Anatomy

So after deciding on the art style for the characters, I thought about the anatomy. I looked at the character designs for Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt and Invader Zim, and thought about how they relate in terms of anatomy.

They both have pretty wacky designs for the characters, very expressive and over-the-top. I've always thought they both heavily resembled german expressionism in terms of anatomy, as well as a sense of John Kricfalusi's art style, moreso with Panty and Stocking.

So I thought more about their influences and looked at some german expressionist artists.

First I looked at Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, whose paintings are generally nasty portrayals of humans, their facial features are accurate but the overall shapes of the body parts are jagged and surreal. They are also given a bizarre combination of vibrant colours, each combination being different to make each figure distinctive.

These expressions have become very influential in terms of character design and figuring out what expressions would be used.

I also looked at Edvard Munch. His paintings are generally quite bleak, with mostly dull colours and low key lighting. They can still be quite lively though but the contrast between the dark colours and exaggerated imagery is what makes them so disturbing. The heavy detail in the brushwork makes the imagery all the more unnerving, because the images are all dynamic and stylistic but the brush work is so detailed that it seems like they were trying to be depicted realistically, making them seem more nightmarish.

The backgrounds are especially unnerving, and incorporating this art style into my character design is what I intend on doing.