How did you develop your artstyle?

[MST3KFan]

My style originates from when I used to attempt to copy a lot of art styles from famous cartoons and Japanese mangas.

I used to try and emulate manga artists such as Rumiko Takahashi (Ranma 1/2, Inu-Yasha), Kosuke Fujishima (Ah My Goddess, You're Under Arrest), Masamune Shirow (Appleseed, Ghost in the Shell), Ken Akamatsu (Negima, Love Hina), and Kenichii Sonada (Gunsmith Cats, Bubblegum Crisis) among a few others all the time in the 90s, when anime was just becoming HUGE in America.

Eventually, over time my own style emerged from all those styles combined and the rest is history.

[Shanny8]

@MST3KFan I used to read a TON of Oh my Goddess, You're Under Arrest, & Gunsmith Cats in the 90s. Also read Battle Angel Alita & Silent Mobius; partially influenced(to a small extent) by Sonada's work.

[TheKawaiiGarden]

Like many here I started with trying to copy my favorite manga artists but as I learned more about anatomy and such I slowly started to develop my own style and moved further away from the manga look. Wasn't really a conscious decision its just something that slowly happened.

[Morair]

[DokiraKii]

Ahhh- I love this question! Um, mine is pretty simple, lol. I drew a ton of anime/manga stuff when I was little. I had "How to Draw Anime" books and even tried replicating some of the artstyles in the manga books I had. For instance, Peach Pit's "Shugo Chara", Jun Mochizuki's "Pandora Hearts"-- My absolute favorite artstyles were Hoshino Katsura's and Amano Akira's. I think they were sort of my middle ground until I started trying new things with my style. I don't even know what it is now. (ÓvÒ);;;

[elisaaaaamay]

My art style is pretty inconsistent because of everything I try to take as an influence(whether I'm aware of it or not). When I was a kid, most of my influence came from shoujo anime (I'm talkin Super Gals, Fruits Basket, OHSHC, you know-the big eyed wonders?). Shonen anime started to kick in my system thanks to CLAMP, but soon I wanted to try something new. The storyboards from Disney animated films were one of my favorite things to look at so that helped me move slowly towards a more Western cartoon sort of style.

Now for comics I went back to a sort of anime style since it's what makes things simple for me, but hey-still open to new horizons

[SynergyEclipse]

I used to base my style off of The Powerpuff Girls, and various anime series I liked. One of the earliest and largest anime influences to my style was DiGi Charat, and then the Pokemon anime after that. I drew in Photoshop, which I learned about how it worked mostly by myself. In high school, I met some online friends who are still some of the biggest influences to my style. They also drew in anime styles, and one of them drew with vector graphics, which inspired me to do the same.

I liked how crisp their art looked, how it looked right out of an anime, and showed that vector graphics could do a lot more than I thought they could. Some of these other friends experimented with fashion design a lot, which inspired me to experiment more with character designs and fashion.

My style has remained fairly consistent since then, mostly with refinements and corrections to anatomy, proportions and backgrounds, while observing real life a lot more.

[ryoko]

Chuck Jones, Bill Peet, Osamu Tezuka and Miyazaki were huge influences for me when I was younger. As a child Jungle Emperor Leo(Kimba the white lion) made the biggest impact on me because of the art style and storytelling. Later on, Sonoda (Bubblegum Crisis), Takeuchi (Sailor moon) and game art, like the Tales of Series, played a big part in how I draw. I'm still learning different techniques and watching new trends come and go in both manga and anime and applying them to my own work if they mesh.

I think of art style as a fluid, ever evolving process, so I'd have to say my art style is still evolving. ^_^

[Zazorealbiz]

Finding your Art style is like finding a needle in a haystack. you gotta just keep working at that stack until you find the needle.
Hopefully you have a magnet to speed up the process. Think of the magnet as a idea or a other artist's style and the hay as pages full of drawings. ^^ you will find your style when you finish that stack. Sadly you will never finish that haystack since art styles change with level of skill ever so little until it is no longer the same.

[alaingrey]

I was first cognizant of the idea of 'style' when I joined deviantart as a kid, which isn't a great place to start. I was really interested in mangas, but I never read any, except Tezuka ones so I copied that and really copied a lot of native American art I'd had around me as a kid. (there wasn't much dialogue about cultural appropriation back then, let me live : P) I really liked Krazy Kat and copied a lot of the art and tried to get a lot of the surreal landscapes in my own art. But in high school I finally took my first class in realism, which I thought was stupid because it wasn't a style. However, I've stuck with looks more closely approximating reality than I ever expected.

A lot of my friends have art with a big focus on line and flowing forms so I picked that up a lot. I had a big influence from James Jean, Beth Cavener, and golden age illustration (Arthur Rackham, Winsor McKay...)

Now that I work in games, I feel like my art style is skewing to be 'industry appropriate' for better or for worse. More bold color choices than my preferred neutrals, a more realistic look, lots of graphic and cartoon art alongside plain realism, lots of experimenting with parodying styles (like scooby doo and pokemon) and on and on... I'm glad I have a job where I can experiment, because it really does affect my personal work. My latest obsession is vintage illustrations so I've been going down a retro-realism Rockwell look.

Basically I guess I haven't really developed a style yet. Someday....

[dojo]

I honestly don't even know where mine came from originally cuz I was just kinda drawing whatever and wasn't trying to really imitate anyone else. I did start trying to develop it more later when I realized I really liked what some people were doing and pulled it into my own style. Now it's kind of a frankenstein of a bunch of styles I enjoy looking at, and I will continue adding gross arms and limbs to it as I go and spot other things I like in other people's styles. I like sleak, clean, simple styles that are super colorful, full of energy, and all the characters look like they might be on drugs.

It's also developed around the fact that I'm also very impatient and get bored quickly. Dunno if it bothers any of my readers but I'm constantly changing how I'm coloring every pages purely because I just get so bored and unsatisfied using the same coloring style every time (I try to at least wait until the characters are out of whatever environment they were in before switching, though)

[almondjoy445]

I started drawing using those "How to Draw Anime" books when I was younger. After awhile I started trying to replicate the style of my favorite cartoons and artists. After years of practice as well as several handy drawing courses in college (trust me folks, college drawing classes help a whole lot) my style has developed into what it currently is today. It'll probably change again though...

[JKNNKL]

LMFAOOO

Or the tumblr version:

1. Copy someone's style.
2. Make the nose, elbows and knees really really red.

[akemikae]

Uh, well it started out by imitating Sailor Moon. haha. Then eventually I started to draw screen shots from various anime dvds I owned. (Mostly 90's anime like Fushigi Yuugi, Cardcaptor Sakura...etc.) Since I grew up with limited resources I.E. No internet. Haha. I ended up having my own art style pretty early on. I find myself enjoying reference from various artist still. Such as Kyousuke Motomi, Naoko Takeuchi, and various mangas and webcomics I've read over the years. I dunno how to really explain it? I pull from everywhere.

I like to think that 90's manga style is my favorite thing to pull from though. Or just unusual styles in general.

[GesuGesu]

pretty much a mix of my favourite gag manga, a couple BL manga/doujin styles, and that one guy who got me into furries

[Mari]

1. Ranma 1/2. Because it was the only manga avaivable in my country in my language at the time and I was like dis animu shiz is kool.

1. Ayami Kojima. She was also the biggest one, it's somewhat visible to this day.

1. Miyamoto Kano. More so their comic style.

1. Yamashita Tomoko. Their influence shows a lot in my comic's narrative & dialogue. Not so much the style.

Also my group of friends, since I've went to art schools since middle school. We influenced each other a ton growing up.

[OliviaMerteli]

I don't know really where my artstyle come from because it's not something I developed consciously. It mostly came of failures after failures XD
I've never had a course and started drawing late. I mostly trained myself on videogames fanarts, franco-belgian BDs, photos and posemaniacs. Not picking an artist specifically but mostly the "realistic cartoon" genre.

[shinjuco]

That's a very interesting question, and all the replies were very interesting to read too! ( ^ u ^ )

I think constant practice is the key, drawing is my drug and I can't live a single day without it. By practice, I just don't mean drawing what I like all the time, I also mean trying to challenge myself into drawing something else. As a teen, I used to draw a lot of human faces but when I decided later on to add some more sophisticated objects, backgrounds etc... my art style evolved in a great way. I think it even changed a bit the way I was drawing human faces. It's hard to get out of our comfort zone but I think it's necessary to develop our art style.

Practice is also inseparable with observation. When I wanted to improve my way of drawing hands, I simply tried to reproduce what I saw in the real world. Like many of you, I also sought inspiration in other artists creations. My childhood was influenced with Disney animation movies and Franco-Belgian comics (I will forever love Hergé's, the author of Tintin, way of drawing hands). I only discovered the fantastic world of manga as a teen. I'm sure that playing video games also influenced my artstyle greatly.

And last but not least, I think the events in the real world has also a great influence on our artstyle. For instance, I had a phase of depression in my life and for some reason, my artstyle became more colorful and "cute". Some people tell me that my comics are light hearted and I assume it comes from the fact that I came across stressful periods in my life and tried to compensate it with my drawings.

So in a nutshell, I think an artstyle evolves with its author. It's a reflection of what we do (the more we practice the more it gets better), what we like (as we are influenced by the real world and other artist creations) and what we feel. I guess that the best way to develop an artstyle would be to push those three points and, as I mentioned earlier, challenge ourselves and get out of our our comfort zone

[digitalvalium1]

When I was younger I drew portraits, very realistic, but black and white. I found anime and manga in the early 90's and copied those styles. I still love Akemi Takada's work, and my heart is there rather than in more recent contributions. IMHO most modern contributions are too sharp and angular. Characters are now shaped by the jagged urban landscape rather than indelibly natural, human curves. I didn't really start drawing per se until much later as an osteopathic sort of self-therapy. I look at drawing now as a kind of journey of self discovery and mastery; a William Jamesian kind of acceptance, but mostly because I resonate with his works.

I'm still finding my way, developing. I don't see a definitive style in my stuff, as I make allowances for what readers expect from certain themes, characters, etc. It's like learning a dialect of a language while you're still trying to understand the base language. I make mistakes, some on purpose, trying to make it my own. I can't really say that's a style.

[UncleVlad]

I got tired of not liking my own art???

Seriously. I've tried a TON of things up until now. I decided i didn't have any issues with the way i'm drawing right now and started to roll with it.

I started reading some of Osamu Tezuka's work and really appreciated his style. its vastly different from what we are used to today- Tezuka has a very 'cartoony' kind of style. And if Osamu Tezuka could find success, why can't i at least like my own work- no matter what it looks like?

I've also grown much fonder of Western comic art as i've been reading much more thanks to friends who've guided me towards good stories instead of to their favorite franchise. So i've embraced those influences on my own personal artistic taste.