Your advice and Marta Dalig’s advice in the pages of ImagineFX Nov. ‘07 issue are very good morsels to chew on during this time of transition for me. Attila’s advice is very helpful as well. I need to kick myself in the caboose and get to work on something. Thank you all.

I totally agree with drawing as much as possible so you can be confident in your decisions, and always aiming for new discoveries in your art, not being afraid to try new stuff.

On the other hand I think that soemtimes you have to constrain yourself to some method to deliver consistent work, indetifying charcteristics and design decisions that you’ll have repeat over and over to make the entire body of work tuned together.

It’s like coming up with a visual language that you’ll be speaking while working on that particular assignment. A style guide for yourself , on the medium of choice , compositions/framing, a library of forms, a palette and so on… I think it’s good parctice to keep a lookout for these.

I stumbled across your website a couple weeks ago cause I wanted to ink in AI, and very few people do that. But your tips helped me out alot. Now this issue about style is one thats key to making or breaking an artist.

They say the artist is his/her’s worse critic, and thats the hump we got to jump. We all want to either do what others are doing, do stuff according to the rules, or what we think people accept. But really it comes down to individuality and comfort, which both lead to consistantcy.

Last few years I wandered into the manga style cause personally I like it. But my art has no identity of my own, and also I felt constrained by rules. What I’ve done is gone over old sketches, lots and lots of books full of my old stuff and rekindled my original style, before I went into the manga style.

Not only does it have its own identity, but I feel less constrained by rules, it feels like my art. And now the manga style is nothing more then a memory. Course this is all recent, but it feels good to find your way through self discovery.

I always use Matt Groening as an inspiration cause he as a unique style all his own. Not that I’m copying him, but how he came to feel relaxed and proud of his work even though others can see errors.

I feel every artist has to go trough that at some point. My advice is if you feel like something doesn’t feel right, investigate it. Doodle, go over old stuff, even try a new medium.

Once you become comfortable in what your doing and how you’re doing it do, your imagination takes over and the sky’s the limit.