More on Hagio and Drawing

I got an interesting comment earlier today, which I will quote from, if I may:

"I suppose I always focused more on [Hagio's] page composition and the techniques she uses for expressing mood and atmosphere...Poe probably marks the peak of her most ostentatiously beautiful (literally Gothic) work, but I think she's better today than ever, in terms of technique and sheer skill in conveying precisely what she wants to convey...I would have asked her in my own interview if she had some kind of photographic memory...she may be one of those people (Winsor MacCay, the creator of Little Nemo in Slumberland, was one) who can draw anything she's ever seen for more than a few seconds. I really don't know."

(You can reference the entire quote at the bottom of the post previous to this one.)

Incidentally, Winsor McCay was one of the most popular comic strip illustrators at the beginning of the 20th century, producing extremely detailed, surrealistic, elaborate, many-panelled cartoons for newspaper publication. In addition he produced some of the very first animation, which preceded the use of cels in animation, meaning that each and every drawing, with every last detail including background, had to be drawn fresh for each frame (at that time I am not sure if he employed 24 frames per second, which is the current standard, but regardless, you can see how many hundreds of frames he would need to draw for even a brief animation.) It would also be safe to bet that having a photographic memory would probably be a useful tool in an artist's arsenal for that sort of purpose.

And for Hagio, it is interesting to surmise how that could have affected her work...for example, I would guess that it allowed her to either take on more challenging visual subjects, or else become more prolific (by wasting less time on research and reviewing that research), or else just allow her to spend more time on whatever aspects of drafting or storytelling might have been more of a weak point for her.

Moto Hagio probably would have been an excellent crime witness as well! But joking aside, I wonder if she felt particularly blessed by this "gift" and I wonder especially how she must have had to draw on other resources as it gradually diminished with age.

Also I haven't seen the newer work of Hagio, so I can't offer my own subjective opinion of her evolved visual style, but based on the above comment, it seems like Hagio has streamlined her style tremendously. And whether this is a direct reaction to losing that "photographic memory," or more likely a higher sense of confidence in her abilities and a less-is-more approach, I find it a good study in adaptation--making the most of an unusual gift, and then letting go of one's reliance on it.

Moto Hagio's Photographic Memory?

In one interview of Moto Hagio I translated earlier, she said:

Back then even my brain was plastic and flexible, so I could just remember a manga of this length (one-shot short) for about a year, with all compositions and lines. I absorbed them like photographic papers.

I think this was very telling. When I read her bio, I didn't really notice much sign of formal drawing training. Yet she executes her drawing with such precision and flexibility. She uses dynamic perspectives to enhance drama, and those are really difficult to draw correctly.

I read an interesting episode about her childhood somewhere. When she was 7, she tagged along with her older sister to drawing lessons. One assignment she got was to draw a carp streamer, which are customarily flown in Japan to celebrate Children's Day in May. She drew the streamers over the roof, with some portion hidden behind the roof and other parts of the streamers. The teacher dismissed her work as something done under adult supervision and complained to her parents not to meddle with their daughter's assignment. She didn't believe it when she was told it was Hagio's own work, saying such young child couldn't have understood perspective. In this interview Hagio says:

When I was in elementary school, I was just following examples and copying the pictures. I tried to copy the faces from various angles. Facing right, facing left, facing front, and back, and so forth. As for the way you draw eyes, Masako Watanabe would do this, or Miyako Maki would do that—I was like such an Otaku, wasn't I?

She went to a fashion design school after graduating from high school. She must have gotten some drawing lessons there as well, but she would soon leave for Tokyo to start a professional life. She must have been doing pretty well even before she got those lessons.

I think Hagio was gifted with some kind of photographic memory, and that really helped her with developing her drawing skills despite a lack of formal training.

I have received some comments to this blog to the effect that people who do discover the work of "classic" manga really appreciate the more complex draftmanship and beautiful detail of these works. One person even said that he or she finds it hard to continue reading current manga after spending a lot of time looking at vintage manga; the newer stuff seems insipid and "plastic."