#twixremix

3. What ideas come from when you were little?

I’m assuming this is asking “what ideas do you have now that started from when you were little”, so I’m going to answer it like that lol

I have a bunch of different story ideas and characters that are from varying eras of my life at this point, all of which I intend to reboot/finish eventually, but rather than getting into all of those at once, I’ll talk more about general subjects/inspirations that I’ve had since childhood. It's interesting to see what subject matter I was most interested in at different parts of my life though!

I was REALLY into animal fantasy growing up (Warriors, Guardians of Ga’Hoole, etc.) so a lot of my oldest ideas feature animals/fantasy creatures as the protagonists, something that absolutely did not change! My love for dragons in particular (thanks to Spyro the Dragon) is one of the first things that any new person I meet learns about me, though I also really love cats (especially big cats), birds (especially owls and raptors), dogs (especially foxes and wolves), and pretty much every cool mythical creature I can think of. I had friends who were horse girls, and I was the dragon girl (Spyro, Dragonology, Eragon, The Last Dragon Chronicles, Dragon-type Pokémon, you name it). Though I have done some much needed expansion of my skills and subject matter since, I still tend to favour animal characters and creature design to drawing regular humans, to the point that I didn’t actually start drawing humans until college! Even with humanoids or monster kids, I tend to give them a lot more animal traits where possible, as I usually find them most interesting to work with.

Runescape was an early inspiration for my love of knights and fantasy weapon/armour design, and that definitely hasn’t changed either! I’m glad that my ability to draw humans has increased enough that I can actually draw proper armour on them now lol

Despite how prominent my star aesthetic is now (primarily influenced by Kirby), that actually wasn’t something that would appear in my art as a significant motif/influence until later in life. Or rather, I’d use it a lot as a kid without really thinking about it, as a lot of general fantasy stuff uses that aesthetic too, but I wasn’t consciously aware of my love for it until much later, and thus I lean into it a lot more nowadays. The influence was there from the start, but I guess the sleeper agent in my brain took a bit to kick in lol

Honestly, I carry the vast majority of my interests from childhood into my current art, so this list is far from exhaustive! Not to get too philosophical here, but I think I primarily use my art to maintain the connection to those things, as they still bring me the same or similar joy as they did in the past, only now I have the proper skills to actually make those ideas real. I think child me would freak out if she saw what I can do now, so it’s a great feeling :)

11. Do you listen to anything while drawing? If so, what?

The short answer is “almost anything”, as I usually just have my unorganized YouTube playlist going when I need to work for a while, which I’ve periodically added stuff to over the years whenever I stumble across a new track I like. My taste in music is so varied that it’s incredibly hard to explain, though generally I tend to favour upbeat/fast tracks while working, keeps that dopamine flowing, you know? Anything from EDM to 90s/00s pop to power metal to electroswing to VGM, whatever gets the gears turning in the moment!

That said though, I’m in the process of curating more specific playlists for specific moods or if I’m drawing a particular type of sequence or scene (like a battle music playlist when drawing two characters fighting, stuff like that). I do this for when I’m writing stuff too, as I’m currently in the process of refining my workflow for comics and such, so hopefully that’ll be helpful for getting into the mindset for each of those different scenes later on. I find that I can't usually focus on art with anything other than music playing in the background though, even stuff I've seen before. Not quite sure why, but especially in the case of cartoons/anime, even if I've seen it a million times, I still like looking at it too much lol

21. Art styles nothing like your own but you like anyways

Answered here! :)

27. Do you warm up before getting to the good stuff? If so, what is it you draw to warm up with?

Honestly every time I remember that warmups are a thing, I ALWAYS forget to actually do them, almost like a weird object permanence type thing lmao

Maybe if I actually got into a routine I might find them useful, but generally I find just drawing circles and lines to be too boring as a warmup. Not by deliberate choice really, as I’m sure they’d actually be helpful with consistent use, but really I just kind of... start until something happens I guess? My methods are mine, sure, but I wouldn't call them efficient necessarily. Either I get into the groove with what I’m drawing or I don’t, and then I decide if I keep pushing through or I switch to something else, especially if I'm working a specific character design/concept. The way that I refine the art for my character sheets involves gradually erasing/redrawing the same sketch until it’s essentially cleaned into line art (I find it keeps more of the life of the drawing that way), so I’m used to this kind of approach when starting my art in general. If I have to doodle something first to start, it’ll usually be a head of some kind of dragon or other animal.

30. What piece of yours do you think is underrated?

Oooh… that’s a tough one! It’s hard to determine if art you post gets what you feel to be the amount of attention it deserves, as so many factors like post time, subject matter, and luck can determine how many people see it and/or interact with it. I guess my logo design stuff in general is kind of underrated? In the sense that I don’t think there are a lot of people out there that specifically nerd out when they see it like I do. Or at least, I haven’t come across many people that do so far! I understand why of course, characters and such are always going to have a far more universal appeal, and character design will always be my main forte, I just really love logo designs too, as I feel they can have a certain “character” of their own when done right. [insert the "graphic design is my passion" meme here but like, unironically] Here’s one of my most recent logo designs that I’m especially proud of :)