Random list of various popular manga artists I found on a website, along with the genders:
-Izumi Tsubaki (Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun) - Female
-Takeshi Obata (Death Note) - Male
-Takehiko Inoue (Slam Dunk) - Male
-Tite Kubo (Bleach) - Male
-Clamp (Cardcaptor Sakura, character designs for Code Geass)- Collaborative
-Yusei Matsui (Assassination Classroom) - Male
-Tadatoshi Fujimaki (Kuroko’s Basketball) - Male
-Cocoa Fujiwara (Inu x Boku SS, Vol. 1) - Female
-Hajime Isayama (Attack on Titan) - Male
-Yoshihiro Togashi (Hunter × Hunter) - Male
-Yana Toboso (Black Butler) - Female
-Gosho Aoyama (Detective Conan) - Male
-Masashi Kishimoto (Naruto) - Male
-Sui Ishida (Tokyo Ghoul) - Male
-Akira Alano (Psycho Pass) - Female
-Bisco Hatori (OHSHC) - Female
-Rumiko Takahashi (InuYasha) - Female
-Hirohiko Araki (JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure) - Male
-Hiromu Arakawa (Fullmetal Alchemist) - Female
-Akira Toriyama (Dragonball) - Male
-Eiichiro Oda (One Piece) - Male
-Hideaki Sorachi (Gintama) - Male
Also just realized my phone autocorrected "manga" to "manias" in my original post, but mania seems fitting enough, so I think I'll just leave it for now
Japanese animation was heavily influenced by exposure to the “cutting edge” American animation industry post WW2. Many fundamentals of design were taken from characters like Betty Boop- which you can see mirrored in head/ face size and eyes, as well as body proportions. Over time both American and Japanese animation styles evolved to match their cultures and trends. Animation from a given age appears “dated” and one can often tell the time period of a work roughly just by the style elements. So animation evolves, rules are made and broken- and newer styles are adapted from what works seem to be most popular- usually based on what is most profitable. Looking at the two countries- American animation tends to use simple characters and designs with limited colors, but be very dynamic. Japanese animation tends to use more colors, shading, and better detail- but is more static and uses more “stills” where only mouths move (if that.) both recycle frames but are different in how they do it.
So wether one likes the state of animation for a country and time (I’m not a fan of many modern American animation styles compared to other periods or locations...) it’s not a direct reflection of anything really. It’s not exactly “worse” or lower quality either. It’s like comparing a very nice laminate floor to a very cheap hardwood veneer. One may look nicer or have more flash, but the other is of equal or higher cost and quality- it just isn’t the same, and priorities/perception dictate preference. But compare a top end, high value Japanese animation production to a top end high value American project where both focused their primary budgets on writing and animation over contracted celebrities and press- and you’ll see that the picture above isn’t indicative of American artistic tallest bit of a style of animation which is trendy and has a good ROI for projects that couldn’t get funded or would have to compromise quality for better animation.
Yes. To both of you. The Seth MacFarlane animation isn’t so far off from the Matt Groening type cartoons- and makes sense as they are very similar in many ways. The earlier Simpson’s style as well as Beevis and Butthead and Doctor Katz all have closer looks to many of these newer cartoons- which also makes sense as they were aimed at adults. Even today animation has trouble being taken seriously as an adult medium, but not so long ago it was almost unheard of in mainstream society, parodies like “Mr. Bill” used clamtion and were stairs of children’s shows. But when mainstream adult animation started to really come around, it wasn’t seen as a “safe bet” and more as cheap filler. Early shows in the genre pushed the envelope and made not just adult cartoons seem like viable investments, but helped shape and cement the styles of animation that many would grow through their formative years or grow up on. Just as Hanabarbara’s economy minded animation style was a staple of a time and...
Disney and other companies go out of their way all the time to make both children characters and characters aimed at children attractive. Not every single time, mind you, but it's not exactly uncommon
“Adult” cartoons tend to be riskier investments. Until very recently it was completely socially innapropriate (at least in the US), for adults to watch any cartoon for themselves, and even now cartoons have a stigma. Adults are much more fickle and demanding of entertainment. Hana Barbara proved that you could turn out fast low quality cartoons that kids would love, which opened the doors to marketing to children as a demographic and led to the cartoon boom of the 1980’s with shows that existed just to sell toys and cereals and other merchandise to kids, which led to licensing shows like yugioh and Pokemon and the like. But adults are less likely (traditionally) to fall for the same tactics and be so easily amused, and the cost of quality animation plus the nature of many adult shows as “controversial” lends to stylistic differences and attempts to cut costs to mitigate risk factor in as well.
-Izumi Tsubaki (Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun) - Female
-Takeshi Obata (Death Note) - Male
-Takehiko Inoue (Slam Dunk) - Male
-Tite Kubo (Bleach) - Male
-Clamp (Cardcaptor Sakura, character designs for Code Geass)- Collaborative
-Yusei Matsui (Assassination Classroom) - Male
-Tadatoshi Fujimaki (Kuroko’s Basketball) - Male
-Cocoa Fujiwara (Inu x Boku SS, Vol. 1) - Female
-Hajime Isayama (Attack on Titan) - Male
-Yoshihiro Togashi (Hunter × Hunter) - Male
-Yana Toboso (Black Butler) - Female
-Gosho Aoyama (Detective Conan) - Male
-Masashi Kishimoto (Naruto) - Male
-Sui Ishida (Tokyo Ghoul) - Male
-Akira Alano (Psycho Pass) - Female
-Bisco Hatori (OHSHC) - Female
-Rumiko Takahashi (InuYasha) - Female
-Hirohiko Araki (JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure) - Male
-Hiromu Arakawa (Fullmetal Alchemist) - Female
-Akira Toriyama (Dragonball) - Male
-Eiichiro Oda (One Piece) - Male
-Hideaki Sorachi (Gintama) - Male