Okay. You know, now I’m just kind of confused.
We had our first look at the art of the DOGS OAV back in December. It was questionable, particularly for Badou and Haine’s designs, but I decided to be optimistic. This optimism seemed to have paid off, as the short trailer that surfaced last month looked brilliant. There actually aren’t many shots of Haine in the trailer, but Badou, at least, looked terrific. (Camoflague print is still missing from jacket, but I’ll live.)
Now, some character sketches seem to have surfaced, and it looks like we took three steps forward just to take ten steps back?
Now, Mihai still looks great. His facial expressions and angles are great, and his outfit is pretty spot on as well. Naoto’s turnarounds look fine, and her facial studies aren’t half bad either, albeit a little generic-feeling. At first glance, Haine doesn’t look terrible either: I love the boots in his turnarounds, and the top row of faces on his facial studies looks pretty good. What gets me are his eyes on second row — especially on the left-most face. Also, that guy needs more forehead, man. The more I stare at it, the more I want to get into art kid super critique mode.
And Badou. God, look at Badou’s face! He doesn’t even look consistent from face to face on that design sheet! What is this freaky-eyed, long-faced monstrosity?
AHHHH!!!
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
….
All kidding aside though, it’s really weird to see these sheets, honestly. I’ve always known character design sheets for anime to be pretty spot-on with their animated counterparts, and these just throw me for a loop because I just rewatched the footage from the trailer and Badou still looks great! What’s up with this nonsense? I almost feel like we’re being trolled. In the end, I guess it doesn’t really matter how shitty these sheets look as the actual animation remains as awesome as it was in the trailer. I find these character sheets kind of insulting to Miwa Shirow’s art in general, but it isn’t like we haven’t seen huge style shifts from manga to anime before. It usually turns out okay, even if it’s a little different.
I’m just kind of fearful of some random cheap crap showing up in the backgrounds:
That’s what I immediately thought of when I saw that Badou. Do not want.
I’m just glad it’s an OVA. The manga has really stylish art that would be hard to capture a normal budget. The preview looked good, so I’m counting on non-messed up faces for the full thing…
Agreed on both accounts. Every time I make a semi-negative DOGS post, I feel like I’m making too big a deal out of very little, but as I really, really respect Miwa Shirow as an artist, it really pains me to see his art and characters so messed up.
hmmmm, comment unrelated, XD
I went and read your report on Momocon and I just want to say, Carameldansen NEVER gets enough appreciation, I did it in the car while it was moving and people freaked out, not like I was driving or something T_T
Oh, and as far as anime having the tendency to elongate characters (especially men’s) faces, man, somebody should look into the history of that, the only reason I can think of is that the cel artists are underpaid :P
Really? I think Caramelldansen is pretty appreciated since it’s a pretty widespread meme — right up there with the Haruhi and Lucky Star dances. I’ve yet to hit a con karaoke room and not hear one of the three, if not all of them. People do freak out when they see a car full of people doing it though. XD It’s fun.
As for the faces, stylistically, it might be popular because of artists like CLAMP who somehow magically make it look attractive (along with other decidedly anatomically horrendous exaggerations). Sloppy animation can certainly be blamed on underpaid artists, but the character sheets themselves?? Come on!