Forum - View topicAnime colors?
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HaruhiToy
 Posts: 4118 |
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How many people besides me rely on specific colors to remember characters?
For example, even on a 32x32 postage stake image among thousands of them in an online gallery I can usually spot Lucky Star's Konata or Kagami, or Railgun's Mikoto, or many characters I can't remember the names of but do remember the hue and shade used to draw the character. This holds true even if the body style changes significantly because a different/amateur artist drew it. One reason I don't normally follow manga is that much of it is in black & white and sometimes all the characters of the same gender end up looking the same to me. To follow the dialog I have to remember that girl A has a choker collar and girl B has a specific hair ornament, or guy C has three hair spikes etc. It can be quite a chore. Is this a problem for anyone else? This has interested me for a while and I would like to hear other's thoughts. |
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rheiders
 Posts: 1137 Location: Colorful Colorado :) |
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This isn't a problem if you read a manga where the mangaka actually knows how to design characters. Even in anime, if I have to rely on hair color to tell two people apart because they have the same face and clothing (even school uniforms can be modified in a lot of different ways to reflect individual characters' tastes and fashion sense), that means the character design is bad. I have dropped series in the past because the character design was bad enough to make reading difficult. Shoujo series like Vampire Knight and Gentlemen's Alliance (read: anything by Arina Tanemura) tend to be the worst offenders for me, but it seems like every time I get brave and try a moe series this problem is there as well. I think too many manga and anime artists focus too much on making characters cute instead of making them distinctive and interesting-looking. It's actually been annoying me for a while. In terms of color schemes defining characters, I think this is particularly common with shounen characters. I can't seem to find it, but I know I saw a picture at some point of bookmarks made with various famous anime characters' color schemes. They would be like, for example, alternating yellow, blue, orange, and red lines that were immediately recognizable as being inspired by Naruto. I thought those were interesting. I know a lot of shounen series place a lot of importance on making characters with distinctive color schemes who are also easy to tell apart by silhouette. Um...To answer the OP's question (tangent whoops xD), I guess I see colors as just one small piece of character design, and so it's not necessarily the first thing I recognize a character by. But, as those bookmarks show, I do associate certain colors with certain characters. |
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marie-antoinette
 Posts: 4136 Location: Ottawa, Canada |
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 I love the designs for Vampire Knight and I can't think of anytime I got characters mixed up in that one. It can sometimes be difficult remembering who everyone is but that's because there's a pretty big cast in that one and some of the Night Class have pretty small parts, but visually I think they are all fairly different from each other.
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FenixFiesta
Posts: 2581 |
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That is probably the only time I have issues with manga, an experienced mangaka understands there own strength and weaknesses when it comes to drawing so they will try to avoid making aesthetic "clone" characters in the same series in the first place. There are always exceptions and even experienced mangaka may have a weakness in that "they can only make a limited amount of character variety" for me (black and white) usually isn't an issue. |
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rheiders
Posts: 1137 Location: Colorful Colorado :) |
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@marie-antoinette: I think they're pretty to look at (Zero is really hot xD) and the uniforms are gorgeous, but she uses the same face for all her guys.
http://i.imgur.com/5Hi3bVh.jpg (image is kinda large so I made it a link) I made the above image grayscale to keep the different-colored hair (which you can't see in the actual manga pages) from distracting from how similar their faces are. In particular, she only ever draws one set of eyes. The way she draws also makes the characters seem like they are all the same height, even if there is a slight variance when they're standing right next to each other. I could always tell Kain was taller than everyone, but otherwise, they all have the same long, lanky limbs and torsos. They all have the same taste in silky button-up shirts (hmm...wonder why) and they all wear their uniforms the same way. Her obsession with screen tone sometimes makes it hard to tell which characters in a scene have light hair and which have dark hair. FTR, this applies mainly to the guys--except for maybe one or two times mixing up Rima and Maria, I don't think I ever had nearly as much trouble telling the female characters apart. Idk, although I think there is such a thing as good and bad character design, it's mainly a matter of opinion. I always really liked the character designs in Fruits Basket, my favorite manga, but my friend had to drop it because after Takaya's style changed she couldn't tell anybody apart. Different strokes, different folks and all that. Edit: Er...I feel like I should point out that I wanted to be a character designer at one point in my life and I really like talking about these things^^; I know most people would consider it nitpicking, but I think it's really interesting so I may tend to go overboard. |
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marie-antoinette
Posts: 4136 Location: Ottawa, Canada |
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It may be the same face but I still have no difficulties telling characters apart. The characters, from left to right, are Ichijo, Ruka, Kaname, Yuki, Zero, Aido, Kain, Rima, and Shiki (I will admit, I had to look up some of the names but I knew exactly which character I was looking for).
Lots of mangaka use similar faces on their character designs but are still able to make each one distinct. All of Yuu Watase's heroines have pretty much the same face but all of them look very different (admittedly, her male leads all look very similar but they are at least in different series). |
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