Their style is perfectly clean and shiny, and I’d love to be able to model exactly like them. They consistently use features like prominent eyebrows, lips, nose and cheeks, which really brings their gallery together, as well as beautiful gradients.
A successful artist based in Mexico City who teachers blender with another simple style, making for adorable creations. I purchased her character modelling course so I’m looking forward to trying that out.
She evokes childhood nostalgia of old video games through these little creatures, using fuzzy textures and round shapes combined with harsh patterns. She then sells these as sticker sheets.
I made sure to drop by Wednesday’s life-drawing sessions whenever I could. They were extremely helpful in learning human anatomy (which is crucial to know before you stylize your art), as well as other nuances of illustration, such as foreshortening.
This is a collection of some of my favourite artists.
Namely, people who have influenced my art style, whose creations and stories I am invested in, or I simply just aspire to be like (or people whose art I can just stare at forever because it’s so aesthetically pleasing).
This is Yoyo, who made the animated GIF I use as my blog background. The little sequences she makes are so simple yet effective, with varied textures and often featuring photos from her travels combined with little creatures. I had the pleasure of meeting her recently at London Comic Con, too.
Alaine is a mainly 2D animator who has worked at Netflix and Warner Bros. The fight scenes that she animates are impeccably smooth and dynamic, with on-point timing and posing. Her use of a 3D background in the first GIF is also very impressive.
Sad-ist owns a widely successful Youtube Channel where she makes skillfully choreographed episodic animations – complete with colour, and voice acting and soundtracks – totally by herself.
An artist with a stunning and expressive painting style, full of life and colour, who’s had a steady online presence since their days making Youtube animatics.
He is a Manchester-based MA Animation graduate who runs an online shop that sells ‘Sneezies,’ which are adorable hand-made yeti plushies, based on a design from his thesis film. They’re extremely heart-warming and unique, and sell out very fast.
She is a Japanese designer who lovingly crafts childlike toys based on everyday items, often using felt. She is criminally underrated with under 1000 followers. I hope that she decides to sell some of her creations one day.
Kiwi also makes plushies, alongside other mixed media things like stickers and collages, with everything being sweet and kidlike in nature. I’m not sure if toy-making is ever something that I’d dabble in myself, but regardless I have a great appreciation for it.
Established Artists
Naoko Takeuchi
The creator of the beloved Sailor Moon manga – one of my all time favourite series, and whose dreamy art style captures the essence of the shoujo and magical girl genre. Having been made in the 1990’s, it was all cell-animated, giving it this sort of charm that sets it apart from a lot of modern shows.
Studio Shaft
The anime studio whose unique style sets them apart from any others – the above GIF’s are from Madoka Magica, which uses cut-outs and physical elements mixed with 2D animation, making for a visual heaven.
Here are some of my favourite personal pieces I’ve made throughout the past year or so.
Self Portrait
I drew myself in a few different art styles, including my own and then like the ‘Sailor Moon’ anime. I picture this version of me with axolotl horns, though I’m not entirely sure why. I’ve always focused very heavily on character illustration, but I’m hoping to use my time at Uni to expand beyond that.
My Characters
These are characters from a story that I’ve been working on for quite a while – I like to imagine it as a web-comic or an animated series. For my Graphic Communications A-level, I decided to make a pretend poster, with a fake title and streaming service. Drawing a big city background took a long time, but I believe it was worth it.
Zine Project
This was my contribution to a charity zine during lock-down last year. 40 artists came together and each produced a full-page, digitally coloured illustration (this was my first time working in CMYK so that was a challenge to overcome). The theme was celebrating the anniversary of the K-pop girl group ‘LOONA’, so everyone was individually assigned one of their songs as a prompt to base their drawing from. Mine was called ‘Heart Attack’ and is about a girl trying to attract the attention of someone she looks up to.
I was also lucky enough to be one of the 12 artists working on the cover – we each drew one member of the band, then made a collage of them together.
The zine was named ‘Asterism’, and copies were printed and sold online, along with other things like stickers, prints and key-chains. The main goal was to raise money for Black Lives Matter, and all of the proceeds from sales were donated.
For our very first day on campus, we each had to bring in a sentimental item, and were then sorted into groups of 4 in order to make a short stop-motion film.
My team consisted of myself, Andrea, Jack and Luc-John. With a cotton ball llama, an ornamental elephant, a screwdriver and a piece of string, we created a story about mountain-climbing and moral dilemmas when faced with adversity. Although, the fall wasn’t that big of a deal after all.
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