Why You Should Copy Anime:https://i.imgur.com/zNDsyF0.jpgNaoki Saito: https://youtu.be/8jsZGeaWkhE?si=6HZIvG9Bx3y9qoHs&t=12AnimeShijuku: https://twitter.com/animesijyuku/status/1717415459778347358Krenz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbKqIJcIUCw**Strive for quantity AND quality.**Anime Studying:>Copy anime references exactly and draw them from memory. Use illustrations, screenshots, anime figures, 3D models, etc.>Don’t copy recklessly. Use construction, color theory, and other fundamental concepts to rehearse a drawing process that you can later easily manipulate for original artwork.>Post all of your anime studies. Post even when you’re told not to. Create an art community that actually draws and improves together instead of just talking about it.>Number your attempts and link to your previous posts.>Critiquers should lead by example by posting their studies.General Anime Style Discussion:>Questions about achieving certain styles/techniques/compositions etc.>Drawing methods, study habits, resources, tutorials, tools, software, etc>Be specific and try to post a sample of your study attempts before asking for help.**Draw copies from good anime styled references to mindfully up our mileage, internalize appealing aesthetics, and learn from each other’s processes and knowledge.**Recommended Resources:https://pastebin.com/Yz2scAEc/mmg/ - Manga Making General:>>>/ic/mmgPrevious Thread:>>7902209
why is this thread literally dead
>>7961543AI must have taken all the anons away. This is now just a desert.
>>7961552
I was gonna post it when it was done but I'll break the ice with the sketch of a WIP copy.
>>7961543Years ago it was kind of the refuge for people who wanted to draw anime but got bullied out of /beg/. There was a stronger anti-anime faction on the board at the time. People don’t seem to get as riled up over the anime vs fundies debate now so maybe fewer people see a need for a dedicated anime thread.I want to keep the thread going though so I’ll make sure to post something next time I do a study
>>7961543All the covid tourists have given up and left.
>>7961623>copy
>>7961750That's basically what the data shows. All time peak was right when covid started and it's been a slow decline since then.Funny enough AI (late 2022 / throughout 2023) and even the hack that took down the site (the gap in 2025) didn't really hurt the statistics, if anything they both actually lead to increased posting.Not sure why we had such a big dip at the start of 2026 but we're starting to rebound somewhat.
>>7961552>>7961562Even their gay ass circle jerk discord is dying because it's just Ganie and Barrel tard dangling the /begs/
>>7961543Not much of a point to this general nowadays. Another anon already mentioned it but people just post their copies and artwork on the other more frequented threads.
>>7961780AI brought an influx of jeets shilling their gens like no tomorrow which lasted a couple of years. The board was almost unusable because of all the shills and every thread was just arguing with no conclusion and AI demoralisers replying to every honest effort picture with a deluge of AI pictures claiming AI did it better. I think that was the nail in the coffin for most of the covid tourists thinking it was over for art. Then I guess the AI shills left as well when they got bored.
>>7962098Huh I’m glad I missed that.The board’s a bit slower compared to when I was most active (like 2018-2019) but it’s pretty comfy so it’s not a big deal.
I need to figure out how to use the sketch phase to take the opportunity to actually correct things. It’s so easy to get into the mindset that once I’ve put a piece down I can’t really change it and I have to work around it.
Do any of you use Krita? I know none of the artists I like use it.
>>7963276fosstard shit is too fucking annoying
>>796327690% of art software is fundamentally the same, doesn't matter that much.
>>7963371Kinda , except Krita decided not to be a Photoshop clone making anybody using the major 3 types of software (PS CSP or Sai) completely confused on how the fuck to navigate their shitty UI. It is so easy to pirate CSP or Photoshop and even if you're too retarded to do that you can just pay for CSP 5.0 perpetual license on sale and get objectively the best performing art software in the market as long as you're not painting high res with large brushes. The only Krita based software that's decent is Drawpile and only because of it's brush performance and connectivity with shared canvases.
>>7963415>pirate CSPtell me how
Made this color practice app, what do you think?https://files.catbox.moe/c66c0q.zip
>>7963418dumb zoomer you dont know how to google or what
>>7964535Apps like these are neat, thanks for sharing.The HSV target scoring might be helpful to figure out why you are off, but as practice it seems lacking compared to something like this exercise.https://www.ctrlpaint.com/digital-painting-101/blending-paintSetting up a blending scenario like that in the app might be difficult, but you could probably get somewhat closer by having the app choose two (or more?) colors and the user has to decide what color is the midpoint between them.
>>7964535>Made thisYou or Claude?
>>7964540>just trust and click links with "FREE CSP + Browser Toolbar"
>>7964606I don't think it's worth it, different painting apps have different color blending algorithms and the colors are also biased by the brush settings>>7964667Claude of course, this is not /dpt/
I'm actually very interested in this method. this and studying plotting things on existing backgrounds (I literally never knew what a vanishing point was) (I drew vehicles but as a child always isometric, I wanna finally evolve) But anyway have something old.
>>7964535a bit useless due to color relativitycan be more useful if you can modify / randomize the background color for different setups
Are we all in /beg/ now or what? I see more anime-style drawings in there than I do here.
>>7965000You're right, I added this modeI'm going to practice with it for a month to see if it will really improve my color sensehttps://files.catbox.moe/eq5q75.zip
>>79615434chan has lost 50% to 75% percent of its users across several boards.
>>7965006Anime website, so checks out.
>>7965276nice, it might be useful to have a mode where it focuses on your weakness (i.e for example I notice that I tend to be less accurate when dealing with dark values, so it should start giving me more of those)cool stuff
>>7965356Anime used to be VERY contentious on /ic/. In the early years of the board it was all about western-style concept art for film and video games. Anime was aggressively shat on (exacerbated by the fact that most anime people were on the intuition side of the intuition vs fundies debate) and people tried to quarantine anime to its own threads like /asg/.Now anime is a lot more normalized and is arguably the default style of the board now so people don’t care as much.
>>7961543Several factors but the biggest one is the bad moderation imo. As a result people have splintered away to niche groups and even then these niche groups are also suffering from the lack of volume. Let's be honest about art, it is a luxury most people do not have because it demands time and most of the time is spent in a cage wageslaving away.>>7960503You faggots have been running these generals for almost a decade now, has there been anyone of you who've managed to draw something on your own? What did you learn? Can you draw something without copying?
>>7965554>You faggots have been running these generals for almost a decade
>>7965554I never wanted to learn construction, but now that hide is teaching me construction (Japanese) I’m guaranteed to be gmi now
>>7965564I don't think you even know what construction is, you are suffering from /ic/ brainrot.
>>7961543My hope is that most people here have realized what a dead end copying is, but that's optimistic.Copying isn't without merit, but copying anime is not different from any other kind of observational practice insofar as the skills it develops. Whatever insight you gain into style is of minimal use when it's not paired with foundational imaginative-drawing skills.Simple question for people who want to draw like the artist they are copying: do you think this is how they drew? If not, what are you doing?
>>7965647copying is half way there, what everyone should have been doing is stealing. Nothing is new under the sun, you are not a special snowflake, you're not original, you are not being creative and you most certainly do not own anything you create since it can easily be stolen by somebody else. So why haven't you stolen art yet, everyone's been doing it they just don't want you to know.
>>7966156Overlay your drawing onto the ref and line up the chins and see how far off you were
>>7966158No duh lol
>>7965554>Can you draw something without copying?i can draw from imagination sure but it's nothing special, but im happy with it i just wanted to draw some 4koma style stuff and im almost there but i didn't learn anything from /asg/ since i already knew the secret to leave /beg/dom was just to practice, copying was never a part of that kek.
>>7966156anotheri like this style of face but unfortunately the artist has only drawn it once and it's not a regular thing
>>7960503I just started dabbling into this thing. Any pointers on establishing a basic bitch anime head at any angle?
Also is the mouth level with the bottom of the initial circle or slightly elsewhere?
any tips on copying nomuras style?
>>7966156You are too focused on contours.When you are hatching, make it a habit of lifting the pen/stylus.
>>7967107Not to be overly hash or anything but it’s too early for you to be worrying about style. Just focus on getting the basic structure of the heads more accurate. If you want to do studies of Nomura’s work and use his drawings as refs then that’s fine, no issues there
>>7967396i had the feeling... guess its back to grinding loomis with portrait refs...
>>7967306Simon , what do you usually do these days? What keeps bringing you back to dunk on clear beginners?
>>7967018another (another)satsuki's head is so long (and in my copy i ended up flattening it a little) but it doesn't look weirdmaybe i just haven't internalised it yet but i think if i drew something without copying i'd struggle to get both eyes to look correct. i understand that the further one is gonna be slightly shorter because it's slightly angled outwards (hence why you can see the corner from a side view) but i can only guess
>>7967306please stream again simon, it's been years...
>>7965376The absolute state of current art trends in the west probably also made a push to anime at least here on this board.
>>7968184>a push to anime at least here on this board.All the sudden I don't like drawing this shit anymore.
>>7968185I'm talking in general terms. The late zoomers and gen alpha that grew up with anime going mainstream while the west was going full DEI retardation would increase the count of new learners wanting to draw anime instead of middle aged woman with gorilla face for example.
>>7967542Because I've been in this position. Countless people have been in this position before every poster here and gone through the same trials, faced the same frustrations, ignored the same advice only to regret it later. The young become old, then tell the next group of young people that they wish they had listened to the old while they were young.I am somewhat desperately, or pointlessly, trying to show that copying is ironically not the best way to copy. Doing studies is not time wasted, but not taking the next step beyond studies as soon as possible, is.Focusing on another artist's results instead of identifying their processes is a fool's errand. One may spend days, months, possibly years trying to perfectly copying one single face, only to find themselves back at square one when tasked with drawing that face from a slightly different angle, of which there is an infinite number. Multiply the time it took you to learn one drawing with infinity, and any rational person should conclude that they will never achieve their goal this way.
>>7968241I only came to these threads a couple days ago because I came to a conclusion where I found myself needing to steal from others for the first time since I've been having issues with proportions. Either the head is too big compared to the torso or the hands and feet are out of proportion relative to the rest of the figure and because animu is heavily stylized I'm beginning to believe there's no other way but to steal from someone else. Reinventing the wheel has been a colossal waste of time.
>>7968431>Reinventing the wheel has been a colossal waste of time.This is not what I was talking about. I was discussing the need to learn to draw for real, versus trying to replicate a drawing without understanding the process that created the original in the first place. Or basically, (re)constructing a drawing versus copying.If one learns proper drawing processes, that makes you a *better* thief. When I look at a piece of character art, I look past what that solitary image is, and begin reading its proportions and taking note of stylistic choices. That is infinitely faster than trying to learn by copying, because learning by copying takes infinitely long.That's the point of posting these demonstrations. Someone who can construct is better at being a "thief" than someone who can't. Just because the final result does not show the construction, does not mean it wasn't there. It's removed just as a scaffold is torn down after the building is complete.
>>7968453That last part about reinventing the wheel is unrelated and came from personal experience, which did no good. Being a thief already implies you have the tools necessary to steal therefore it wouldn't be copying it's stealing.
>>7967901another^3
>>7968645>when your reference is a /beg/ drawing Yours is unironically better lol
>>7968645
Does anyone have that old image that was like a japanese explanation of going from a realistic style to a more anime style?it was like 3 images side by side: photo of gloomy asian girl > realistic value sketch > anime girlI remember it being really useful for understanding how to stylize different parts of the face.
>>7961754
>>7965326Internet is truly dead.
>>7968651The reference is the settei, is literally original artwork from the animators.
i tried doing one (1) drawing from nothing using minimal reference and just my memory of what lina looks like and it turned out like hot ass
and another copy
>>7970008>>7970011So, have you drawn anything from the neck down yet?
>>7970008I can see the likeness, main issue is that you forgot the rest of her skull/hair
>>7970015like once maybemy reason for focusing so hard on heads is because being able to draw a good head (and nothing else) is better if i want to show other people imo
>>7970024>I'm too afraid to draw anything but floating animu headsYou need to get out of your comfort zone, get used to making mistakes and start drawing what nobody likes to draw which are the hands and feet.
>>7970011The orientation of your construction does not match the reference.
Is studying/copying frames from anime fighters (a la Guilty Gear, BlazBlue, Melty Blood, Under Night) a worthwhile use of my time if I've never done figure drawing in basically any capacity before?like pic rel
Currently doing the hyped hide course, starting with the head one. Not gonna lie, I think it was a mistake. It is a bunch of boring repetitive sloppy skull drawing... It's getting harder to get knowledge from it, though I will still grind it to the end.Once he begins teaching actual anime heads, maybe things will improve. Since the lessons on realism aren't good, I'll have to use other materials later to really learn how to properly draw a human head skull and such.The guy vibe is very "see, it's easy!" while he makes arbritrary decisions that actual begginers would get lost.
>>7970660ngmi
>>7970660Well his skulls definitely aren’t “sloppy”, his method works and is pretty easy to follow along with as long as you already understand basic perspective principles.Can you try asking a more specific question? Either something specific from the course you don’t understand, or a drawing that you tried to do that looks wrong and you can’t figure out why
>>7970431No, anime fighters are notorious for bullshitting their anatomy and proportions for style effects in 2D. Same advice to all /beg/s applies here, study your god damn Loomis first.
>>7971987GMI, actually. As if criticizing, but properly doing the hyped course, would hinder my progress.>>7971993I just got to lesson 9, when he starts shading it as well. It does look a lot nicer with the full skulls, so I will be focusing on that now. But it was sloppy in previous lessons. First, the heads are made all in arbritrary angles and arbritrary length cuts, so following him is awful (I already know perspective, so it is fine for me. Still, unlikely to be good for real beginners) as you end up with different perspective lines and negative spacings from his drawings. Also, freehanding of contours on the spheres add to the injury.His methods aren't "easy to follow along" at all. For example, instead of just going through the skull aspects then drawing each of the skull section direct on the angled faces, he could have first drawn just the simplified sections shapes by themselves, and after it draw them on the angled head.
>>7972029Still, I'm doing it. I like that he uses the real skull as reference, because even if I don't like how he teaches, it is useful and I can study more in other ways later.
>>7972029>As if criticizing, but properly doing the hyped course, would hinder my progress.it will make your study less effectiveyou can't look down on your teacher and expect then to readily absorb all the information presented, it will get subconciously deprioritized by your brainthe effect goes the other way too: if you look up at your teacher you'll get even more out of it, and your brain will categorize it as important and worth remembering
>>7972069>look down on your teacherI am actually looking down on his teaching methods, especially as the course is said to be for true beginners.>it will make your study less effectiveI don't believe in such psychological gimmicks as you described. Teaching is hard, and people learn differently. All it matters is that hide is a professional animator, so he has knowlegde I can make use of and study from. Absorbing information has nothing to do with silly things as your opinion about a teacher. I don't like his methods, but I'm still learning a lot. Same shit as don't liking realistic drawings or anatomy, but learning greatly improves your ability to draw anime.I don't make excuses, but I'm critical. Hide might be remarkable professional animator, however being a teacher is an entirely different category of skill.
>>7961780the decline of post rate of /ic/ may be in part due to 4chan slowing down in generalmany boards have a similar curve
>>7968453I know you've gotten this asked probably a million times but in essence then your advice would be to not do copies at all? Or is it more just the use construction when copying. Just currently lost in limbo between "copying even if blindly is good" and "copying is a waste of time". I've done some krenz/bargue type copying and now I'm wondering if I've just wasted all those hours besides the mileage I possibly extract. I almost wish I could pay you just to have a weekly 1 hour chat but also then again I don't want to waste your time
>>7972359Not him, but I have some thoughts on the topic.You should re-read his posts first. It's really good advice and answers your questions, you just maybe haven't understood it yet.>>7968241>>7968453Copying has it's use, but the diminishing returns ramp up fast, and it's too easy to get absorbed in the process and do it mindlessly or get comfortable copying and never apply what you are learning or challenge yourself.When he says to take the next step and to reconstruct drawings it's not about specifically using construction. It's about analyzing what you are seeing to the point that you can add it to your visual library. For learning stylization an example might be mapping out what parts of an eye the artist omits, what parts they exaggerate, what shapes they use, and then drawing eyes using those observations.>So what should I do?I think it's fine to do copies from time to time, as long as you keep in mind the process rather than the results like that anon said. And it shouldn't be the bulk of your studies. Better to draw from life, and do anatomy studies. Understanding your subject will make it much easier to make confident decisions on your drawings or reverse engineer what decisions other artists made in stylizing.But even more important is to draw an original work to completion. Periodically, not just once. It's an opportunity to internalize what you've learned. The parts you struggle with are the best indicators for what you should spend your time studying.
>>7972359I do studies all the time, but it's not to learn a design. It's to test and prove a method or process to myself.We need to be more careful and specific about the meaning of "copying." If you're trying to replicate an existing drawing stroke by stroke, as if you were doing a contour drawing, the benefit of that will be very limited. That's also mostly what I see in these threads.>I've done some krenz/bargue type copying and now I'm wondering if I've just wasted all those hoursYou're not wasting time, you're just learning an approach to copying. You're not learning the subject itself, nor are you learning design. This is a very important distinction.Let's zoom out from this question of copying or not. What are we even learning? What is the goal? Since this is ASG, the assumption is you all want to learn how to draw like a Japanese animator. So what separates them from other artists?Most of you seem to want to "internalize" a design, or a design philosophy. But that's not what an animator does. Why should they expend the effort to memorize a design that they'll likely only draw for one season, when they can simply pull up a model sheet?What is actually special about what these animators do is that they can take a very small set of data, like a model sheet with front, side, quarters views and some expressions, and deduce how to draw the character from any kind of perspective, in any kind of pose and conditions. Those are the skills you should be building.Move away from the idea of learning anime as a style. All designs are just inputs. You should be design-agnostic. If you really learn how to draw, then styles should not make a difference to you. I draw way more western characters in styles that ASG would find revolting, like "calarts" or "beanmouth." The challenge and the fun is in taking those characters beyond the limits of their design.
>>7963371having to deal with krita and gimp, there are two types art software, shit that just works, and shit you have to fight with.FOSS has a huge problem with being designed by engineer, where UI, UX, ease of adoption, user friendliness, ease of use is all secondary to whatever the fuck the developers are doing while refusing any suggestions to make it more like the proven software(photoshop, csp) that it's acting as an open source alternative for.
>>7972359>I've done some krenz type copyingBut did you really? Did you went through his content and understood why you should copy and what are the important aspects of it? How to use it to learn and understand the drawing?Krenz doesn't just copy. The copy is made up of analysing the contruction of drawing, line direction, negative spacing, precision, simplifying forms, etc. Then, the most important part, is to redo the copy from memory, to really internalize what you copied. Then, it comes the challenge, take that copy and redo it in another perspective/rotated, modifying part of it (add new furniture to a room, or change part of the pose of a character).The idea of copying is to create an visual internal library that will be your foundation for drawing anything. It is not about the copy itself, but the extraction of information about that art.
Does anyone have their Discord invite link?
What is in your opinion THE method to draw the anime head? Book or video course, doesn't matter just post what you use
>>7973846Loomis, but unironically.
>>7973849I feel like the proportions are so different though, and the anime head isn't a 3D model that can be rotated freely, it distorts as you view it from different angles. That's my problem with applying Loomis to anime
>>7973854>I can't into Loomis because anime can't into 3dI'll just leave this here.
>>7973846>>7973854You can always look though the "how to draw" tag on pixiv for tutorials from japanese sources, but most of them are just going to be modified Loomis heads
>>7973846I'm not sharing the golden anime ratios that easily...
>>7973868Don't you need a pixiv premium account to sort by popularity or something/
>>7973956Oh yeah, searching pixiv is kind of a pain I guess. Boorus are good too https://gelbooru.com/index.php?page=post&s=list&tags=how_to+
I find pixiv accounts through the recommendation system, and I stick to the ones I like the most rather than finding them through random searches.
Does this artstyle have a proper name?It's not quite early 2000s moe, it feels very specific.This guy here https://x.com/glyvees also seems to be heavily influenced by it.Grand Chase/Elsword also used to have artwork in this distinct style https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/grandchase/images/1/17/Lire_archer_new.jpgI need some references so I can try drawing it but i'd like to collect more information on it first.
>>7973854ugh............... you are probably a baitranny or a tourist but this has been answered millions of times.learn basic shapes such a boxes balls cilinders etc... this is to train you brain to see forms instead of the 2D visuals(anime style) who are based on 3D formsstart relaying less on basic shit like boxes and just practice morestart applying a bit more of details and keep doing the sameafter this you can then start applying loomis shit and whatever the fuck style you are trying to make.a lot of /beg/ s make the fatal mistake of trying to learn all in one go, you niggas heavily understimate how difficult this shit really is(specially the head) tldr: learn ze fundies you fucking retard.
>>7974494I don't think it has a name? It is just a common art style of games for that time. While the face is similar (very characteristic of the 2000 anime era), Grand Chase actually has a distinct feature of giant forearms and hands (which appears to be due to easier 3D rendering as well).Are you perhaps a man of culture? Grand Chase is absolute kino and soul.
>/asg/: i will now copy yet another screenshot like an NPC! thats how im GMI>reality: >>7973637
>>7960503Not particularly anime specific, but there isn't a broader stylized art thread up -I'm looking for something to listen to / watch on the subjects of stylized artwork, capturing appeal in stylized artwork, addressing stylized characters in extreme perspectives, quirks of more heavily stylized art (like how certain anime styles alter head/facial structure for different viewing angles) etc.Would anyone here be able to recommend some material(s)? Books would be fine too I suppose.
>>7974790correct
>>7974507You know that your drawings are /beg/ too right?Like why should anyone take your advice when you haven't demonstrated that it works?
>>7975068holy newfag
I'm only starting to draw and just grinding basic shapes is agony. I want to draw anime girls, do I just start copying anime and manga I watch? And it works?
>>7976201>just start copying anime and manga I watchthat's how most japanese artists started out, copying the stuff they liked as a kid. keeping things fun is more important than grinding the fundamentals but hating the process. it works if you copying mindfully. ask yourself why they drew it like that. copying sketches from pros helps too, since you can see more of their process and what they were thinking.
The last pewdiepie video was really good. We don't have an art store in my area anymore, I also bought same calligraphy that he didn't know how to use, I did the same thing in the past.
>>7960503Is there an anon here who likes and draws Xiao? He mentioned he used this general.
This thread is more dead than my social media accounts. Jesus christ. Sad.
Hi /asg/ its been a while. Its been a month since my last UI's styled Watame drawing progress lol. Anyway this progress, I draw her horn, gave some shading on her right side of her hair, and fix her chin's proportion (might improve it later). Anyway this is my progress for this week (i'll try give progress every monday)
so what's the /asg/ approved anime head construction method?
>>7974790Every single panel that looks decent in that was copied directly from a Tsutomu Nihei comic
>>7979846Anime Loomizor uh hide_channel
