What do you guys like about this cover art? It's not the traditional sharp line drawn anime, but I dig the colors and overall look of it. Ordered this from an artist separately, and going to order a new piece soon.
https://soundcloud.com/dcxnightcore/fly ... re-version
Which style is better for the cover art, the shaded one like this or the traditional anime style with clear lines?
Anime cover art
Re: Anime cover art
Here is the image that was obviously used for inspiration ^^
http://konachan.com/post/show/106496
Your example has more shading and a better sense of depth, so it seems more realistic, but that also means that it comes closer to the uncanny valley. I find that things like facial expressions, anatomy and lighting becomes a big factor in those pieces of art, while in traditional anime you can get away with a lot of things without it seeming weird. This is very obvious in the image in my post if you look at the nose, which is basically just a dot. Imagine if you did something like that to the art you linked, how strange that would look.
So what I'm getting to is that traditional art is cartoony, but it's less demanding, so it takes a lot less work to make it look good. Realistic art is supposed to be realistic, so suddenly you get these expectations in your head that the art is supposed to conform to what the real world looks like, making it much harder to pull off. It's the same reason why you often see cartoon characters twist their anatomy in ways that would be completely impossible if they existed in the real world, and the reason why more realistic looking characters in movies like Avatar conform to the limits of reality.
So which style do I prefer? Well, both, but I think it takes a waaay better artist to make a realistic style look good than it takes to make the traditional anime style look good. It also obviously takes more work to do all of the lighting and shading. In your example I like the colors and I like the hair, but the face is uncanny and the hand looks weird (look at the difference between the ring finger and the pinky). If pulled off right I think that the realistic style is awesome, but it NEEDS to be pulled of right or it just looks wrong.
http://konachan.com/post/show/106496
Your example has more shading and a better sense of depth, so it seems more realistic, but that also means that it comes closer to the uncanny valley. I find that things like facial expressions, anatomy and lighting becomes a big factor in those pieces of art, while in traditional anime you can get away with a lot of things without it seeming weird. This is very obvious in the image in my post if you look at the nose, which is basically just a dot. Imagine if you did something like that to the art you linked, how strange that would look.
So what I'm getting to is that traditional art is cartoony, but it's less demanding, so it takes a lot less work to make it look good. Realistic art is supposed to be realistic, so suddenly you get these expectations in your head that the art is supposed to conform to what the real world looks like, making it much harder to pull off. It's the same reason why you often see cartoon characters twist their anatomy in ways that would be completely impossible if they existed in the real world, and the reason why more realistic looking characters in movies like Avatar conform to the limits of reality.
So which style do I prefer? Well, both, but I think it takes a waaay better artist to make a realistic style look good than it takes to make the traditional anime style look good. It also obviously takes more work to do all of the lighting and shading. In your example I like the colors and I like the hair, but the face is uncanny and the hand looks weird (look at the difference between the ring finger and the pinky). If pulled off right I think that the realistic style is awesome, but it NEEDS to be pulled of right or it just looks wrong.