Minimalism

“Crayon Shin-chan” also known as “shin Chan” is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Yoshito Usui created in 1990. As you can see it uses a very minimalistic style of drawing. The use of its non-smooth lines and child like doodles makes it easy to analyse by showing minimal human features. Everything has become simpler appealing to young audiences which I think I think Yoshito Usui was trying to achieve. The illustrations also gievt he effect of it being flat because of the use of shadows because there are hardly any used in the manga. Another thing he has used to give it a child like feeling is a lot of primary bold colours such as red and yellow which Yoshito has used for the main character “Shin Chan”. Also the younger characters faces have all been baby faced with a round shaped head big eyes and lowered mouth making it cute and appealing. “Cuteness is based on the basic proportions of a baby...no neck-head joins on to the body directly... nose and mouth are always small.” (1). with the adult characters they have more of a pointed or long face with a visible nose.

References

1)      Advanced animation by Preston Blair in 1947 image page P16  http://www.animationresources.org/pics/pbanimation17-big.jpg  

Here is a short clip of the comic strip Garfield created by Jim Davis published in 1978 about a ginger cat called Garfield but this cat could walk and talk. Minimalism was shown in Jim Davis’s Garfield for example the round edges and curves and missing or exaggerating the facial features like the nose and eyes. Also the way he has illustrated the cat in both of these clips are very different. The image on the left Jim Davies has drawn Garfield as an ordinary cat but using his minimalist round curved style. The image on the Right has more of a human structure with human like hands and feet, this would change the way the audience perceives Garfield from being an ordinary house cat to an exaggerated cat with human features which makes us see him as a man trapped in cats body.