When drawing and designing anime, attention to detail is stressed in almost all its techniques. Characters are designed to show descriptive emotions. Even small objects are drawn to be as realistic as possible, while rooms and scenery are drawn out with the detail of an architect's blueprint.
Colors
Most forms of anime use a two-color shading system for characters and other objects that move and are animated. These objects use colors separated into two contrasting shade groups (like flesh colors and red or blue hues). There can sometimes be a third color for shadow or gloss, and the objects are outlined in smooth, black lines. Meanwhile, backdrops and scenery are drawn with blending shades and without black outlining. This helps make the scenery more realistic and helps separate it from the foreground.
Characters
While characters are designed to be as realistic looking as possible, certain body parts like the hands, feet and hair are often drawn larger than normal. This not only allows for movement to be more visible, but also more exaggerated. The eyes are drawn big and glossy as a way to show emotion. The most famous trait of anime is hair, which is frequently drawn in crazy styles and unnatural colors to differentiate one character from another. Clothing and fashion are often made to be trendy with the times, but the Japanese culture of school uniforms is popular.
Scenes
When filming movement in a scene, anime often uses a trick called "panning." Objects in the scene are "rotated" to help simulate a camera giving a sweeping shot around a real life scene. Objects in the closest foreground and farthest background move faster than those in the middle to help give a more three-dimensional feel. Depth of field is also used, in which a character or object meant to be the point of attention is shown in focus while the rest of the foreground is blurred.
