This is my first non-drawing article.
True, I’m a little interested in manga as an artform, though I haven’t actually found myself reading any manga in a long time except for those moments when Lan recommended me some manga to read.
I’ve been wondering: I’ve seen a lot of people draw manga characters. Some of them are n00bs. Totally. But beyond n00b bashing about how badly they draw, I notice that they love to make drawings of certain characters (sometimes characters from the little seeds of stories that they make up) and then label their drawing with the character’s name and age.
As a psychologist, I wonder. Why do they do that?
Actually, even I have found myself doing the same thing at least once in my life as a n00b (pardon my terminology for those who despise the word). But, for the life of me, I can’t remember why I labeled it that way.
But my question is “why?”
I doubt that it’s a crutch to make up for their inability to properly show age in their art.
Really, without much to work with, I wildly speculate two possibilities:
- It may have something to do with the fact that most n00bs are kids, and that their personal identity, as well as the identity of personas they would create, would be defined by what they find most salient about themselves… especially at ages when every year difference is a big thing. or…
- It might be a natural tendency towards making systematic lists, as in school systems. Maybe they tend towards making lists of characters complete with descriptive data that would belong in a personal file such as birthday, location, etc…
I dunno. Those are the ideas I have about that matter as of the moment. Either way, I figure it’s because of social influences that our culture presses on the budding artist.
Does it reflect their level of knowing a person? Only by their age and height and place of origin? I don’t want to lament over the signs of societal decline just yet, but it’s a thought, right?
