Japanese manga has developed its own visual or iconography language to express emotions and other internal character states. This image style has also migrated to anime, as many of the manga stories are adapted into television shows and movies. While this article discusses the style of both types of output, the emphasis here is on the origin of the manga for this style.
The manga style is popular and known to be very distinctive. Emphasis is often placed on the top row of shapes, and the placement of stories and panels is different from those in American comics. Impressionistic backgrounds are very common, as are the order in which panels display detail settings rather than characters. Panels and pages are usually read from right to left, consistent with traditional Japanese writing.
Since manga is a diverse art form, however, not all manga artists adhere to the most popularized conventions in the West through series such as Akira , Sailor Moon , Dragon Ball , and Ranma Ã,½ .
Video Manga iconography
Panel characteristics
There are several distinctive expressive techniques (and some of them unique) on the manga art form:
- Screentone: Transparent adhesive sheets are produced with a distinctive pattern (typically, some dots or hatches, but also include flashy effects such as stars or explosions, or common scenes like scenes cities, schools, and landscapes), these are cut and overlapped on the panel to introduce shadows and details that will be time-consuming or unfeasible to draw by hand. The more, the physical tone sheets are replaced by the equivalent generated computer.
- Expressive bubble of dialogue: The boundary of the speech/mind bubble changes in a pattern to reflect the tone and atmosphere of the dialogue. For example, blast-shaped bubbles for angry appeals. Also, manga usually do not follow conventional Western comic conventions for speech (solid arcs extending from the character's head) and mind bubbles (some small circles are used instead of arcs). The last balloon style is often used for whisper dialogue in the manga, which can confuse Western readers.
- Speed ​​lines: Often in action sequences, the background will have a neatly arranged line strand to describe the direction of movement. Speed ​​lines can also be applied to characters as a way to emphasize their body movements (limbs in particular). This style, especially the blurred background, extends to most action-based anime as well.
- Mini flashback: Many artists use segment copies of previous chapters (sometimes only one panel) and edit them into story panes to act as flashbacks (also apply darker overlay tones to distinguish them from current events ). This can be considered an easy-to-use method for generating previous events along with visual imagery. In situations where character life events appear in his mind, the opening page can be used with an entire background consisting of segments from the previous chapter.
- Abstract background effects: This involves a complicated hatch pattern in the background and serves to show or amplify the plot's mood. It can also describe the state of mind of the character.
Maps Manga iconography
Facial features
While art can be very realistic or cartoonish, characters often have large eyes (female characters usually have eyes larger than male characters), small noses, small mouths, and flat faces. Psychological and social research on facial attractiveness has shown that the presence of facial features such as children increases attractiveness. The manga artists often play this to increase the attraction of the protagonist. Big eyes have been a permanent fixture in manga and anime since the 1960s when Osamu Tezuka was inspired by Disney cartoons from the United States and started drawing it this way.
Furthermore, within the big eyes, the transparent feelings of the pupils and the gaze, or small reflections in the corners of the eyes are often exaggerated, regardless of the surrounding lighting, even though they are only present in living characters: the dead character's eyes are the color of the iris , but darker. Sometimes the effects of death are also used to show emotionless characters due to trauma or loss of conscious control due to ownership (ghosts, demons, zombies, magic, etc.). In characters with hair covering some faces, the eyes that should be covered are often underlined to make them visible, even when the hair is very dense and dark.
Certain visual symbols have been developed over the years to become common methods for showing emotions, physical conditions, and moods:
Eyes
The shape and size of the eyes can be exaggerated or changed altogether. Love and eye-doe show insanity, while the stars show that the character is engulfing the star. Spirals show confusion or dizziness, while the vast flame or semicircle indicates that the character is angry or vengeful. When dead, unconscious or stunned, "X" is sometimes used as an indication of the state. Eyes can be replaced with two "& lt;" facing the opposite direction to represent a variety of emotions, such as nervousness or excitement. The eyes without pupils and with reflective flashes indicate the state of delirium.
The enlargement of the eyes, where they become large and perfectly round with small pupils and no iris and beyond the reach of the face (often shown with the mouth being like a semicircle stretching, the point extending past the chin) symbolizes extreme joy. Similarly, turning the eyes into two half-thick circles, gives a funny and fun look (see the character Design section below).
The shape and size of the character's eyes are sometimes symbolically used to represent characters. For example, larger eyes usually represent beauty, innocence, or purity, while smaller and narrower eyes usually represent cold and/or crime. The eyes that are completely black (dark) show a vengeful personality or a deep rage. It can also show that a person is a wise type, especially when accompanied by a grin. The eyes of a character are overshadowed regardless of the lighting in the room when they become angry, upset, something is wrong with them, or they are emotionally hurt. The bubbles formed in the corner of the child's or girl's character often indicate that the character will cry.
Mouth
The mouth is often described as small, usually given with a single line on the face. A fang peeking from the corner of the mouth shows a mischief or excitement (except, of course, that character has normal fangs). The mouth of the cat (like the number "3" rotated 90 ° clockwise) replaces the normal mouth of the character, and usually accompanied by larger eyes can also represent delinquency or penchant (a striking exception is Konata Izumi from Lucky Star , whose ordinary mouth is this).
Nose
Again, the nose is often described as small, with only a short L-shaped mark to find it. With a female character, the nose can sometimes be removed completely when the character is facing forward. In its profile, the female nose is often a button-shaped, which is composed of smaller than small triangles. Nosebleeds show sexual excitement after exposure to stimulate an image or situation. This is based on the story of an elderly Japanese wife. A balloon dangling from one nostril ("snot ball") signifies sleep.
Head and face
Drip sweat is a common visual convention. Characters are drawn with one or more sweat points protruding on their forehead or forehead (or floating above the hair on a character whose back is facing). It represents a broad spectrum of emotions, including shyness, despair, confusion, and shock, not all that is considered a cause of sweat under normal conditions. The actual physical stimulation in the manga is characterized by a uniform distribution of sweat throughout the body, sometimes over clothing or hair.
Throbbing "cross popping" veins, usually described as crosses or triskelions in the upper head region, indicate anger or irritation. These shapes can sometimes be exaggerated, and placed over the hair as the characters are facing away from the viewer. Further pulsed show additional anger. However, some manga such as Doraemon use smoke puff to represent anger, and have no badge of blood vessels.
Red cheeks or drips on the cheeks represent blushing faces, usually used when humiliated by romantic feelings, while oval "red dots" on the cheeks indicate cheeks reddish. This can sometimes be confusing with graffiti on the cheek, indicating injury. Sometimes when a character expresses a strong emotion, such as sadness, a long red hue will appear.
The shape of the face changes depending on the mood of the character, and can be seen from a rounded apple shape to a finer carrot shape.
Parallel vertical lines with dark shadows above the head or under the eyes may be death, fatigue, or horror. If the lines are wavy, they may represent disgust. A much sweeter way of representing frustration/coercion is (especially for young women/female characters) that they tend to stroke their cheeks while their line is conveyed in a grainy, "3" elongated voice that shows swollen lips, to emphasize that bloated look.
Hair color of anime characters is not just randomly selected. In some cases, they reveal an important element of the person's character (based on the color symbolism in Japan).
- Black : Power, evil, emptiness, sadness, mystery, sophistication, completeness, death
- White : Purity, simplicity, peace, humility, cold, heaven (can also mean death)
- Blue : Peaceful, quiet, stable, reliable, man, cool, faithful. With dependence, dark blue means more responsible than light blue.
- Purple : Kindness, wisdom, spirituality
- Red : Passion, joy, aggression, energy, love (basically strong emotions)
- Pink : Femininity, purity, child, love, kindness
- Orange : Energy, balance, enthusiasm, warmth, attention seeking
- Blond (e) : Wealth, paradise, childishness, courage
- Green : Luck (good and bad), jealousy, harmony, life, spirit, tranquility
- Silver/Gray : Reliability, intelligence, maturity, sadness, boredom
- Chocolate : Comfort, simplicity, endurance
Character design
To get a better emotional response with the audience for a particular character, the manga artist or animator will occasionally use certain traits in character design. The most common features include youthfulness as a physical trait (younger age or pigtails) or as emotional traits such as naive or innocent views, childhood personality, or some sympathetic weakness obviously character working hard to correct (extreme awkwardness or life-treating illness ) but never really managed to get rid of it.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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