I really like your style. Was it intentionally designed, or did you just sort of fall into it over time?
I wouldnt say I intentionally designed it, as in I haven't sat down and Engineered a specific style, and instead it was more of me finding what I liked and wanted to incorporate into my style.
You could probably trace my style back to its influences. I used to draw really round shapes (I still do but like they were just ovals and circles...I guess i just like that shape) until I started watching How to Draw Anime tutorials in middleschool T-T (shoutout to Mark Crilley lol)
But when I first joined social media back in 2016, I found all these crazy artists with really unique styles that really influenced me. I was drawn towards artists like star_bite/prince_canary and rawrgyle/grassflu who have very dynamic expressions and character poses :0 (also they ended up working on a Batman and Superman project respectively and how wild is it that my icons from forever ago now work on projects aligned with my current interests!!!) And as you get exposed to different artists you get exposed to the many ways you can Draw things and along with your natural affinities towards certain things (such as me being attracted to Bright and Bold colors and Shaped styles) you kind of naturally build a style.
And part of that is also just having fun Trying things out? Sometimes I wouldnt even try to emulate their style as much as I tried to just...do what they were doing? As in making my ocs and putting them in fun poses, and doing color palette trends and such etc.
I hope that helped! If you're curious I can break down some of my style checkpoints over the years. As you can see there was still some major anime influence in my style back then when I first joined social media around 2015/2016
Around that time, I also discovered the fandom around the Cartoons popular at the time, so I drifted away from anime and drew things like gravity falls/steven universe/otgw etc etc so it got Rounder I guess. I really liked how stylized characters looked and got obsessed with Shape Language and assigning characters distinct Shapes (box vs triangle vs circle etc). I also read a lot of webcomics and stuff like that so those played a part I guess
And then around 2019 I saw more artists drawing anime fanart with really sharp angles, which was completely different but so cool to look at so I tried to incorporate more angles into my art. I still had that very cartoony style but tried to push the Sharpness a tad bit more if you can tell. (I think the name of the artist I liked was jeluto?)
I think around this time I also focused a lot more on color as well and did a lot of paintings then and whenever I did more Painterly stuff I tended to switch Styles into something Less Cartoony T-T
Then by 2020, I revamped my ocs, actually tried to break down and study my own style and how I would draw them, and my style kinda fell into a mix of round vs sharp edges I guess. I tried to give myself Rules which I would follow when stylizing a character to keep it more consistent and intentional.
Then in 2021 some of that Fun Part of stylizing characters into something more Cartoony kind of took a backseat as I focused more on Pose Work and Body Expression instead which I think helped a lot :0
And here's some recent stuff from the past year! Still very cartoony, but less so than 2016 I'd say, and still using really bold colors!! Still love my Soft Vs Hard angles B]
And overall have stronger pose work :) I'm sure my style will evolve as I learn more and experiment more, because one thing I want to focus on is backgrounds and environments :0
