Anonymous Coward · 6mo
you mentioned a while ago that you have a real love for naoki urasawa's work and i was just wondering if you wouldn't mind talking a little about that, because i really love his stuff and i feel like i can sense some of the influence in the way you approach certain things. mostly the human form but also some of your sense of timing i think? but ANYWAY would love 2 hear ur thoughts...
WHOA okay im so sorry this took so long for me to answer! thank you for the question
yes, one of my favorite things about his work is what the industry calls "face manga" （顔マンガ）... it is generally considered a rookie mistake to draw "face manga", comics where each panel is just someone's face talking. (western schools of Comics Thought also generally agree with this)
there was an interesting portion of urasawa's manben episode where he talks about drawing "face manga", and his belief that it isn't bad to draw "face manga" at all. by drawing face manga you can deeply emphasize the acting and the subtle expressions of a character. i love this and try to execute it well in my own work.
you will often see pages where he'll draw the same character's face from the same angle multiple times, showing the way their expression changes as they realize something... i aped this from him HAHA
i will also say, i like his sense of timing too (but i think this is because i prefer densely boarded pages rather than very open ones). and ofc i can't say enough about how beautifully concise his expression of the human form is, he's a genius.
by the way, i recommend pluto out of all his works, it's nice and short and beautiful and heartbreaking
tl;dr i love his work for the focus on acting and i like dense paneling in general
