You know, it’s interesting what impressions you give others, even though you don’t mean to sometimes. It happens to me a lot. I think mainly due to excessive behavior. I look upon my anime collection, my video games, my complete and utter otakuness. I even draw anime. What sort of impression does that give?

Obviously the impression of an otaku, obsessed with his hobby, so much so that it narrows the mind in terms of exposure to other cultures and art. For me, this is only partly the case.

I seem to give people the impression that Anime is the only thing that I know how to do (probably because that is mostly what I draw), and that I can’t draw other styles, or “stylized realism”.

I would have to say that this is not the case.

Though admittedly, I’m not very good at drawing realistic characters, I can draw other styles. However, me being in a predominantly North American market, I need to cater to that, and diversify myself in order to be marketable.

People seem to think that I don’t know how to draw guys either.

Perhaps I’m not as good as a lot of other people, but I believe I pull it off fairly well. Obviously if I keep at it, I would become better at it as well.

You know, fans of anime who live outside of Japan have it tough. It’s a cult phenomenon that isn’t widely accepted. And as such, isn’t as explored or familiarized. I was at the library the other day, and I found a book called Manga For Dummies. You know those series, right? I’ve always thought that those “For Dummies” series were very informative, and though they never teach you the specifics, they start you off with a good basic foundation. My impressions on these series has since changed. The drawings that they had in them were very americanized Anime, if at all even recognizable as anime. It seems that it takes very little in style alterations for North Americans to consider something “anime”.

Even worse are those How To Draw series. The artwork in it is absolutely appauling (though there have been a few that were good). For those fans that desperately seek acceptance for their otakuism, I understand your pain. I believe it’s one of the reasons why some of the self-proclaimed anime fans are so big on mainstream Jump anime such as Naruto and Dragonball Z, yet have never in their life heard of Sharon Apple.

So then, what is considered “still too anime”?

It seems that even this would be considered very anime, sadly.

My take on this now is that I need to expand my views a bit more, and learn to adapt my style with the North American style. Fusion is one thing, abandoning the anime style is another thing. However, if done right, I think it can raise a pretty attractive style that appeals to both North American and Asian. Considering that I experiment with so many different Anime styles, exploring realism and incorporating a “Japanese/Asian Influence” into the style should be challenging and fun.

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