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UNDERSTANDING YOUR STYLE - 1
Published: 2010-07-01 10:49:15 +0000 UTC; Views: 167359; Favourites: 5037; Downloads: 3745
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---PLEASE DOWNLOAD FOR EASY VIEWING!---Part one of my Understanding Your Style: Symbols, Design Pattern, and Anti-Pattern guide/essay-thing.
A lot of you already know about symbols and stuff - if that's the case for you, please skip ahead to part two!
If you like what you see here, please, share it with your friends. I literally put over a week's worth of work into writing, formatting, and illustrating this. If you like it, please support it! This message is extremely important to me, and I've been thinking about making a guide on it for a long time.
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Comments: 330
Found this and part 2 linked on Tumblr... thank you!
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Thank you! You put this into words so well.
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I like to say "It's not style if you can't do it any other way."
Useful useful.
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I shared this and Part II with my friends who are having difficulty in understanding how to apply symbols to represent the face. It also pointed out some of my own flaws in improving my own style without understanding how the style works.
By making this tutorial, you've provided me a more clear direction on understanding my own art while I am otherwise teaching myself with little professional guidance. I thank you for this very dearly.
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You're exceedingly welcome. Good luck with everything!
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This series has been utterly invaluable to me. I've been struggling with a lot of artistic confidence and art block issues of late, and I keep coming back to this. 
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This is brings up a lot of really good points and makes me think a little deeper on some stuff I had only skimmed. Thank you for creating this.
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This is the most interesting tutorial I've ever read.
You've made a great job, and this could be really usefull for those (like me 'til one year ago) who are in a "style crisis". I've spent too much time to understand what this tutorial can say in such a "simply" and understanding way. This is important, and I'll share this
I wish I had found this tutorial years ago.
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This was very helpful, and gave me a lot to think about. I really liked it. Thank you!
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This changed everything for me! Thank you so much for posting it. ;u;
After reading, I noticed exactly what you described in my drawings (I have indeed started out by copying Sailor Moon, but quickly tried to move on to my own style - which I never really found) and could try to at least prevent a bit of damage. I started paying more attention to real life anatomy (especially position wise) and I'll try and this guide actually also helps me to understand common mistakes I make even when trying to draw from real life. Thank you!
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Very, very helpful. I actually found this guide on thepunchlineismachismo's blog on his drawing advice piece. Really glad I found this and I hope it helps out me in my drawing journey-I'll be sure to show it to my sister as she's taken up drawing after not doing it for years as I haven't too. 
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Thank you for this. It is incredibly helpful to me!
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I'm drinking beer and reading these while I rest my busted up hands. It's fun!
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I refer to this all the time! Thank you so much for making this!
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Had this faved on the old account, refaving for posterity. I MUCH approve of the stuff you're writing here and want to keep spreading it.
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That's an interesting point of view. I never thought style can be explored in such depth!
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I feel like the only person in the world who has been drawing for years, yet didn't hesitate to study anatomy when I was told to. 
(Also, I do have a friend who draws in Sailor Moon-esque styles, and insists that it is realism.
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Aaaah.... You got me. You're blowing my brains out. I knew about symbols to some degree (there was a whole lengthy essay on this that I read a few years back, but I didn't quite understand it), but you just exposed so much to me. Goodness, this is wonderful.
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I don't think I've ever read anything that so clearly gets this point across. Thanks so much for writing this!
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thank you so much for this...so helpful and well-written.
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>Why Life Drawing is so damn important.
The best explanation.
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Both of these tutorials are amazing - I will do my best to follow them. They are very helpful, thank you for making them!
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Have you ever read Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics? It sounds like the same really important messages that he has in there, but spread out to the wider audience of DA, so, awesome job! It's really lessons that need to be spread!
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this is beyond what you would find in your normal tutorial and guide. it reminiscences on a class lecture of art and its fundamental studies. Job well done! I look forward to part two! : )
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Parts one and two of this tutorial may be the most important things I have ever read. I'm just now trying to come out of drawing Anime. I want to draw something that someone can look at and know I drew. I'm tired of trying to copy and learn from someone else's style, but until know, that's all I've ever known. How-to-draw Anime books and tutorials by other artists on dA have founded the structure of how I draw, and I'm not happy with what it's given me. I cannot express my gratitude enough to you for the incredible time and effort you have put into these pages. Thank you.
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and this is one of the reasons i recommend all my freinds scout mcclouds comic theories, even if they are not comicartists, but work with cartoons
You made great work, and it is easy to understand. ^^
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The resolution of symbol utilization, a wobbly diamond eye is an example of low resolution symbol utilization, it refer to a general concept of an eye but we don;t get the quality of that eye because the concept is too general. A detailed rendered eye is higher in symbol resolution, but an eye does not end here, because unlike other features, an eye cannot be perfected by physical quality alone, it has to communicate the state of mind, in order to do so it has to synchronize with the gesture and surrounding. The analogy of "resolution" com from the fact that digital image are better at high resolution because it communicates more information. The wobbly eye is analogical to low resolution image where everything is blurred with large pixel and compression artifacts, you can get what's in the picture but not enough details. The physical quality of a work is depend on the pixel resolution, the physiological quality of a work is depend on symbol resolution.
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But the point of cartooning is to draw 2-5 basic lines and shapes and create a whole eye. Something quick and easy that tricks people into believing that what they are seeing is in fact, an eye. No other features required.
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I wish this would have existed back in 1998, or at least if I had the ability to print this out and then go back to 1998 and smack my past self around the face with it.
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Thanks for this. I'm trying to improve my art skills, and this is very helpful
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I'm so glad you wrote this, especially since most tutorials seem to reinforce the problem. I learned to draw from my brother's Marvel comics. While it's true and fair to say that I need to practice drawing, not many seem to realise just how hard it is to relearn when one has spent ten years thinking this is all there is to it and over five years more being too disheartened to even know where to start again.
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A well deserved DD, I think. This is the exact kind of advice I was hoping to find.
I've been getting really discouraged lately as to why I'm not seeing any change in my art... I had feared that I'd grown stagnant.
But after reading this (and part 2), I feel I can approach it with a different perspective.
Thank you for the solid, well-written guide!
-DM
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A very useful tutorial that i wish any comics and graphic novels artists should anaylse and reading. (For true)
Sadly, we left a generation of good constructive cartoonings to a series of hybrid cartoons styles who never figure nowhere. Problem is, they made moneys with this. So, it play against us, who really want to mastering our skills and improve. Okay, i can like some stylisations but only if it's common sense. Not be random. I agree with anatomy. It was a problem when i started years ago. And i learned by cartoons blogs how it use and works. Construction and shapes are your bests friends when you made a character.
It's a interesting drawing process who help you to learn how a style works and be more individual than be a follower like the majority of comics of the last decade.
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it's so deep. i'm not used to taking in such artistic philosophy on DeviantArt.
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This . . . that was so amazing! I have no words that can describe the usefulness and intelligence that makes up this guide!
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amazingly insightful !
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hm~ you're pretty smart : )
i can actually agree with that view.
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Thanks for this. It's excellent and helped me to understand some issues I'm encountering moving away from an 'anime' style.
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I needed to see this. Desperately needed to see it.
Thanks a pantload.
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very interesting <-- long time did not say this word!
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I've been thinking roughly the same thing for many months now, and it's helped me IMMENSELY!!
Thank you for writing this! It confirms my beliefs!!
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