Seiyuu and Their Art Skills…..Or Lack Of
A recent post over at Seiyuu3 about the Minami-ke trio drawing their own Sensei & Ninomiya-kun manga got me thinking about how it seems so many seiyuu seem to have pretty decent drawing abilities. As houkoholic says, a good proportion of the current seiyuu grew up as anime/manga fans with some originally aiming to be illustrators.
So I compiled a bunch of illustrations and sketches from seiyuu who I know can and can’t draw, and looked up a few others. Some of them are really good but of course, there are probably as many who are really bad. It’s just that they’re smart enough to not embarass themselves publicly……
THE GOOD
Omae Akane
Omae isn’t too well known, Sakurako (one of the cheerleaders) in the Negima series remains her only ‘major’ role - she tends to do more dubbing for films & such. I don’t even remember what she sounds like to be honest, but her art….. now, she is damn bloody good. Not just at illustration, but at all the other arty stuff like colouring & shading too. Below is a random sketch of a monkey which took her 2 & 1/2 hours in total from start to finish (click to enlarge).
Her blog has a few other examples of her art, including some manga-style original sketches.
That’s just crazy good.
Kitamura Eri is a dab hand at all this art stuff too. Does her own colouring (仕上げ - shiage in animation speak) on her iBook G4. A rough sketch of Rin from Kojika below…..
…..and a finished, coloured illustration.
See some of her older works here and here.
KitaEri’s good friend Kadowaki Maii doesn’t draw too often but when she does it can be pretty awesome.
That’s one of her ‘just-inked’ illustrations. It’s good!
Kuwatani Natsuko
I’ve seen a few of Natsuko’s rough sketches, mostly done on the spot and they’re not bad. The one above is of her character Yue from Negima.
Consider her sketch of Arf (from Nanoha) whipped up in a few minutes during one of the Lyrical Parties:
OK, so maybe it doesn’t look fantastic here but compared to Mizuki Nana’s attempt:
It’s a masterpiece.
Goto Yuko draws her own webcomics and illustrations. I’ll refrain from posting any of Goto’s works here as her site has the rather ’scary’ message of Never reproduce without permission plastered across one of the pages… so go see them on her site.
Inoue Marina is pretty good too.
THE SO-SOs
Asano Masumi isn’t too bad. I think.
Here’s Seki Tomokazu’s sketch of Ryuki from Saiunkoku Monogatari….
Yoshino Hiroyuki cheated on his sketch of Firo from Baccano! by not drawing the eyes properly…..
BUT WAIT! Not all seiyuu are unfairly blessed by God with fantastic art skills.
THE FUGLY
Sawashiro Miyuki probably didn’t listen to her teacher during her kindergarten art classes….
Supposedly that’s Mayura from Gokujo Seitokai.
I know that’s Shichimi in the middle, and the other two…. Anya and Nekane….? (Negima!? characters)
Takahashi Chiaki may be sexy, but her art definitely is NOT.
Chiaki’s probably the only seiyuu who can rival Kobayashi Yu in the bad ‘art’ stakes.
You can see a full gallery of her fantastic works through the link below:
http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm143446
And last but not least - Kobayashi Yu; everything she tries to draw ends up resembling hairy testicles….
Some call it abstract art…. A few people in the seiyuu world have mockingly named her Picasso.
Anyone else played Picto Image DS? It’s a sort of Win, Lose or Draw game - they picked a few hundred people (ages ranging from 3-40+ IIRC) to sketch random things like The Three Little Pigs, snails and so on & the player has to guess what’s the image being drawn. Kobayashi’s the spokesperson for the game, so you can imagine how bad some of the pictures are….
Well…. not everyone is blessed with art skills. It’s just the very good and the very bad who get noticed more often ^^;
December 18th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
Awesome post. I laughed and was impressed. GJ with the Nana Mizuki jab too.