Anime

I overlooked my blog yesterday in favor of my Digicel production blog, which completely wrecked my "post once a day" streak. Since school's started I don't have a lot of new sketches to show, and even if I do they're generally Digicel related so it's going up on that blog. Charapoo's Place will stay active and exciting though, I promise.

So today I've been thinking a lot about influences, specifically relating to character design. As part of an assignment I had to collect some images from artists who are good reference for character design. I immediately picked up artists like Chris Sanders, Jamie Hewlett, John K, etc. The weird thing is, I never even looked at western (non-anime) artists up until maybe a year or two ago, and now they're my main focus. In an effort to find a style that lends itself better to western animation, I'm looking at western artists.

I think I just want to take a moment to reflect on the biggest influences to my art, and remember why it appealed to me so much. I want to evolve as an artist but I also don't want to lose my roots, and I'm sometimes afraid I am.







Tanemura Arina is without a doubt my biggest influence, and what really got me drawing seriously. Like most shoujo styles, unique facial and body structure is replaced by a standard "attractive" template, but that's what I enjoy. Immense detail is put in the linework, the clothing design, etc, and her colors are subdued but effective.




I can't even express how much influence CLAMP circa Cardcaptor Sakura had on my drawings. The soft colors and cutesy expressions were one thing, but the detail in the character's costumes, etc ust blew me away.





Art from Honey and Clover by Umino Chika. She was definitely a later influence for me, but big nonetheless. Her use of colors is so appealing, and all her lines are sketchy but deliberate.