I think my big three faves (especially as of ate have bee Sonic the Hedgehog, Sky: Children of the Light and Splatoon and I've got a pretty decent chunk of fanart for al three (Sonic has the most by far tho)
Overall those three have stood out to me for their shared trait of being these really bright, colorful, exciting adventure type stories or games but the lore and world building when you dig into it get like surprisingly dark which I think is interestingly reflective of how life can be as you grow up looking at the world through childish eyes and then growing up and realizing how a lot of things are.
Like Sonic is a franchise I've loved for years and aside from being this cool hero with super speed there's a charm that the characters have in taking care of their world and having these strong values and feeling their emotions and how there's this sort of repeated theme (in some of the older games especially but also recently with Sonic Frontiers) about life and it's brevity and how valuable that is and the need to just be grateful for each moment and "live life to the fullest in the time you have" (SatBK my beloved) it's just very emotional while also being cool and spunky and funny and I love the versatility
Splatoon I adore for being so colorful and fun as this co-op game with silly themes for splatfest but the worlds are rich in details and the lore is unique but still at the core comes back to people connecting regardless of background or origin and accepting that the past can be messy but what matters is coming together to build a better future
Sky really does well I think in going over these phases of life as there's this new strangeness when you first open the game to exploring each sort of phase of life through the form of realms within the game. Reliving the memories of ancient spirits, seeing their struggles and their triumphs and just mundane things both sad and happy and every other emotion on the spectrum as you observe their world as it is now versus the glimpses of how it was in the past and then experiencing this games version of life's end and a unique process of rebirth it's just really breathtaking and I love how well it's score incorporates these things and the player can truly be immersed with such great music and sound design
As for others I'd say there's been moments in different pieces of media and others work that have really captured me though getting into the specifics is a little tough. Like just on Tapas alone stories like Dream Constellation have really grabbed me with visuals that are really impressive but hitting on bits of life tha most readers can relate to or at least empathize with. Ghost Lights which is also a very pretty story but the way it mixes the natural and supernatural is just really captivating especially when one seems to almost literally bleed into the other. Then in more popular media I've loved Into the Spiderverse and it's way of playing with alternate universes, Undertale and Deltarune and it's characters and their personalities and stories and the way their worlds operate both separately and in tandem with one another. The Zelda games tho the only one I've played is Breath of the Wild and only even watched a playthrough of Wind Waker I still enjoy both for this interesting silent protagonist but this interesting land of Hyrule and the conflicts that are faced as well as the underlying theme with duty by way of being this hero throughout time and how the main character responds to that even if it's not addressed directly but more through other characters around him.
I could probably list of more but I think it's something about stories that point out and address things relating to the human condition and all the mess we've done or still do or are still doing or things we feel and experience and it's just interesting how all that can be interpreted from one story to another. I'm also just a sucker for unique or interesting visuals or designs and just generally pretty or colorful things
Regarding fanart here's a couple that I like:
(sonic frontiers screencap redraw)
(undertale scenario with an old self insert)
(this one looks like it has sad context but it's actually two sketches stitched together from another canvas and liked how it looked on a black background which one is a vet player that led me through a trial and another that's just a really dramatic sketch of my moth)
(ENA and Moony fanart(ft Turron) for ENA Day)
that's like it's a lil addendum but i think fanart for me is interesting because for me it means i got that invested into a piece of media or just actually fixating on it long enough that i wanted to add to it in terms of ocs or self inserts or sonas or whatever
