Deciding On Your Style

[Mallory]

My "default" art style kinda leans more towards realism/sketchy-ness/messy painterly stuff with super low contrast because I am Le Bebe when it comes to choosing shadows. Actually I'm really unsure about sharp/soft shadows so it takes me a forever of floundering to get a picture done in my normal style. So, there was basically no way I'd draw a comic in my normal style because it would take me a year to finish one page.

There's a concept in graphic design (and elsewhere, I'm sure) that suggests to lean into your strengths and away from your weaknesses (I did not learn graphic design, obviously, as you can see from lettering in my comic... But I did learn this concept and thought it was kinda cool). My art has been primarily complimented on its a) appearance of movement and b) lineart (when I used my brain) so I decided to go for a style that leaned heavily into both and was super simplistic when it came to shadows (literally one cel-shaded layer on multiply...). An earlier comic attempt tried to marry the movement and the painterly style and that uhhhh took too much effort from me because it was too far away from how I normally draw, so I knew I had to stick closer to what I knew. Since I knew this comic was going to take me a few years to draw, I also wanted to keep the style so simple, it could be replicated on any drawing program or device should I ever need to switch computers. So I made it so that it would rely on using just one normal-ass hard round brush 99% of the time. I've been developing a cartoony/simple style for a number of years and felt like it suited the story pretty well, so after agonizing about the exact size of the character's noggin (3 heads tall? 4 heads tall?), I settled with what I have here.

[allenT]

Tone and Target Audience are how I decide my art style be, and it has to based on projects.
Though I tend to draw more cutesy things and have never done a mature rated stuff.

I did have some other art styles before my comic series.
Without any other webcomic I have, so i use my game art instead, 'kay?...

This one's is a family friendly cooking game. Artstyle & promotional arts looks clean & semi-cartoony.

Here's another game with opening screen/end screen art, This one is pixel-art oriented.

Overall because the games are family friendly, they're in the CUTE side (with larger heads) , with saturated color.

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I drew some clean furry arts some years ago but now I don't do them anymore (all passion now went to my comic). This one doesn't have target audience and i draw whatever i like to draw, sometimes experimenting styles. It ranges from drawing more realistic bodies, to something cutesy or 'Sonic' inspired.

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Back on my current webcomic, My target audience is young teenagers (and furry lovers), because of the story of a young teenage cat boy. It features semi-cartoonish animal people, but it has a dramatic tone underneath the peaceful setting to the story. (even if it doesn't show recently) So my art decision is to design a mix of cartoonish side characters and more manga-like main characters (that able to do emotions better)

Art direction can go different ways for different artists. I'm just very influenced by b&w mangas and want to create that manga look. (the formatting is only a bit different) Well, drawing traditionally is part of a style, the uneven organic lines work nicely on my fantasy countryside settings, so it's a huge plus. Oh I wish i can keep inking tranditionally until the end!

That's all, folks!

[Pony_wearing_a_hat]

My writing style tends to vary a bit between stories, but with my current novel it's particularly different due to being written in first person. Eryn, the narrating character is essentially my inner monologue personified, so they narrate they way I think and talk, for the most part. Occasionally though, other characters will jump in the narration and describe events in their own voice, which is something I'm experimenting with for the first time.