Anime Style

アニメ絵 / 1960s– / Style / Animation Techniques

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.

Anime Style — Danny Choo, character design by Azami Yuko, Mirai Suenaga, character of Culture Japan, 2011 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0
Danny Choo, character design by Azami Yuko, Mirai Suenaga, character of Culture Japan, 2011 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0 · CC BY-SA 2.0

At a glance

Visual 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

Best used for

  • Making a character's expression work with little information
  • Learning direction designed around constraint

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Dictionary entry

Type
Match subtitles and logotype to the weight of the contour line.
Composition
Fix the composition of the held drawing first and concentrate movement at the key points.
Material
Paint in two step shading and fields of limited saturation.
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.
Further study
The conventions born from the frame count limits of television / The move from cel painting to digital coloring / Its spread into drawing styles abroad

Related entries

More from Animation Techniques

Continue through styles in the same Animation Techniques family, prioritised by shared effects.

Browse all Animation Techniques entries

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https://indexstyle.org/styles/anime-style
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