Anime Clay
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For years I have actively searched through the internet for anime art to adore. After creating a large collection of my favorite artists, I decided it could be nice to share.
In America, I feel that much of the anime fandom neglects the artists and their style and pays more attention to the characters -- often paying no respect to the artist/source even if they like it. As an artist myself, this makes me pretty upset. I made this blog hoping to change that around.
You can call me Miq,
Enjoy the artists, here at Anime Clay.
The elegant, peaceful, and beautiful femininity of Moka (もか), also known as Mokaffe, fashionably enriches each of her images. Moka’s art encapsulates a popular aesthetic for many young girls in Japan, from the cute and innocent to womanly and luxurious, within fashion styles such as Forest Girl (森ガール) and Lolita. I personally adore Moka’s ability to subtlety depict the dreamy faces of her figures, especially when it comes to those starry eyes.
I do not know if I will be sharing any artist classier than ikura.
An aspect of Japan that I really like is the street fashion. Surprisingly, you don’t get to see a whole lot of it in anime, at least in comparison to how many cos-play-prone fantasy or sci-fi outfits there are (not that that is bad). But ikura keeps the street fashion of Japan in their art, coupling it nicely with their sleek and graphic style.
For ikura’s Pixiv: http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=252972
For their site: http://electric.boo.jp/
Renji “Range” Murata (村田 蓮爾) is one of the most well known anime artists of all time — if not the most. His brilliant understanding of light, texture, and form has brought life to every series he has worked on (such as Last Exile, Shangi-La and Blue Submarine No. 6) and has flourished in various art books (such as Robot), calendars, posters, video games and now as figures.
I greatly admire the gentle faces of his characters and his creatively fashionable outfit designs. His twist on the steam-punk aesthetic is very polished, and creates an aesthetic that is to die for. I would high recommend picking up any art book featuring his work.
For Range’s site: http://www.pseweb.com/page/english.html
My gateway artist into Korean anime art and still one of my favorite artists of all time, Kim Hyung-Tae. He broke all the rules, on anatomy, outfits, weapons, footwear and character design in general. And he did it successfully, influencing character designers world wide, and letting the world know what Korean style is. With the intricately detailed outfits and absurd anatomy of his characters, Kim Hyung-Tae uses a thick style of shading to render his characters in what I can best describe as “clay-like” — a look somewhat typical of Korean anime artists.
His work can be found in various art books — such as the Oxide series, and Apple (which he did the cover art for, shown here in the 2nd image). He also did the character design for the PS2 game series Magna Carta and the upcoming MMORPG Blade and Soul.
Kim Hyung-Tae’s official site is still under construction, but will be located here: http://studiosis.com/jam/
For the Magna Carta official site: http://www.atlus.com/magna_carta/
For the Blade and Soul official site (Korean): http://bns.plaync.co.kr/
For Apple Comic’s site (a Korean art website): http://www.applecomics.co.kr/
And for an interview with the artist: http://www.guupress.com/magazine/interviews/htk/1.asp
Packing everything and anything into the hair of their characters, Hiroyuki Takahashi (タカハシヒロユキ) creates mind melting images of color and clutter. The complexity of each character is so extreme that entire environments are made out of each outfit. Their aesthetic is to get lost in and die for.
In my opinion, this artist has just really began to perfect their style relatively recently, which is why much of their art I chose for here is pretty recent. To watch their next masterpieces dawn…
Here is Hiroyuki Takahashi’s site: http://www5f.biglobe.ne.jp/~slipper/
And their Pixiv: http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=1024034
