Due to the spontaneous nature of how this project started (drawing during session), I didn’t deliberate much about what sort of style would best fit. Instead, I just drew somewhat intuitively in the “style” that came naturally to me.
My default style has been influenced through the years by many sources, most prominently Japanese animation & comics. Something about the heightened emotion & expressiveness common to the medium has continued to appeal to me.
Studio Trigger’s style is quite similar to what I’m going for, with its bold designs and expressive use of colour. Little Witch Academia & Promare, serve as good examples of these.
Little Witch Academia makes use of the facial proportions of anime ie. big eyes, to heighten expressiveness and heighten the empathy of the viewer.
Promare makes use of colours in a very bold and bright fashion. It serves as a good example of the genre while breaking convention with its extreme use of colours.
The ongoing influence of sequential art on the way I draw has meant that I usually conceptualise images as snapshots in a sequence. This has been an ideal fit for session sketches (see here); conveying the sometimes comical, sometimes serious events in a way the audience is accurately able to interpret and match to the scenes they were meant to depict. Simplified, cartoonish designs that are easily distinguishable and could be viable to animate or can be drawn over and over again consistently, coincidentally also work well for quick sketching during the game.
My style consists generally of working quickly without worrying too much about realism. Exaggerated shapes, sharp angles, gestural lines and not much sketching unless the subject is particularly complex or unfamiliar are trademarks of how I draw. I typically do studies of unfamiliar subjects or sketch new character designs over and over again until I can draw them quickly, recognisably, and comfortably, in a way that fits into the overall style of the scene, (unless the point is not fitting).
A big aspect of my style that can also be found in Manga is the use of the “Unfinished” image. This is characterised by a not particularly clean finish and creates a unique signature for each finished piece.
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