, that no, breast growth is not inherently linked to sexual activity, nor fertility, nor is it something that just goes on forever like noses and ears. We may even, yes, want to vary up the bust sizes on some existing characters in fanart to ask people to question the way it's treated. We DEFINITELY need to bring back Free The Nipple. But we can't STOP at shrinking characters' breasts and calling it "less objectified", and we also very much cannot, as I've seen asked for, replace that with making the characters fatter and more muscular to be "more proportional" to say the same - again, please consider what you're implying to real human women with the body types you're calling "objectified" or "not objectified". When you stop there, you're telling the large-breasted woman that she IS just a sexual object. You're telling the fat girl that she CAN'T be a sexual being. You're telling the small-chested woman that she's too much of a baby for anyone to ACTUALLY be attracted to her. That's not what we need to be doing with these critiques! That's the opposite of what we need to be doing with these critiques!

Speaking of "telling the small-chested woman she's too much of a baby for anyone to ACTUALLY be attracted to", that brings me to point two: we need to figure out how to talk about how young aggressive sexual objectification starts WITHOUT implying or getting sucked into some Pizzagate-tier bullshit about the media managing to "normalize pedophilia", like - that's some gateway blood libel shit right there. "Everyone knows that molesting kids is bad and evil, but there's a secret shadowy group of people who not only do it systematically, ritualistically, lurking around every corner, looking to snatch your kids up for their wicked deeds, and they've so infected the media that they're going to manage to convince you that the horrible abuses they want to enact on YOUR poor innocent children are normal, they're so influential that even just LOOKING at their propaganda can turn a well-meaning person into a monster" - I'm not sorry, if your media critique can be paraphrased to that, you're going down a DANGEROUS path and need to go back to square one, especially if you're already starting to get suspicious of certain last names in western media, or aiming it first and foremost at a foreign culture (looking at you, anime critics).

The problem is the stereotype of men as ruthless sex-seekers and women as prizes. The problem is the idea that youth is about training for those roles. The biggest problem is the idea that women are no longer dateable once they hit 26 or so - they should either be married by then and dedicate their lives to being good wives and mothers, or simply disappear from public life as laughable failures, because ultimately that's what women are for in society.

The idea that your only years of value, especially if you're a woman, are from 18-25 is definitely some chud shit, but it's NOT pedophilia, because...get this: 20-somethings aren't children.

This standard is pervasive. It's everywhere. And because it's treated as such a default, such a constant, such a universal truth, it starts young - look how many book bans are targeting anything that DARES to state or even imply there are other options. We need to criticize that! We need to criticize how much gender standards end up having overly sexual implications even when applied to kids! We need to have serious discussions of how to disentangle the decades of social coding that make it hard to really tell who we need to be criticizing when it comes to things such as, say, prematurely "sexualized" clothing for little girls - i.e., that we have to pause and ask "...but wait, is it really that sexualized, or is it just feminine?"

We need to also have discussions of how this and the Leonardo Dicaprio standard intersect with fatphobia - i.e., is that animated girl "minor-coded", or is she just in the age range that Leo would date and super skinny because even breasts would make her look ~faaaat ewwwww~?

And we need, BADLY, to stop getting distracted from that conversation and letting it drag us to some really ugly and dangerous places instead.

#media #serious tag #keeping the property values down

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38sr · 1 year

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#industryQs ... I think. How much time to you usually have to get to know a character/model sheet? I study animation at university and while I feel confident in my drawing fundamentals, I struggle A LOT to get a character on model ...

Ooooh, good question! Drawing on-model is a difficult task and even I struggle with it from time to time (especially if the design is very detailed). But to answer your question: You kind of don't get the time "to get use to" and are learning how to draw them along the way. Granted, yes, when hiring you do want artists who can emulate the style of the show (cartoony, anime, illustrative, etc.) But I wouldn't say it's like...a bad thing if you can't perfectly draw the characters. As long as you stylistic fit within the show's style, you can be taught how to draw the characters and get use to them over time.

As a board artist, I often don't have a good handle of the characters until the end of my term on a production (which could range anywhere between 6-12 months). But in the storyboard phase, the characters shouldn't be layouts (on-model poses that are used by animators for when the actual animating production begins). So you shouldn't be too hung up about drawing everything perfect. Your focus as a board artist should be if the visual storytelling is being portrayed first and foremost. But as an animator/layout artist, yes you should be able to draw the characters on-model. Right now, I'm testing for a layout position for a feature and they gave me a month to complete the test. In that time, I've been studying the character sheets, breaking them down, redrawing them in different angles just so that I'm comfortable. Not every test will give you a month to do a test but there are a few that understand you might need a minute to understand the designs. But even then you still kind of are learning how to draw the characters on the job because if you have the potential to be taught, they will teach you. That's why there are directors, animation supervisors, design leads and such! They are there to help bring everything on-model by providing corrections for us. Just last week, I was given my first corrections for an anime and it was incredibly helpful to see the animation supervisor's redlines over my drawings. While I had the foundation down, the animation supervisor helped me understand where to add the embellishments in order to make the drawing feel more like the show. So as long as you can emulate the visual style of the show, you can be taught how to draw more on-model with the help of supervisors and lots of practice. That's why it's so important to have your drawing fundamental skills down 'cause it'll make it so much easier for you to adapt to different visual styles. So don't feel bad if you can't draw on-model perfectly. In fact it's incredible that you're challenging yourself so early! I would implore you to do it more for your favorite animated shows (yes I am telling you to make fanart haha) so you can apply your fundamental skills and evaluate where improvement is needed. Drawing on-model is just one of those things that's a continuous learning process if you're not like... the lead character designer, art director or animation supervisor 'cause then you're the one dictating the style of the show and have to give corrections haha. I hope the was helpful and answered your question!

#industryqs #animation #animation industry #anon #ask #send me anon #send me asks #drawing on-model

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darklightsworld · 3 years

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Hello, I remember you saying some time ago you didn't like how female characters are portrayed in (current) anime because of how annoying and, maybe, misogynistic their archetypes are. Could you maybe elaborate on this point? I feel similar but can't articulate well and always end up feeling like I'm the one being misogynistic whenever this type of subject comes up in conversation x.x Sorry if this comes up as too personal.

Sorry about the late reply, I have been busy with a conference. Also sorry, because my answer is a bit long and all over the place ^^;

This is a difficult question, especially because nowadays people like to think in black and white, and everything is so extreme, like if they don’t like something, then it must be wrong and eliminated, not to mention the policing of every content based to this – which kills diversity and dismisses personal (and gendered) preferences. What I think is really a personal preference and not exactly a general critique of female characters in anime, especially because there are many factors to consider (genre, age and gender or the target audience, cultural background, etc.), and there’s also the audience with its multiple readings.

Personally I dislike most female character types manga and anime has to give, because I’m not really a person for overly feminine and girly things. The Japanese ideal is very cutesy and it’s the standard in both media for men, women and also real life. Not just looks, there is also the behavior side of things, the cutesy, childish, girly ideal, the passivity, helplessness, pretending to be stupid, etc, and I outright hate it when female characters are treated as stupid, clumsy messes. The question is, though, is this ideal really conservative and an embodiment of the toxic patriarchal system? Actually not necessarily. They definitely originate from the oppressive system, but over the decades girls made these ideals their own, and turned them into a weapon to get what they want. Even in real life, fashion is very feminine for me, always with frills, ribbons, flitters, tons of dresses and skirts, and it’s difficult to find plain clothes without any decoration, not to mention all the cuteness in goods and stuff, but as for the behavior of girls and women, the cutesy ideal seems more like a role to be played at a certain age or for certain purposes, like getting things they want and eventually the man. A woman, who didn’t like this ideal herself defined it as “they had to play the wounded deer”. Actually women, who use this role too much and even among women, are usually hated – this is the infamous burikko.

But no matter how they were in their younger years, married women don’t use this role anymore, and they seamlessly slip into a different identity, one that rules the family and the finances with iron fist (I’m stereotyping) – nothing cutesy, helpless or stupid about that. The Japanese themselves are aware of this cutesy role, both men and women, it’s their version of cunning flirtatiousness, it’s just a very different type of flirtatiousness than in the West. For example, there is currently even a tv show enacting certain situations where this cutesy behavior is used to get the man, and the hosts rate how effective the cutesy behavior was. But while I understand intellectually that these are not necessarily misogynistic stereotypes, I have some kind of a visceral hatred for them. The above tv show makes me outright nauseous. It’s a personal preference, and I don’t think I have to like these character types. But I also don’t think they should be erased from Japanese media, and it would be a mistake trying to push my very independent Western values onto such a different culture, so I rather avoid these characters – which is not easy.

So, what does this mean for anime and manga? Both are largely determined by genres (manga more than anime), genres work with clean-cut character types, tropes, traditions and reader expectation, so there is a reason why female (and male) characters are the way they are in different genres. Male-oriented works will obviously have female characters that appeal to men even if the work doesn’t have in your face fanservice shots (though let’s face it, if it’s anime, most of them do). I don’t like these female character types, I don’t think I have to like them, they are clearly not geared toward me, but I also don’t think they shouldn’t be there in a clearly male-oriented media. Sure, there can be discussions about removing overly exploitive situations, harassment and rape or things like that, but I’m not really against letting men have their fun – because I expect to have that same freedom in media geared toward women. There are occasionally unisex anime, but usually they still serve one or the other demographic in a way, and I don’t think it’s possible to create truly unisex anime that everybody will be satisfied with – fanservice for women will always bother men, and fanservice for men will always bother women.

Shōjo manga is a more difficult question, because somewhere in the 70s romance started to focus on imperfect heroines who still got the best guy, because he loved them regardless of their imperfections (“I love you the way you are”), and since then the genre is full of the stupid, clumsy, indecisive, housewife material archetype without any dreams beyond getting the boy (or very old-school women job dreams), which does not appeal to me either, so I usually avoid most romance shōjo manga, especially the high school variant, and even most josei manga, because I don’t care for the adult version of the same with marriage as the end goal *shrug* Actually it’s not even about these things only, like, I disliked Arte too (though not shōjo manga), despite it trying (and failing) to pose as a feminist social commentary, just because the mc way annoying. Fortunately there are a lot of other types of shōjo manga as well, even with more appealing female characters or the best, without female characters (plus the whole BL scene), so it’s not all that bad, at least in manga, not so much in anime. Interestingly, I’m much more compatible with shōjo manga by fujoshi artists. If I like a shōjo manga, usually the artist ends up coming out as a fujoshi after a while by posting BL fanart on her twitter or drawing outright BL manga – it’s been a pattern XD

Anime is more difficult, but I also admit, that my tastes might be extreme. In Japan there are many female fans who love the cute female characters of male-oriented media. Many women like Love Live, for example, because the girls are, I quote, “so cuuuuuute” – while I am fighting nausea… Yeah, Japan is imbued with cute. It’s especially difficult, because I’m usually not willing to watch a series even if there are such female characters in supporting roles or as a second protagonist with male characters I would love to see (Cop Craft was a recent-ish example). And while I avoid female only casts on principle, sometimes there are surprises. For example, the Yashahime anime has terrible writing, but I don’t hate the three main female characters (even if occasionally the anime has some iffy things to say about femininity).

I also mentioned multiple readings. It is important to note that the audience does not necessarily interpret everything the same, especially if there are cultural differences. One of the most famous examples for this is Sailor Moon, which was the incarnation of girl power and emancipation in the West in the 90s, but it has the same “dumb heroine gets the dream guy” trope, and the same conservative message of getting married and giving birth to children as any average shōjo manga, and the same “so cuuuuute” packaging. It really depends on the audience what they get away with.

All in all there are preferences, genre conventions, cultural differences, so the whole thing is quite difficult. But I don’t think you need to be worried about not liking or being uncomfortable with certain character types. And it would be a stretch to consider tastes like mine, for example, misogynistic. Sure, even in real life I make a wide berth around overly girly or feminine women (among others), but it can’t be helped, you can’t like and be friends with everyone, and I guess they wouldn’t like me or wanting to be my friend either. And that’s fine, and I don’t think it’s misogynistic for me to reject certain types of femininity for myself and to interact with, as long as I don’t want to erase or invalidate them, or deem them as inferior – and I don't. Of course, this is the attitude I expect towards myself as well. Live and let live 🖖

#magnoliawaltz

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