How did you develop the art style that you have?

[Wingstofly]

Was it a certain anime that you watched or perhaps you experimented with drawing and combining different styles. (Can you also post a page so we can see your art style)

[LunarScyphozoa]

I think my main inspiration was lavendertowne and.. I think it’s pretty easy to see that

[faisalhussein394]

I used to draw characters inspired by the art style of anime before I discovered manga and I was so embarrassed even to show anyone this:

And that was nearly a decade ago:

But as time went on, I continue my focus from art-style to storytelling and as I draw comics to make the story I wanted, my art developed into this current state:

[darthmongoose]

Oh man... that's a loooooong story!

I've had many obsessions over the years, and early on when I was a kid, taught myself to draw characters like Mickey Mouse or Simba or Sonic the Hedgehog from memory in the usual styles they were drawn in.

Then I started to experiment with doing my own drawings and developing my own artstyle, particularly inspired by Warhammer artwork from the time, but also by Tetsuya Nomura's artwork from Final Fantasy 7 and 8, and also the trickle of anime starting to appear on UK TV, most notably Digimon and Cardcaptors (a heavily edited version of Cardcaptor Sakura), so my art from my early teens was all over the place:

Yes... yes, those are Warhammer 40,000 Triple Triad cards. I know, that's bizarre.

My OCs from when I was 14... yep.

I kept on drawing in this weird, hybrid kinda style that sometimes leant a bit manga until I was eighteen or so and discovered Naruto and Bleach. It's hard to understate the enormous impact these manga had on me. The way they were distinctly manga, but used things I'd previously thought of as "more western" like hatching, or more realistic anatomy (compared to the cutsier styles I'd been used to) and so they really helped me pull my art style together. By the time I was nineteen, my art looked like this:

(Rekki from Errant has been around AGES, She's an OC I've been making comics with since my teens, even with the sword draw magic still used in Errant!).

I entered and placed in some competitions in the years after this, like the Rising Stars of Manga (UK and Ireland), and Manga Jiman, was just getting into pitching to publishers and then BAM. The 2008 Financial Crisis hit. Nearly every publisher stopped taking submissions and pitches, Tokyopop imploded, and in the next few years, being a manga artist became profoundly unfashionable!
...So I diversified. I learned digital painting and games art skills like 3D modeling, and I also started to make art in a dot-eyed art style that turned out to be popular with tech clients, so I was making a lot of stuff like...

and:

I think my more cartoony work is most heavily influenced by a mixture of Bryan Lee O'Malley and Kiyohiko Azuma, but maybe there are influences there I picked up without really thinking!

Then... After a long time making work for clients, and drawing other people's characters, I had a yearning to make my own comic, something original, maybe with my characters from my old webcomic, but rebooted into something modern. I was happy to learn that manga had kinda come back in fashion and it wasn't cringe any more, so I could embrace my weebiness as much as I wanted. I was able to bring in some newer influences like I aspire to have the sense of mass of Hiromu Arakawa's work, and my sense of comic timing and more cartoon-like energy is heavily influenced by stuff like Azumanga Daioh, Yotsuba&! and Scott Pilgrim, and the bold colour and lighting owes something to "Enter the Spider-Verse" for sure.
So Errant looks like... this:

[BoomerZ]

My style is very disney-like. I wanted the large eyes and simplified form so I could make them have larger than life reactions. I also wanted them to not look flat and have depth so cell shaded was the look I went with to feel like you are reading an animation.

[Freemints30]

uuuuh, I mosty copy what ever art style/comic/artist Im into and over time some stuff stick and remain into a big ol blob. Alot of cartoons, anime and online artists and eventually to what I have here. It may change over time which is a good thing.

[candiedcotton]

HO BOY. A trip down memory lane.

My biggest inspirations... uh. Probably a mixture of various game artbook work, as well as Castlevania and Angel Sanctuary.

I haven't shared progression stuff... ever. So let's see.

Here's 2016. I was broke AF and only had color pencils really. Still hadn't taken up digital yet:

Then this is 2017, got my first cheap tablet and started to try digital:

Then just a LOT of experimenting in 2019-2021:

And this was 2022 junk while trying to figure out some decent comic styles:

[LouisWinter]

A lot time ago in High school, I used have a heavy anime art style and my artwork looked like anybody elses , but when I started making comic strips. I began to adopt a more western art style.

To be honest, drawinf anime hair styles is still kinda fun

[river121693]

it's a combination of skills that I've learned and developed in art class, my general process, and apeping some of my favorite creators.

I love junji ito's art, so my black and white scifi/horror comics looked like his:

When I wanted to make a fantasy story instead, I looked at works by Miyazaki. My characters ended up being kind of pudgy lol. I also tried for a painterly, detailed background.

Eventually, I learned to take my own references, and incorporated the type of straight, rough and, "edgy" line work I'm used to when I draw on paper. I gave up on the painterly background bc it was a lot of work. I took inspo from works by Linnea Sterte and Mobeus for a more rough lineart background. This is where I'm at. I'm very comfortable with my figures now, but still not happy with my background work.

[NickRowler]

I mostly just experimented with a bunch of style and just gravitated to one I liked more. I guess my style is a mix of book illustrations (Madeline, Little Prince), newspaper comics (Doonesbury), tv shows (Xiaolin Showdown), and manga (Toriyama, Tezuka).

I guess with my comics, I am not really trying to emulate or copy someone else's work. I just draw however I want.

[Kelheor]

I inhaled 3 hundred billions images and exhaled whatever I have for the last couple of years I went through a long anime phase, horrifyingly ugly and short attempt at "realism", red noses, really crooked smiles and another dozen of experiments on noses...

To get here

Honestly after all these years I still think that Tenchi Muyo and Hellsing had the deepest influence on my art ^^

[Avonguardian]

I started out drawing in the style of Eddsworld from newgrounds/youtube XDD.
Since then I just kept drawing and eventually I suppose a "style" came to be.

I drew using msp paint and my mouse!

Eventually my style adapted to this other animator youtuber, I do not remember her name but her style was fun as she didnt draw the hands, hehe.

Excuse the garrish colours

I started to really develop my style, being inspired by other creators and of course the anime and cartoons I watched as a kid.

I think the best way to explain how my art evolved is that I just sucked in everyones elses style into me like a sponge and then eventually squeezed out something original, but you can def see the inspirations if you squint and sometimes not even that! xD

I'd say what sticks around now a days is the art style of Yugioh, sailor moon, teen titans, avatar the last airbender and others!
I dont believe in the notion that you should be too concerned in developing your own style because people will notice you drew it trust me

Its hard for me to find a good picture that would represent my current "style" as I change alot, but a page from my comic would be pretty accurate.

I recommend asking friends and family what makes your art special or how they know its you, its fun to see what other people pick up!

[powerplantanimations]

That Stick Figure Isekai has multiple artstyles. Quincy's was just me saying "screw it, let's go full Jack Kirby".

Quincy has a bit of Orion in him. His world's artstyle actually looked like this, but we decided that it was best to keep it this way because... well... it gets the superhero aesthetic across.

The Aztec one was so cool where DoodleAndie didn't have enough time, so she improvised:

The stick figure concept was funny where I had to translate panels to another artist who couldn't speak english, so I drew stick figure art. I then went "HEY WOULDN'T IT BE FUNNY IF I MADE AN ISEKAI WITH STICK FIGURES?". I didn't go with it for a couple of days because I thought someone would've done that, but to my shock, I couldn't find any.

Andie likes to get animated with the stick figures. It's so amazing.

Read That Stick Figure Isekai | Tapas Web Comics

[bulgariansumo]

(2007, anime attempt 1) Before I had my own computer, I liked anime, but wasn't able to watch much of it, so I was going off of vague recollections of spiky hair, sparkly eyes, and a few stock facial expressions. I drew a lot before this, but those pictures are lost.

(2012, more cartoony) Around here is when I started using the internet to find art resources and learned the fundamentals of art. (Technically before that, but those pictures are sadly also lost.) I was also exposed to a lot of artists through deviantArt and later other social media and wanted to copy what they did. This led to a lot of experimentation where I eventually started to discover that I liked bright colors and expressive features. In this period, I branched out beyond anime.

(2013, idk what was going on here) I got hooked on a lineless style at some point. This worked for when I was doing Sonic fanart and drawing in Microsoft Paint, but soon after creating my original characters, I realized that a lineless style might not work as well for these new designs.

(2014, current style trajectory) Then I discovered the artist of this picture, whose style encapsulated pretty much everything I wanted mine to be.

(2017) As much as I wanted to copy that artist's style wholesale, there were other styles that caught my eye, so I studied a bunch, picking and choosing what I wanted to incorporate into my own.

(2022) That pretty much leads to where I am now.

[XiuLyn_12]

My art style is very inspired by a mangaka called Yasuko. I learned a lot from them, including some artists from Instagram~

here's my most recent artwork:

[Lensing]

I grew up reading TinTin, Asterix, Lucky Luke and Clever & Smart.
The 4 typical comics that every euro kid in the 80s would read.
Then I was always really obsessed with the 1950s and with rockabilly
music and that influenced my art style too.

As a teen I started reading Mad magazine and then discovered
Will Eisner and Jordi Bernet who draw in black and white, that influenced
me too. Then I discovered some artist like Dean Yeagle who influenced
the way I draw female characters

Here are some examples of the stuff I read as a kid and then one of
my pages

[DarkSena]

First of all I'd love to say that everything you see and like while growing up really does influence you. Just like everyone else I liked many things but I guess the biggest influences in my life were Clamp - first time I saw X/1999 in german TV I was blown away but the beautiful characters, looking at the manga itself and cover I felt like I wanna create something really aesthetic, something really beautiful with many details. The second one was Kazuki Takahashi with Yugioh. This one left a big mark on me. At first I couldn't handle the very specific style, very sharp, very different from what I have seen until then as a child but I grew to really enjoy it and it remains one of my favorite animes of all time. Recently after the author's passing I got myself some cards to in ancient boxes in collection. First time I felt an author's death so very close to me and I cried a few days over it.

Motu pennarum from 2013

This one's from Mermay 2022

I ended up going my own way but keeping it the way I always wanted to create. A lot of passion for details and aesthetics, this way I pour my love and devotion into all pieces I create.

[Mallory]

I watched a LOT of anime so it's been sort of ingrained in my brain, and comes through a lot in my art style.

Initially I was drawing things like this (~2006-ish for these two)

Because I thought that like, as an artist I HAD to draw normally-proportioned people, even though I really enjoyed drawing chibis. In the end it was probably a good thing because I did learn a lot of anatomy from making this my "main" style instead of gravitating towards something more cartoony.

Around this time though, I was really getting into a number of popular artists like MissRuin, and that was the first time I realized that technically, I COULD have characters who existed purely in the cartoony world (and not just exaggerated occasionally for cute effects) and that it was a valid art style to "major" in.

So I started drawing things like this (early version of Dot from Engram):

You might notice that most of these are not colored and that's because I uh... that was one of the last things I wrapped my mind around. I had a neck injury that prevented me from drawing in any long-term capacity for a number of years, and during that time, what happened was a) I significantly simplified my line work (because I couldn't do more detailed stuff due to the pain) and b) ended up having to rely on color to give visual interest to my work (because I could do cel shading with a fill tool and that was easier on my hands).

Somewhat ironically, doing all this simplified shape stuff with cartoons helped me figure out how to shade my more realistic attempts at art, haha. So that came to a full circle.

I'm still trying to push how quickly I can work so... I expect something has to give about my lineart and coloring soon because they take up the majority of my time spent on art now. I'd like to cut another 20% from my comic workflow for my own health.

[RedLenai]

Well, I simply draw trying to emulate what I like, for example
The Style that I use for Scarlet Society is inspired on Kiyo Qjo's, I love the detail, the long eyelashes, detailed hair and clothes but still very animeish and shoujo like

My style

Kiyo Qjo's

[Lensing]

I really like the style of your drawings and I always thought that it would make sense to first learn everything else
before learning to color. I always felt like I want to understand shapes and light before applying colors