Tag: manga

Research: Origins of Japanese Comic Art

Research: Origins of Japanese Comic Art

by turquoisecho ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

I’ve been influenced, however directly or indirectly, by Japanese comics in a big way in my personal artistic style. I’m researching the context for it, to see the historical and social connections to my current style.

In terms of my personal style, artists I had access to while developing my style were heavily influenced by contemporary manga and anime.
This was because of shows like Pokemon, Sailor Moon etc. that many people, including Western / American artists, were exposed to from childhood. The stylised, lineart heavy cartoons I enjoyed on social media growing up were all tied back to Japanese animations and comics.

Hokusai is a famous 19th Century painter from Japan. He’s most known for his woodblock prints and natural paintings, but he created a lot of “playful sketches” (manga) work for his students as well. This is some of the earliest modern manga.

“After Commodore Perry opened up Japan to the West in 1853, an influx of foreigners followed along with the introduction of European and American-style comics. In 1857, Charles Wirgman, a British journalist, published The Japan Punch, a magazine modeled after a popular British humor publication. George Bigot, a French art teacher, started Toba-e magazine in 1887.

While both publications were originally intended for the non-Japanese expatriates living in Japan, the humor and artwork in the pages of The Japan Punch and Toba-e caught the attention of native Japanese readers and artists. Ponchi-e or “Punch-style pictures” began to appear as Japanese artists were inspired by Western-style comics and began the evolution toward the uniquely east-west style that is modern manga.”

At the dawn of the 20th Century, Japanese artists took inspiration from Western comics and applied Japanese ideas to them.

Kitazawa Rakuten (1876 – 1955) is considered the father of modern manga. He was inspired by American artists like Outcault, who created the comic strip The Yellow Kid. He was the first to start a school specialising in caricature and comics.

He drew humorously. The figures are all fun, drawn semi-realistically with a black ink pen.

Machiko Hasegawa was one of the first female manga artists. Following World War II, Japan was occupied by the US. The US had bought in comic and animated characters of their own, e.g. Betty Boop and Mickey Mouse. This was inspiration for a lot of Japanese artists.

I think this is adorable. My characters have an incredible amount of similarity to this work! It’s been so interesting finding out where my style leads back to in its origins.
An example of Hasegawa’s most famous comic strip, Sazae-San.

A really influential early manga artist was Osamu Tezuka. He created Astro Boy, a figure who is now an icon recognisable by almost anyone today.

Tezuka was the first to draw eyes so disproportionately large. Almost every anime and manga in recent decades uses a similar style, so this was revolutionary in terms of the style’s conventions.

I just went onto the Tezuka Osamu website. It turns out that he put the word for insect into his pen name, simply because he loves insects so much… and when you scroll down, you can click a little picture of astro boy shooting up to go back to the top of the page. I actually wept a bit at how sweet it was.