Christmas/Birthday and Visual Books

On December the 25th 2013 besides Christmas I also celebrated my 21st birthday and for my birthday I got a numerous amount of birthday presents and while I love each and everyone I found two to be of particular interest to me: the two visual books for Azumanga Diaoh the animation.

These two books give an inside look into the designs needed for the animation and production of the animated Azumanga Diaoh Anime based on the famous Manga of the same name, which was written and illustrated by Kiyohiko Azuma.





Sadly all the books are written in Japanese lettering known as Kanji and thus I am unable to actually read a single word in the book (minus the few actual English words chucked around for no obvious reason). But how exactly would these visual book help me with my work? The answer is in the back of both volumes. And that be 'design references'...

While these images may only show the multiple character outfits, there are also designs for classrooms and other locations from and throughout the series. But personally I do find the outfits to be a larger and more interesting point than that, because each character has their own unique personality, so it is interesting to see how they dress themselves. 'Cause the way a character dresses suggests a lot about how they wish to be seen by others.

Example, taking in the two characters sheets we can see the top one dresses very sporty but somewhat 'cool', this gives the impression that she herself either views herself to be cool or wants others to view her that way. While the other image, the teacher, dresses very femininely, but from a lot of the expressions used for her on this sheet contradict that feminine feel, this says a lot for how she actually is and how she wants people to see her. But while these are very important factors, one most also consider the characters own comfort and how they feel in these clothes and if they really 'enjoy' what they wear, or if it really is just a guise to how they want people to see them.