How did you develop your current art style for comic?

[reirotic]

It's interesting to know how other wonderful artists develop their art style suited to their liking. As a comic artist, we all know that it has to resonate the feelings we wish to express, while not getting to hung up on details that it takes too long for a single chapter to be completed! Gotta strike a balance between time and effort, yo!

Let's share your growth as an artist and how your art style came to be to. Who or what (game, movie) left a huge impact on your style? Is it efficient enough to create consistent content every week/month? Is there something you'd like to improve on over the course of comic making?

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So let's start with me!
I am a big fan of Final Fantasy and their style is just so gorgeous! Everything from the hair to eyes to the costumes is so well done. Then seeing Disney-influenced art on Tumblr/Twitter just made me want to try out this style! Beautiful depth of line art, gorgeous handling of shape contrasts and the mind-blowing composition you can make from them! So I tried to leave a bit of both in my style every now and then. So far, I'm quite happy with my art style. I wouldn't say my style is efficient enough, as I still struggle to complete a chapter within a week (that's my current goal!). Comic making is one of the big reasons for me to improve on my technical skills as an artist and also a storyteller. I believe that I can better in those two as long as I preserve and make consistent comic updates. It's hard effort, but it'll get easier! err... hopefully...

You can check out my comic to see all that effort presented in its full glory:

Unearthing Hope | Tapas

[duckuga]

Hmmm tbh I have no idea how my art style came to be haha. I guess manga and other art styles I've seen have influenced mines? Though I really want to change it into something less simple, and I have a hugggeee list of artists that I really look up to and am inspired by right now, so it's not just one big one that made an impact.

My art style is simple and I use monochrome or no color so I guess it's really efficient....it only takes me maybe an hour or two to make each page? In the future theres a lot of things I want to improve on! Like making better backgrounds, shading and coloring well, making cleaner art eith a better artstyle and not to mention effective panelling and shots...there's a lot I want to get better on! And the only way to improve is to keep drawing haha.

[joannekwan]

The biggest influences for my more serious style exemplified in my series Heavy Horns are
Est Em

(hilarious that when I googled Est Em, this exact pic popped up from a post I made a while back on the same topic here on the forums)

and Tomer and Asaf Hanuka.

I looked to them A LOT during my formative years in college when I was in my art program. I just love how their figures looked so I tried to express a bit of the same linework and flow in my own drawings.

[Maps]

Wow! I really love your style! It’s absolutely gorgeous.
I’m still working on finding the right style for myself. The current comic I update... I’m not happy with the art but the story drives me. I also had another comic I began and quit since I was so new to drawing and knew I wasn’t happy with it.
I swear I learn something new each day about how to make my art more developed.
I love watching YouTube videos and seeing other people’s styles. Also... Nier Automata’s style resonated with me in character design a bit.

[Coati]

I don't know if I have a solid source of inspiration. I kinda like a lot of artists and maybe took a little of each one.

For Flower Field I need a style that I manage to keep a regular schedule without drain the life of my body. The comic itself is an art experiment for me. I'm trying to balance a nice and colorful, but keeping a simple art style.

Flower Field | Tapas

[elyss]

I pick from what I like on places like twitter and tumblr. A nose here, eyes there...

[Shanny8]

I started out with a typical comic book type style- then went left and started mixing other elements that I liked: harsh shadows, heavy angular lines & hatching, plus some manga/anime elements and worked in that style for almost a decade...around 2015 I started looking back at certain mainstream comic artists and decided I wanted to go back to that style; so while I have gotten back to that mostly entirely, I still have trace elements of the other style in there as well.

[IndigoShirtProd]

At least for the comic I have now, I started off working very cartoonish with influences from western cartoons, mainly Danny Phantom. Then there's a shift from my first to second chapter where the comic is still cartoonish but less so. I have been influenced by anime and I pull from many places, Though I can't really list them all right now.

The Black Belt Society | Tapas

The shift is pretty obvious when you look.

[BlueWorldComics]

Acknowledging my artistic limitations (backgrounds, perspective, consistent character design, mechanical objects) and my poor work ethic. If I design characters using basic shapes, keep the art relatively modest but consistent, and give my stories a "for all ages" vibe, I can keep a decent schedule and everything will look and feel "on purpose".

The story, though rated PG, I feel can still be epic (see the best cartoons from the 90's and early 2000's), and story is what I care about most.

The Skyman | Tapas

[azzy-m]

I think the best way I can describe how I got my art style is that I took all of the art styles I was inspired by when I was young, and mashed them together.

The three art styles that inspired the kind of "basis" of my art style is anime, an old art youtuber (that I don't watch anymore) and one of my best friend's art style. Over the years, it kind of became my own thing.

[Kittosaurus]

The art style I use for my main comic is heavily influenced by early golden books style, along with early Disney concept artists like Mary Blair. I wanted it to feel like you were falling into a story book.

I had to simplify my own style and try to use minimal line work to speed up the process. I also found that by blocking out the shapes first with the base color before adding the line art helped my work quicker and create more appealing shapes/silhouettes. Here is my process for drawing a panel:

[unknown_user]

I'm just drawing, and the drawing turns out to be in my art style.

[simplykit]

ive been drawing since i was a kid

ive had a lot of anime, movie and video game influences

[LT1986]

I developed my art style from watching cartoons/anime. I started out making my art work with a cartoonish style.

Now I've decided to make my art look a little bit more realistic, like certain Marvel, DC, and Image Comics comic pages. Now I add more details to fur/hair, texture to clothes, and texture to skin.

[OttoGruenwald]

I get as many visual resources as I can for my artist and try to be as clear as possible in my descriptions. For instance, the goblet that shows up in:

came from the Titan's Goblet my Thomas Cole, a painting I've always been fond of. I had her include it as a "world made from a goblet" fit the theme of small worlds created inside dreams.

The overall style came from the golden age comics many of the characters originated in combined with the cinematography of Conrad Hall via The Outer Limits.

The Power of Stardust | Tapas

[AniStaciaArt]

The first time I heard people talking about developing a style or wanting to change their style I was baffled. It never even occurred to me. I always just drew and that was it. My art evolved and changed as I learned more but it wasn't a conscious effort to change things.

I did change how I draw noses eventually so I could create more diverse noses. That was probably my only intentional style change. It looks SO MUCH better though!

[sorailleart]

Hhhmmm I was a fan of CLAMP and it served as my main inspiration in developing my style. But I guess as a teen I pretty much knew how I want my art to be: pretty and warm.

My most recent and current inspirations are Touya Mikanagi (Karneval) and art nouveau.

I still have a long way to go but people have consistently called my art pretty in recent years so I'm glad I'm still on the right path. 🤟

[Lucca_Vendramel]

My style was always simple and cartoony, but I love Steven Universe so much that i started basing my style around it, which actually encouraged me to pursue more anatomically correct practices.
Here's a comparison between before that and after that:

This character is not from my comic, though.

Everdream: Stars Hold no Boundaries. | Tapas

[vothnthorvaldson]

Mostly trial and error, still going on, my style is still in development. I did not read many (modern) comics before starting to draw one, so the comic influences are almost inexistant.

I would say children books from the 1970' 1980' are more of an influence, especially Agnes Rosensthiel.

(off topic, but that book.. my favorite child book... The discovery of numbers, with initiation to prime numbers, other that base-10 numeral systems and the notion of infinity, for age 2+!!!!!. Great illustrations, great contents! We had some great children's books in the 80'!!)
Too bad I can't find pictures of the illustrations (and my copy is on another continent).