Is Anime harder or easier to draw than realistic style, in your point of view?
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Muuuuuuuuch easiear
damn. o_x
You don't actually need many skills to draw anime in my opinion
Anyone can start it, it's just a matter or finding a mangaka you like and try to follow the guidelines of that mangaka.
I could do it, my sister can do it, maybe my grandma can do it.

Realism is MUCH MUCH MUCH harder

Proof: try to compare how many manga style artists are there agaisnt the few realistic artists e_e


Reality helps the hell out of it to anime style (such as backgrounds ehehe <33 which i fail miserably at </3)
But not necessary

I feel quite the same as you when it comes to reality, I don't like drawing it D: (but I do wish I could do some caricatures ;-; )

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hun... How do I get moar pageviews? O:

I've drawn realism more successfully than I ever have with anime/manga type of illustration. I am just simply unable to draw in that style (no matter how badly I want to )

Personally, I think it depends on the individual. For some people, it comes naturally, because when I'm drawing in my own style, if I go back and draw in the bones and muscles over the face of whatever I did, they usually fall into place accordingly (I like doing that btw, its fun to do with diff colours pens).

Drawing anime is definitely a different kind of skill in my opinion because the proportions are not the same as in realism, but they have to match within themselves in order to look well....proportional(if that makes any sense whatsoever to someone other than myself)

But I've noticed, those who draw anime style well (honestly, better than your average 'i like manga, i draw manga' kid), tend to draw realistically fairly easily? But they usually are the ones that have prior knowledge of where the joints and such should be as well as how the body works (and does NOT work), therefore are able to get that natural fluidity of movement into the drawing as you said. I think the key is that these are just different styles of portraying one thing, and the basic knowledge is necessary to get either, realism or anime, to look right and not completely wonky.


Basically.

I agree with you.

OTL

8D8 I... I do think it's pretty important to learn how to draw the human body realistically before attempting to modify it for your own devices, especially if you're using a style that exaggerates the human body.

I don't draw straightup anime but I elongate and stylise the bodies I do draw, and looking at the way another artist draws them doesn't really help me because I'm not looking at how the body actually works, I'm just looking at someone's interpretation of it-- and I'm not here to interpret someone else's work.

I think if anyone draws ANYTHING, whether they're drawing still-lives or landscapes or cartoons or anything from their head, then in order to really enhance their work they're going to have to do it from life first. After all, where does anyone get their inspiration? From things that already exist.

I never took any serious art classes before I entered college, so I was mainly self-taught before then. I think I learned the basics pretty well, but when I did take art classes at school, I learned a lot more in that semester than I did on my own all those years I spent doodling my characters and trying to find my style.

So, yeah. I guess re: "drawing anime" you don't NEED to take a life/figure drawing class, but I think knowing how things actually work in their environment will aid the feeling, fluidity, depth, and overall skill of your art much more than just looking at someone else's drawings, because again, the anime style is a style that over-exaggerates aspects of the human body, both in anatomy and actions-- so, what better to reference than the actual human body before you begin to distort it?

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_{hand me a match
this is a story about fire}

i totally agree with u, since i think that drawing realism helps with u're anime drawings, while drawing anime helps with realism. some say that drawing realism's so much harder, but that's not completely true, since once u learn how to draw realism with crosshatching and various techniques, it becomes easier.but with drawing manga and anime, u don't really learn the basics, which makes starting drawing manga very hard, since u don't neccessarily have a reference. especially if u get the hang of drawing manga, u start to realize some things don't look too right, and try to fix it- well, it becomes harder (or seems to) as u go along drawing manga since it's u're own style, and there's no one to teach u how to exactly draw this and that. so, it begins and leads into a stage of pure experimenting, and finally, one day (or maybe never) u get the hang of u're own style.

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"start where you are, with what you have. make something of it. never be satisfied." -george washington carver

I could rant on this subject for hours, but I think this old journal of mine still covers most of my thoughts: [link]

I agree on a lot of things here, and yes, you CAN draw anime well without classes, life drawing, and practicing realism, but doing so is pretty much guaranteed to improve the quality of anyone's anime drawings more quickly than if you didn't. I do realism portraits when I'm really bored/lacking inspiration, and after the first time I'd done this, I realized that my issue with the spacing between two eyes that I'd had such a problem with before was resolved. I mean, I understood the fact that the distance from one eye to another is the same as the length of an eye, but I somehow still made the eyes I drew too far apart anyway -- that is, until one silly little boredom portrait of Emilie Autumn that I drew from a reference. And that's only one example of how occasionally drawing realistically was such a help to me. Now that I think about it, I should really do so more often xD So yeah, it's not necessary, but it helps you get a lot better a lot quicker.

I'm not sure if this counts as life drawing, but...My art teacher this year had students come up and model in these funny costumes, and we'd draw them...I think that's life drawing? I don't know the terminology for a lot of these things lol. Anyway, I was able to draw folds in clothing and such a lot better after that, and anatomy stuff too...So I guess life drawing helps a lot too.

I had a forum topic that can kind of relate to this here: [link]

I agree with most of what you said except for a few points

Yes there is nothing wrong with drawing anime/manga style w/o life drawing practice beforehand but this is only applicable in the short run. Over time if you do seek to improve your art, you're really going to want to know your proportions, foreshortening and the like. Anatomy was so hard for me to master at first because I had learned anime/manga style which often distort natural proportions. Now I have an eye for this sort of thing from practice.

I highly disagree with a beginner learning how to draw the anime body from a another artist's style. Unless that artist has a very good grasp of proportions, the person could end up permanently drawing long bodies like CLAMP. I'm not saying their style is bad, but it isnt a good start for a beginner (Even CLAMP started out normal, then they elongated things for styling). I encourage the use of guides and tutorials for anime bodies that involve proportion rules and comparisons of the male and female figure. These tutorials tend to take the correct amount of life drawing skills necessary to create the manga/anime body. I do believe that drawing from life is much harder than the anime/manga style because of less abstraction.

If you want to get better to a near professional level, life drawing is essential. Stiff bodies only go so far.

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=nio-sama is an African-American Anime/Manga style artist looking for fellow artists of this ethnicity and style to feature in a DA news article. If you have any suggestions, please note her with candidates!

Webcomic: [link]

<sub>xD;;; yeah

To some, realism comes naturally and they're just able to sketch it out.
I'm jealous/envious of that.
They are two different types of skills, most definitely, but at some point go hand in hand.
orz;</sub>

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「自滅的で美しい」

_{Ah, so, so true. I think I see what you are trying to say.}

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「自滅的で美しい」