A Designer’s Dilemma
In Japanese-animated adaptation of comics, an anime’s animation character designer’s role is to extrapolate the original character designs into formats fit for animation. At least, that is it in a nutshell.
For instance, a popular manga simply is that, a manga. To then take the characters from the manga, draw out all the details (think: a typical character design sheet you can find in artbooks for shows or as Newtype features, etc) so animators can see how the character’s hands are, how the back of the character looks like, how the character’s feet are like, etc. The animation character designer provides those specs as one uniform source for the production team to work off of.
Consequently, the extrapolation process often times includes making the original designs workable in the context of making an anime. The original design may have some inconsistencies, or are often way too complex for the purposes of animation. And due to budget and time limits, detailed animation are often not possible anyways so the animation character designer has to simplify the designs in a capture-the-essence kind of way.
And of course, this isn’t limited to manga adaptations. Some light novel adaptations come with character illustrations, and sometimes an animation character designer work off that.
So what happens when the manga was generic enough to begin with, design-wise? The animation character designer should have an easier time right? Not necessarily.
The easily identifiable differences between different design elements within the same set of characters is one of the keys to make a good set of character designs for the original character designer. However, beyond that, the designs generally reduce down to “same” or “barely differentiable” for the sake of faster processing, checking, and better consistency in a hurried anime production.
By nature, character designs bear trademarks of the designer. Style, some would say. There is also a matter of form and convention. Anime characters have big eyes and small mouths, for example. But your generic character designs are already generically pleasing in some sense; people use pleasing templates.
So how do you differentiate a generic-in-reality character versus an above-average-pleasing character in terms of the design aspects that pleases the average viewer’s eyes? A focus on T&A and shapely body lines? Muscle tones? Height and length of limbs? What if those things were already drawn, as a genre convention, at their ideal specs by default?
How do you make someone like Ami-chan extra-sexy? Maybe there are a few ways. But it isn’t by design.
I, too, think that Toradora’s characters are ugly and plain.
Another non-character design aspect to make them more attractive that you didn’t mention is their personalities. Some of the longest running anime also have very ugly and plain character designs, but the quality of the characters’ personalities make those shows so beloved. So, in the end, good writing trumps ugly designs it seems, for while the fantastic writing can offset ugly-looking characters, crappy writing plus gorgeous characters do not a quality anime make.
Sexy characters are sexy, that is what you’re saying.
Putting aside that it is a matter of preference, I would say that it has to be done convincingly. Writing alone cannot substitute for actual titillation, it can only excite the mind and the audience go the rest of the way.
But how do we do this without writing?
As for ugly, I don’t think they are ugly. They are just really simple and plain.
The character designs prolly saves the company time and money by making them simple and plain.
>>how the back of the character looks like, how the character’s feet are like, etc.
nice engrish
you prefer the backside? or what? :/
“nice engrish”
Actually, as awkward as it may sound for you, that usage is well established as a normal regional variation in English.
For a West Coast English speaker like myself, the correct way to say it would be either “_what_ the back the of the character looks like” or “how the back of the character looks”.
In some regions, however, the other usage is considered pretty standard. It’s just a matter of differing interpretations of what correct grammar means.