Pop Media Research – Japanese Media

What form(s) you plan to work in?

I am planning to work with Manga illustration mostly and animation for visual effects.

 What artists are you looking at, and what similarities or differences exist between these artists’ works?

Kentaro Miura, who illustrates the manga Berserk and Katsuhiro Otomo who created the Akira manga.

Both artists have nearly identical approaches to details in scenes and the attention paid to them. They also draw very realistically and hold that style to high importance for the sake of immersion and how much breakthrough it will have to the viewer.

For the animation aspect, I am taking into account that each frame will be hand-drawn to give it a similar fluid motion aesthetic as Akira had.

I am also loosely taking inspiration from Daigo Ikeno, who has done the character concept art for Street Fighter: 3^rd Strike and Naoto “Bengus” Kuroshima who did the character art for Marvel Vs. Capcom 2. Their character designs allow them to be animated easily with a diverse and unique set of movements while still staying true to their character’s form and personality.

What are the tools and materials usually used in production?

When illustrating Berserk, Miura uses a dip pen and ink for lines, ink brushes to shade in darker tones and toned gray paper to draw on for the grey shading and added on patterns.

Otomo illustrates In the animation process for Akira, cell animation was used and on each were pencil sketches to map out fluidity and movement of the scenes, while each frame was painted individually by the animation team.