/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

>>4287574
COUGH

>>3884811
Am I gonna make it?

>>3883993

>>3879866
‘Symbol drawing’ is a phase in drawing development when a person is drawing inaccurate pictures based on their idea, their symbol, of how an object looks. For example, they know that a chair has four legs, so they draw all four legs of a chair they see regardless of whether any of the legs are actually visible from the angle they’re seeing it. The chair symbol in their mind overrides the chair that’s in front of them. The word ‘symbol’ is being used in a psychological context.

Tezuka used ‘symbol’ in a literary context. Some of those symbols are symbols in the commonly used sense, almost like pictographs - X shapes for angry bulging forehead veins, for example. But others, like girls running to school with toast in their teeth, are more complex. The toast rush tells you that this character is a scatterbrain who’s not that bright, but that she’s got a good heart and is a dear friend. We know this because countless manga used the toast rush as shorthand for this, and it will mean the same thing no matter how simply or realistically (or even in live-action film!) the scene is rendered.

That said, you can symbol draw manga symbols. Japanese kids do it all the time.