Anime Style vs Superflat
アニメ絵 / スーパーフラット
Anime Style comes from Animation Techniques and Superflat from Japanese Postwar Avant-garde. Both are read here as style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Anime Style
The drawing conventions Japanese television animation accumulated in order to deliver the most information from the fewest drawings. A unified, sign like face, clarity of contour, and speed produced by held drawings and effects have influenced drawing styles around the world.
Superflat
Juxtaposes anime, manga, advertising and traditional painting on one flat plane, questioning the border of high art and consumer culture.
| Anime Style | Superflat | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1960s– | 2000s– |
| Family | Animation Techniques | Japanese Postwar Avant-garde |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | Eyes and nose placed as signs / Contour lines of even weight / Painting that splits shading into two steps / Held drawings used together with speed lines | Extreme flatness / Vivid color / Repeated characters / Commercial culture |
| Best used for | Making a character's expression work with little information · Learning direction designed around constraint | Exhibitions and merchandise that must carry the same image on equal terms · Repeating a character until it fills the whole field as ornament |
| Type | Match subtitles and logotype to the weight of the contour line. | Letters share the drawing outline and sit flat without shadow |
| Composition | Fix the composition of the held drawing first and concentrate movement at the key points. | Abandon perspective, fill the field evenly, show depth only by overlap |
| Material | Paint in two step shading and fields of limited saturation. | Even fills, vivid color including fluorescents, a glossy finish |
| Caution | The size of the eyes is not the style. The point is that it was designed as an answer to a limit on the number of drawings. | Lining up cute symbols drops the argument that set high art against consumer culture, and all that remains is product illustration. |