You have this amazing style but your customer asked you to go out of your comfort zone? Are you trying to find this unique style we ever seen? Or you struggle to find your own art style and need some help?
Then is article is for you!
I'll help you to better understand what is a style and how to correctly use your references to create your own! Shall we start?
What is a style exactly?
The best definition that I can probably give you, and that I apply to any of the styles that I establish in my work is : " The art style is defined by a set of graphic rules that influences the characteristics and visual of your artwork".
Confused? Ok, Let me explain.
@Borderlands , Microsoft.com
If you observe an image such at the following one, You will be able to analyse various aspects like the colours, the shapes, the genre, the lines , the anatomy , the textures (...). These are specific characteristics that defines its visual. Let's try this out! If I want to describe this image, I will probably say: " This is a stylised image, the proportions are exaggerated, probably inspired from comics because of the black outlines and shadows. The textures are not too visible but still rich, the colours are quite bright (but they are a bit more pastel in game). it looks quite grungy and appears to take place in a sort of apocalyptic universe.
So I can easily assume that the rules to draw a similar image or character would be:
- Stylised proportions - Pastel colours but with some vibrant elements (ex googles eyes or power)
- Black outlines and some inner lines to draw the main shapes and volumes
- Strong contrasts, black shadows - Grunge textures
- Apocalyptic designs - Comics visual influences
See? I was perfectly able to find the main characteristics of Borderland! Easy right?
All you need is to observe your image and do your best to describe it. When defining an image, the very first thing that you need to find is it's "main genre". We have actually 3 big families and tons of children. Shall we continue?
3 Big families ...
The three big families are Realistic , Stylized and Cartoon. Each of these genre have their own characteristics, it's your base. See it as the three starters from Pokemon: you have these 3 options and you can only choose one to start your journey. You will be able to tweak and add more rules to your starter pack to create your very unique style.
@ (1) Death Stranding, (2) League of legends , (3) Pokemon Sword
Realistic: The realistic one is the closest visual that we can find from what we see in our daily life. It is usually defined by a commonly limited colour palette (low saturation, mid tones, reasonable contrasts and full range of values), realistic proportions, high level of details and textures and natural lighting. What makes this style difficult to master is that anyone can spot the mistakes, as they have plenty of references in mind from our world. If you want to go for that style, you will certainly spend a lot of time studying the fundamentals such as colour theories, anatomy but also perspective. I would highly recommend you to start from learning these, even if you want to get a more stylised style, because these principles will heavily influence the other styles anyway. it's some basics that you need to master, no matter which style you want to achieve.
Cartoon: The cartoon is the very opposite of the realistic style. The cartoon style is an extreme exaggeration. it's defined by a simplification of shapes, minimalism, exaggerations of shapes / expressions / gestures , usually saturated colours and high contrasts. To master this style, you will mostly need to practice your stylisation of shapes, textures and control your line. BUT to be able to exaggerate the shapes, you still need to understand the realistic basics. That's what I meant earlier: even if you want to have a cartoony style, you need to understand the core fundamentals in order to exaggerate or tweak them.
Stylised: The stylized style has a lot of diversity as it can be anything in between the realistic and the cartoon.
As you can imagine this includes a wide range of styles which can be more or less close to one
 style or the other. It also gives you more freedom and the opportunity to create your own rule-set to come up with something original.
...And their children
In these 3 categories, you will find some very famous styles which includes the Mangas, the Chibi, Disney / Pixar and the comics. These ones became a genre on their own because of the popularity of the books and movies. Each of them have also their own rules to define their visuals. I won't detail them all, so it's up to you to go check these out and try to define those on your own ;)
To create a stylised style, you will pick elements from both realistic and cartoon styles, but it will always be more influenced by one or the other. It's up to you to decide how much stylised you want it to be. It's not unusual to mix up some popular styles. As consequence you can find Cartoon drawing with realistic volumes and textures (ex Pixar) or even semi-realistic mangas (Aku no Hana or Death Note).
@ (1) Morgan Freeman , (2) God of War , (3) Loving Vincent , (4) Haku no Hana , (5) X-men , (6) Sleeping Beauty, (7) World of Warcraft , (8) league of legends , (9) Darksider , (10) Naruto , (11) Boku no Hera Academia , (12) Tangled , (13) Monster High , (14) Simpson , (15) Samurai jack , (16) My Little Pony , (17) ??? , (18) Adventure Time
Create an art style
Now that you know the basics, I can give you some useful tips to create an art style! Recently, I have been asked to draw a cartoony cat jumper. As you certainly know, I am mostly a semi realistic artist, so it became very challenging for me to try out different cartoon styles. You probably experienced the same: you might be able to draw 5 iterations, but it starts being very difficult to find something new without repeating. So here is my process to establish these styles:
@ Maéva Cortinovis
The first step is to find some references of various styles that you like and want to try.
Let's have a closer look at 20. You can see my reference on left: This is Caroline's Piochon's work. Check her work out right here: http://carolinepiochon.blogspot.com/
I really liked the stylisation that made these cats look like kittens, especially the big head and the dots eyes. So, if we analyze a bit this style: they have big heads, dots as eyes, very small ears and paws. The style is quite round and curvy and there is few hair indications.
Now, it's fine to use references, BUT IT IS NOT OKAY TO COPY IT. The idea is to create your own, based on your reference. So I kept some elements that I liked such as the small ears, paws and eyes. But I wanted to show the hair. So I decided to go for a round stylisation (according to my reference), have a bigger mouth to enable to have more facial expressions. But also I wanted to have a less exaggerated proportions so I made a bigger body. I also added some small cheek and eyebrows lines, because I thought that it would be cute. And a round nose. Here we go! I ended up with (20)!
So if I need to create an other character in the same style, my rules would be: Exaggerated proportions (Slightly bigger head, small paws, small nose, small ears) 2D style, visible line, round shapes, no inner texture details, very small eyes with lines under, line for eyebrows and some hair/ texture indications. I would stick to these to create any new character or object. NO EXCEPTIONS, it must be consistent. How did I ended up making these decisions? There is no big secret: you only need to try different things! To do so you can do a base close to your reference and ask yourself "Right, how can I make it my own now? What would I do differently if it was in my own style?" Or even probably "What do I don't like from this reference? What would I make differently?". From there, you can start sketching iterations (what if it had big eyes? what if I took the same proportions but with a sharp line style instead of round?...). By doing this, you will bring some fresh ideas in your mind and will come up with something different! That's how I came up with (19), which was an iteration of (20), and became my absolute favourite of the entire series!
I used exactly the same process for all my iterations! Here are some more of my references :
(1) @Landysh inspiration for design (16)
(2) TheLonelyPixel Extra Inspiration for design (15)
You can also combine multiple references to create a unique style. You will certainly need to pick what you prefer from each images and try to mix them up into a new design. For example, How would your cat look like if you use the brush texture of the design of ThelonelyPixel but use the cat body proportions and eyes of the one from Landysh? Wouldn't it great?!
Fancy to try it out?
Conclusion
In order to create your unique style, you need:
- Decide which of the 3 main style you want to use (realistic, cartoon or stylised)
- Find references that you like - Analyse the images and pick some characteristics that you want to re-use or adapt
- Create your own set of rules
- Stick to the rules that you defined for any new design
Now it is your turn!
If you want to practice, I can propose you two exercises:
1) Pick 5 to 10 art styles that you like, depending of the time that you can invest in this exercise (try to have as much variety as you can like like Power puff girls | Dragon Ball Z | Disney | Comics | Horizon Zero Dawn ) and draw one same character or object in each style.
2a) Choose an animal, character or object and develop 15 iterations in different styles that YOU created, based on references that you like. Do not copy your references, the idea is to develop your own style by observing your references.
2b) Pick one of the styles that you previously created, and design 2 new animals / characters or objects in the same style.
You now know the basics to create your own style! I hope that you enjoyed reading this article and that you found it useful !
Feel free to let me know in the comments what you think of it! And feel free to send me your artworks if you need any feedback! ;D
Thanks for reading! Catch up later!